Mr. Siddharth Chatterjee’s powerful message provided a valuable opportunity for each student to internalize the challenges faced by the international community and explore the role they can play.
Many students said they were particularly moved by a video shown at the beginning of the session, which introduced Mr. Chatterjee’s personal and professional journey. His unique career path inspired them to think about their own futures from a broader perspective.
One student remarked, “It made me realize that behind our comfortable lives, there are countless conflicts in the world that don’t receive enough attention,” adding that they learned the importance of taking personal ownership of global issues. Other students expressed being deeply struck by Mr. Chatterjee’s emphasis on “human capital”—investment in education—as the most important path to national development, and by his stark warning that the modern era, with over 30,000 nuclear weapons, represents “humanity’s lowest point.”
A lively question-and-answer session with Mr. Chatterjee followed the lecture, demonstrating the students’ high level of engagement. One student asked, “Why do so many neighboring countries tend to fall into conflict?” In response, Mr. Chatterjee explained that the root of this lies in historical struggles over resources and power. The student who asked the question stated that this reaffirmed for them the importance of dialogue and diplomacy.
Through this study session, students learned that cooperation, not competition, is essential to solving global challenges and that efforts to build common ground through dialogue are indispensable for creating a peaceful future. While recognizing the difficulty of high-level issues like UN reform, they came away with the realization that young people have significant power to make improvements at the grassroots level, making it a very meaningful and rewarding experience.
(Reported by Daigo Matsushima)