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China Forum for Civilizational Dialogue

April 16, 2021

New Chinese Approaches to Humanities Education

The last two decades have seen innovative efforts at Chinese universities to strengthen humanities education, drawing on a range of resources including the Confucian tradition and existing liberal education models around the world. The China Forum for Civilizational Dialogue convened a panel of experts to address three key questions: What explains the revival of humanities education in China? What are its main contours and variants? How does it relate, if at all, to wider challenges of economic and social development facing the country?

The China Forum, a collaboration between Georgetown University and La Civiltà Cattolica, convenes Chinese academics and public figures with international partners to discuss common challenges at the intersection of culture, ethics, and global society. Through academic seminars, public events, and an online platform, the China Forum is initially focusing on three topics: the global ecological crisis, humanities education for a global era, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. 

This event fell on the first anniversary of the Chinese edition publication of La Civiltà Cattolica.

Participants

Benoit Vermander

Benoît Vermander

Benoît Vermander is a professor of religious studies in the Department of Philosophy at Fudan University. He also heads Fudan’s Xu-Ricci Dialogue Institute. He has published extensively on Chinese religions and interreligious encounters in East Asia. Among his publications are Shanghai Sacred (2018, with Liz Hingley and Liang Zhang), Corporate Social Responsibility in China (2014), and Light in the Night: Art, Life, Philosophy (2019, with Li Shuang). 

Kathryn Temple

Kathryn Temple

Kathryn Temple is a professor in the Department of English at Georgetown University where she has taught since 1994. She specializes in the study of law and the humanities. Among her publications are Loving Justice: Legal Emotions in William Blackstone’s England (2019) and the co-edited Research Handbook on Law and Emotions (2021). Her humanities outreach activities include work with military veterans and the incarcerated. 

Xiang Shuchen

Shuchen Xiang

​Shuchen Xiang is assistant professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and the Institute of Foreign Philosophy at Peking University, China. She was born in China and educated in the United Kingdom from the age of seven. She received her undergraduate education from the University of Cambridge, and her Ph.D. in philosophy jointly from the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and King’s College London.

Tongdong Bai

Tongdong Bai

Dr. Tongdong Bai is Dongfang Chair Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University in China and Global Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. His research interests include Chinese philosophy and political philosophy. He has two books published in English: China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom (2012) and Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case (2019). He is also director of an English-based master of arts degree and visiting program in Chinese philosophy at Fudan University that is intended to promote the studies of Chinese philosophy in the world.

Daniel Bell

Daniel A. Bell

Daniel A. Bell (moderator) is dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University (Qingdao). His books include Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (2020, co-authored with Wang Pei), The China Model (2015), China's New Confucianism (2010), Beyond Liberal Democracy (2006), East Meets West (2000), and The Spirit of Cities (2011, co-authored with Avner de-Shalit). 

Thomas Banchoff

Thomas Banchoff

Thomas Banchoff is vice president for global engagement at Georgetown University and professor in the Department of Government and the Walsh School of Foreign Service. He serves as a senior fellow in Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, which he led as founding director from 2006 to 2017. His scholarship centers on ethical and religious issues in world politics.