TU Weiming

CKGSB Honorary Professor, Chairman of the CKGSB Committee on the Humanities, Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy of Confucian Studies at Harvard University

Areas of Expertise: Chinese History, Confucian Philosophy

Biography

Tu was born in Kunming, China in 1940. He grew up in Taiwan and obtained a B.A. in Chinese Studies at Tunghai University (1961). He received his M.A. (1963) and Ph.D. (1968) from Harvard University.

Tu taught Chinese intellectual history, Chinese philosophy, and Confucian studies at Princeton University (1967-71) and University of California at Berkeley (1971-81). He joined the faculty at Harvard, where he continues to teach, in 1981.

Tu has been a visiting professor at Peking University, Taiwan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and L’Ecole Practique des Haute Etudes. Tu holds honorary professorships from Zhejing, Renming, and Zhongshan Universities and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and has been awarded honorary degrees by Lehigh, Michigan State (Grand Valley), and Shandong Universities.

He is a vice-president of the International Association of Confucian Studies, an international advisor of Rahman University in Malaysia, a member of the “Group of Eminent Persons” appointed by Kofi Annan to facilitate the Dialogue among Civilizations, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Tu has published several books in English and in Chinese, and dozens of articles primarily focusing on the modern transformation of Confucian humanism. A five-volume Chinese-language anthology of his works was published in 2001.