Monday, September 22, 2008

Tu Wei-ming

Tu Weiming is an ethicist and a . He is currently Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He was Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute . He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Tu was born in Kunming, Yunnan Province, Mainland China in 1940. He obtained his in Chinese Studies at Tunghai University in Taiwan and earned his in Regional Studies and in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University. Tu taught at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley and has been on the Harvard faculty since 1981.

Tu was a visiting professor at Peking University, Taiwan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Paris. He holds honorary professorships from Zhejing University, Renmin University, Zhongshan University, and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He has been awarded honorary degrees by Lehigh University, Michigan State University at Grand Valley, and Shandong University.

Tu was appointed by Kofi Annan as a member of the United Nation's "Group of Eminent Persons" to facilitate the "Dialogue among Civilizations" in 2001. He gave a presentation on inter-civilizational dialgoue to the Executive Board of UNESCO in 2004. He was also one of the eight Confucian intellectuals who were invited by the Singapore Government to develop the "Confucian Ethics" school curriculum.

Tu has two sons and two daughters: Eugene, Yalun, Marianna, and Rosa. He was featured in ''A Confucian Life in America'' . His homepage: .

Tu has written about two dozen books in and , including:
* ''Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness''
* ''China in Transformation''
* ''Confucianism and Human Rights''
* ''Confucianism in Historical Perspective''
* ''Confucian Ethics Today: The Singapore Challenge''
* ''Confucian Spirituality''
* ''Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation''
* ''Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity''
* ''Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought''
* ''Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming's Youth''
* ''The Confucian World Observed''
* ''The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today''
* ''Traditional China''
* ''Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays on the Confucian Intellectual''

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