Prof. Patrick Mendis honoured in South Korea, China and US for his service

By Ajith Kumarajiwa, special correspondent

Seoul, South Korea: Sri Lankan-born American diplomat Patrick Mendis arrived in Seoul after his lecture at the ancient Longquan Buddhist Monastery in China. He was invited to give a keynote speech at the Chungnam Institute of History and Culture in South Korea’s new mini capital of Sejong. 

“It was a long and tiring journey from Washington, but I learned a lot from these highly-educated Chinese monks at the Longquan Monastery,” said Prof. Mendis, who was visiting the National Museum in Seoul. 

“South Korea has achieved remarkable progress over the last two decades,” Mendis added. 

As an American military professor at the Pentagon, he taught at the Yongsan Army base in Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) after his Pacific Command teaching tour in Japan. Prior to that, he taught at the US military bases at NATO Command in England, Germany, Italy, Spain and Turkey.

At the Longquan Monastery, which was established in 951 AD during the Liao Dynasty, he discussed the application of Buddhist sutras in his speech on ‘What the Buddha taught on sustainable development’. On his previous visit, he also gave a lecture at the monastery on the historical Buddhist links between China and Sri Lanka that date back several centuries.

Over the past two decades, Prof. Mendis has visited all the provinces of China and taught at over 25 Chinese universities, including Fudan, Renmin, Shandong, Tsinghua, Tongji and Zhejiang. Most recently, he served as a distinguished visiting professor of Sino-American relations at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in Beijing.

For his contributions to China, Mendis was presented with the International Confucius Award from the prestigious National Confucius Research Institute of China in Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. 

Recently, he was invited to South Korea by the Chungcheong provincial government and the Chungnam Institute. With an audience of over 300 government officials and Confucian scholars, the Harvard-educated Sino-American expert delivered a fascinating historical account of the value of Confucian culture in the founding of the United States and its relevance to contemporary society.

As well as being a former US Commissioner to UNESCO, Mendis has previously served in the federal government and Minnesota state government during the Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations in various capacities. He was a former AFS high school exchange scholar to the State of Minnesota and a Hubert Humphrey fellow at the University of Minnesota.

For his leadership and public service, Mendis has been honoured with numerous awards by the University of Minnesota, the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture. He is the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Award presented by the US Department of State, where he once served as the Secretariat Director of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the former US Information Agency.

Mendis has also established several awards. Those include the Millennials Award for Leadership and Service at Harvard University, the Edward Burdick Legislative Award at the University of Minnesota, the Sarvodaya Peace Prize in Sri Lanka and the Patrick Mendis Prize at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.

A frequent visitor to Sri Lanka, he is still in contact with his friends, high school teachers and professors, he said. The Best Commander of the Army Cadet Corps of Sri Lanka, Mendis served as the first Youth Ambassador of Sri Lanka at the United Nations prior to becoming a naturalised US citizen.

He has worked in and travelled to more than 125 countries. 

“Travelling makes me humble and insignificant in the larger scheme of things,” the Professor said. 

Currently, he is a distinguished Visiting Professor of Global Affairs at the National Chengchi University of Taiwan and a Senior Fellow of the Taiwan Center for Security Studies in Taipei.