Congratulations to JET/MEF Alum Leonard Schoppa

Congratulations to JET/MEF alum, Leonard Schoppa (Kumamoto, 1984-1985),for being awarded the prestigious imperial decoration, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, in recognition of his academic contributions and his work to strengthen US-Japan relations. He is an alumni of the Monbusho English Fellows Program, the precursor to the JET Program, and has spent much of his career encouraging his students to apply to be a JET, supporting JET alumni and others in the US-Japan field.

A political scientist at the University of Virginia, Professor Schoppa is the author of Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan’s System of Social Protection (2006), Bargaining with Japan: What American Pressure Can and Cannot Do (1997) and Education Reform in Japan (1991). He is also editor of the volume, The Evolution of Japan’s Party System (2011). His first book, published in 1991, was inspired by his experience in Kumamoto classrooms as a MEF at a time when the Japanese government was discussing education reforms aimed at fostering more diversity and creativity among students.

He has taught at UVA since 1990 and has served as a Commissioner for the Japan-US Friendship Commission, as Associate Chair of the Department of Politics and Director of the East Asia Center at the University of Virginia in 1997-2000; as Academic Dean on a round-the-world educational voyage of the Semester at Sea in the Fall of 2008; and dean for a similar round-the-Mediterranean voyage in the Summer of 2011. Professor Schoppa was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University (1985-1988) and a Reischauer Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1989-1990).