NYU is at its origin a community-oriented university, and there was never any question that Mr. Uemura's talk should be a public event. The central themes, furthermore, include not only the wartime history of Japan, but also the role of women in history, the idea of a free press, and the nature of politics now—matters which are immediately relevant to everyone. Although the talk was scheduled in the last week of classes and publicized less than a week beforehand, it drew a standing room only crowd. The audience was diverse, and included students and faculty from NYU, Columbia, and nearby universities; artists; a filmmaker; journalists from Japan and Korea, Asahi Television New York, CNBC, and the New York Times. Carol Gluck provided a clear, sweeping history of the role of the comfort woman issue in public discourse, including its transformation into a global topic after Kim Hak Sun's public testimonies in 1991; Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono's statement in 1993 acknowledging the government's role in the forced prostitution of women during the war; the 1995 apologies of Prime Minister Murayama; and the contestations of these statements that have since developed. One could see in Prof. Gluck's overview an increasing attention given to the comfort women, particularly by those groups who tend to argue against their importance. Yukiko Hanawa then offered additional thoughts and provocations after Mr. Uemura's talk. For Prof. Hanawa, the comfort woman issue becomes global at the point when women become able to define the problem in their own terms. She also warned against becoming caught either in the boundlessness of emotional appeals or arguing over the details of a positivist history in ways that sometimes miss the larger picture.