Public Matters: Intellectuals and Political Life in China: A Symposium in honor of Merle Goldman (1931-2023)

Organized by the Fairbank Center, and co-sponsored with the Harvard-Yenching Institute

View program and other event details

Please join us at the Fairbank Center for a day-long workshop in honor of the work of Merle Goldman, a leading figure at the center and a foremost scholar of her generation who pioneered the study of contemporary Chinese intellectuals.

In a full day of panel presentations and discussions, an interdisciplinary group of China scholars from North America, Asia, and Europe will highlight ongoing research that either builds directly on Merle’s work or addresses some of the central concerns that animated her professional career: literary dissent, state-intellectual relations, conceptions of citizenship and political rights, and more.

The panels will explore the myriad ways in which Chinese intellectuals, from imperial days to the present, have sought to express political agency and the extent to which their impact has matched their aspirations.

Please join in this celebration of our late colleague’s important legacy!

Organizers:
Elizabeth J. Perry, Harvard University
Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia
Joseph Fewsmith, Boston University
Nancy Hearst, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Program

9:00 AM – Welcome

9:15 AM – Panel 1
Chinese Intellectuals and Chinese Society: Mobilization? Accommodation? Engagement? Alienation?
Moderator: Elizabeth J. Perry, Harvard University
Peter Zarrow, University of Connecticut — The Language of Republicanism: Liang Qichao and Civic Virtue
Joan Judge, York University — Towards the Notion of a Politics of Accommodation: The minjian Classicist, Hu Puan 胡檏安 (Yunyu 韞玉 1878 – 1947)
Sebastian Veg, School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) — The Rise and Fall of minjian Intellectuals

10:45 AM – Break

11:00 AM – Panel 2
Chinese Intellectuals and the Chinese State: Proactive? Reactive? Reformist? Conservative?
Moderator: Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia
Els Van Dongen, Nanyang Technological University — Jiang Shigong’s Foucault and Selective Borrowing in Reform Era Intellectual Debates
Matthew Johnson, The Jamestown Foundation — Wang Huning’s Journey from Establishment Intellectual to ‘Red Eminence’: The Party as Ideological Fortress
Joseph Fewsmith, Boston University — A Through Train to Democracy? Xiao Gongqin and the Yan Fu Paradox

12:30 PM – Lunch Break (on your own)

1:30 PM – Panel 3
Between State and Society: Dissent? Acquiescence? Subversion? Support?
Moderator: Joseph Fewsmith, Boston University
Hang Tu, National University of Singapore — The Covert Sphere: Persecution and the Subtle Art of Literary Dissent in the People’s Republic
Eddy U, University of California, Davis — Subversive Sociality: The Resistance of Intellectuals in the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia — Polishing the Mirror: Historians as Public Intellectuals in Xi’s China
Denise Ho, Georgetown University — A ‘New-Style Socialist University with Chinese Characteristics’

3:00 PM – Break

3:30 PM – Panel 4
Beyond State and Society: Nationalism? Cosmopolitan? Globalism?
Moderator: Orville Schell, Asia Society
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, University of California, Irvine — Chinese Publics Beyond Chinese Borders: Political Exiles and Political Debates from Late Qing Times to the Present
Angela Xiao Wu, New York University — Postsocialist Press Theory: Information for Infrastructural Modernity
Clyde Yicheng Wang, Washington and Lee University — The End of ‘Balanced’ Nationalism: Popular Revolt against Hu Xijin and the Changing Roles of Establishment Intellectuals

5:00 PM – Wrap-up: Toward a Conference Volume

Light reception to follow