HPAIR
Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations
This annual summer conference brings together undergraduate students, graduate students, and distinguished speakers to discuss from six stimulating workshops topics. Speeches and discussions, interactive projects and activities are a few among many workshops attendees can participate. In the past, attendees have came from more than forty different countries. HPAIR is a place where many current and future leaders can meet and exchange ideas on international relations.
A Word from Greg, an HPAIR participant:
By attending the HPAIR conference, you will be exposed to a wide variety of opinions on various subjects such as technology and its future impacts, national security, and modernization and development with a specific focus on the Asian geographic area. These will come from a number of many experts on the subject from many well known universities, and from discussions from the many other delegates attending the conference who come from all throughout the world. Discussions of this nature, especially pertaining to the Asian region is rarely, if ever, discussed in many US classrooms, and this will be the opportunity to engage in thoughtful discussion with bright students with a similar interest from many other countries.
Each day of the conference, expect to be up early, about 7 or 8, to catch breakfast and then attend the first section discussions. Each lecture/discussion lasts about 2 hours with breaks and a lunch period given in-between each. Also, don’t be afraid to attend other discussions or topics even if they aren’t your designated topic. Sometimes, the other workshops will have something that sounds really interesting, so just go ahead and go to it. The breaks between discussion periods are the best times to engage fellow delegates on their opinions of different topics and just learn more about other perspectives on just about anything. These are also very good networking opportunities and really should be taken advantage of! Most of the later discussions/lectures were field trips to various places in the city relevant to the topic. The final few meetings of the conference took place at Fudon University, rather than the discussion rooms within the hotel where the first few days’ gathering took place. The conference time for each day ends at 5pm.
At this point, delegates should make plans with others on places to go out for dinner and other plans to explore the city’s nightlife. The 2004 HPAIR was in the city of Shanghai where it is very commercial and has a very large variety of nightclubs and bars to check out. There often were many unofficial HPAIR plans for clubs or bars for the delegates to go to. For me, I felt these were the most fun times because you are free to do what you want in a very social setting with many people to meet and get to know. It’s amazing how much you can learn of other cultures and people in very small amount of time in settings such as this.
So from attending the HPAIR conference, you should be able to learn much from the many discussions you attend but will also meet people from all over the world. It is a very fun experience and if you have the opportunity to attend, I would definitely recommend going.
- Greg
