Incredibly, most of my time as President has been spent functioning as the SACP webmaster. After a tremendous amount of expenditure of time and effort, I raised funds, hired some students, and got the site transported to the University of Maine Web Server at http://www.umaine.edu/sacp/. During the summer, I made changes directed at the most significant inaccuracies, although much remains to be done. Many of you have sent me changes and postings, assuming that I'm the webmaster. I thank you for your patience, since I have usually had to ignore your requests, even if this has been very stressful for me. As you'll see later in this report, all of this is about to change for the better.

Another time-consuming task aimed at revitalization has involved our SACP mailing list and membership. It took me a lot of work to finally have access to a mailing list that seemed surprisingly modest. Many leading Asian and comparative philosophers, including past Presidents and other officers of the SACP, had been dropped from the mailing list. Before mailing the spring 2001 issue of the SACP FORUM, I assembled a new mailing list and added about 75 scholars. I have been working recently with my other officers to add names to the mailing list and to increase our membership.

One other major area of revitalization has been my priority of becoming more inclusive. For a variety of personal and scholarly reasons, the SACP has become narrower than it should be. For example, almost all of our Presidents during the past decade, including me, have had their major specialization in philosophies of India and South Asia, and this has often shaped priorities and programs. I found that many scholars focusing on China, Japan, and other parts of Asia had become less active or had not renewed their memberships. I have made a conscious effort at reaching out beyond my specific areas of specialization and scholarly contacts to communicate to other Asian and comparative philosophers that we want them to play a vital role in the SACP. To provide a second illustration, when I served for several years as Program Chair, there was an understandable reaction among many members that the Society should move beyond Hawaii and a relatively small group of established scholars. In recent years, I've noticed that most of the older established scholars, often at or related to Hawaii, simply withdrew from active participation in the SACP, while a relatively small group of newer scholars appeared on panel after panel. I'm trying to reconnect with the older scholars, who have dedicated so much effort to our Society, and to scholars at Hawaii, who must play a significant role in a revitalized SACP. At the same time, I want to support those who have become involved in recent years, reach out to younger scholars, and open the SACP to many voices.

We should greatly increase our membership. You will find the 2001 Membership Form in this issue of the SACP FORUM. Before you receive this issue, many of you will have received a renewal reminder and Membership Form from Dr. Sushil Mittal. A number of scholars used the old 2000 Membership Form to renew in late 2000 or early 2001. Since our membership fee is so modest, with regular dues set at $20 and student/emeritus dues at $8, please send in a new 2001 membership even if you sent in your 2000 renewal rather late. If there is some confusion, communicate with Sushil at smittal@mail.millikin.edu. Please rejoin or join for the first time. Most of you know of faculty, students, and others who have not related to our Society, but who would benefit from and possibly contribute to the SACP. Please send their names, addresses, and e-mails to Sushil Mittal and to me, and we'll reach out to them.

During the past six weeks, the two students I hired to work on the web site have devoted considerable time brainstorming on how to completely redesign the site. The students are redesigning the site so it will be greatly simplified, more automatic, more interactional, and will allow you to post items with minimal effort. Unfortunately, until a few days ago, these students did not realize that it was important to make changes and post items while they were working on a complete redesign of the site. This will now change. Even more important, I finally realized that it is unreasonable, even insane, to have the SACP President spending most of his time as webmaster. Through the suggestions of my officers and board, we finally came up with an alternative in which I'll hire a student with advanced skills to serve as our webmaster. One of my students just agreed to serve as the SACP webmaster, and we'll post this information on our site. This will make things much easier for our membership and will allow me to function as the President of our Society.

As I wrote in the last issue, our Program Chair John Holder notified me that he had to step down after so much dedicated work on our behalf. I was finally able to recruit David Jones as our new Program Chair. I've had long conversations and exchanged numerous e-mails with David during the past month. He has a lot of initiative, energy, and organizing skills. David has already done very good work on our programs, and he is going to be a sensational Program Chair. We'll have more panels at our five annual conferences (Eastern, Central, and Pacific Divisions of the APA and the annual meetings of the AAS and AAR), and we're exploring opportunities for introducing additional SACP panels at regional and other conferences. If you have suggestions or would like to get involved, contact David Jones at djones@ksumail.kennesaw.edu.

In addition to SACP panels, officers and board members and I have begun to discuss various possibilities for a major SACP conference next year. If you have suggestions, get in touch with David and with me. In addition to a large SACP conference, I've recently begun to think about possibilities for more modest, smaller SACP gatherings. For example, a few days ago, a member, who has done a lot of work on Gandhi, suggested that we might organize an SACP Mahatma Gandhi conference, perhaps something like "The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi in the Twentieth-First Century." As a peace and justice scholar and activist, I have devoted many hours every day since September 11 to the aftermath of the tragic events. Among my commitments, I have already given talks at four teach-ins during the past three weeks, trying to get at the root causes and to formulate a larger framework for understanding what occurred and how we can respond. It has repeatedly occurred to me that much of my analysis, which one never finds on television or in the mass media, is related to my background in Asian and comparative philosophy. This has led me to wonder whether a smaller and more focused SACP conference on "Understanding the Tragedy of September 11 and Its Aftermath: Asian and Comparative Perspectives" would be an exceptional event and a major SACP contribution. Once again, if you have suggestions, contact David and me.

I, along with my Vice-President, Program Chair, and other key members, will be at the Eastern Division of the APA in Atlanta. Several of us will be on a panel featuring Graham Parkes on Friday, Dec. 28, 2:45-5:45 p.m. An SACP panel is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 27, 8:00-11:00 p.m. Unfortunately, this had been arranged before I became President. When I contacted our former Program Chair to see about including an SACP Business Meeting toward the end of the session, I was told that it was too late. John Holder mentioned that we could try to hold a Business Meeting at 11:00 p.m., but we agreed that that's not a good option. In any case, I'll attend the session, and I'll look forward to meeting as many of our members as possible. Please feel free to contact me before or during the conference in Atlanta if you'd like to arrange to meet with me.

As you can tell, things have begun to turn around and look up recently. Several of the officers and board members have begun to get actively engaged. I've begun to work closely with our new Secretary/Treasurer and with our new Program Chair. Our Society is beginning to be revitalized and energized, and we are beginning to move in new, exciting, creative directions. I invite you to become part of our renewal and growth. 2002 should be a very good year for the SACP.