To Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura

The signatories to this petition include people throughout the world. We respectfully request that the Japanese government immediately repeal the ministerial decree ordering the closure of social science and humanities faculties at the national universities. 86 university were covered by his decree. We believe that research and teaching in fields such as economics, international relations, law, history, foreign languages, and the many other disciplines affected by this decision contributes to the wealth and power of a country in numerous ways.

While we are conscious of the fact Japan faces serious economic problems, we note that all other developed countries support the social science and the humanities. We commend the Japanese government’s ambition in wanting to increase the number of Japanese universities in the ranks of the world top 100. We believe that the proposed abolition of social science and humanities at the national universities would undermine the achievement of this goal.