Welcome from Marty Whyte, Acting Director of the Fairbank Center

Welcome one and all to the start of a new academic year of activities at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies! This opening statement conveys two new developments at the Fairbank Center. First, our Director, William Kirby, will be enjoying a richly deserved sabbatical leave this year, and I will be serving as Acting Director in his absence. Second, we have changed our name, from the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research to the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. This change, approved by the Center’s Executive Committee last spring, is designed to more accurately reflect our Center’s focus and activities (and acknowledge that we share the East Asian “turf” with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and the Korea Institute). One related piece of news is that we welcome to our Center Professor Liu Xiaoyuan, who will be teaching courses on China in the history department while Bill Kirby is on leave. Professor Liu received his PhD from the University of Iowa and now teaches at Iowa State University. His primary research focuses on the ethnic frontiers of China. His office for the coming year will be in the Fairbank Center.

This year we again welcome a bumper crop of new postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and visiting fellows. Each has a specific research project for the year, and as the year goes along, all will have opportunities to present talks and participate in workshops, so that our already diverse and lively community will be enriched by the presence of these very special visitors. A brief listing of these newcomers is contained later in this newsletter. For more details on their backgrounds and research projects, you may consult the special booklet, “Postdoctoral Fellows and Visiting Scholars, Fellows, and Associates, 2007–2008,” which can be found in our front office, Room S138 of the CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street.

Some of the special events scheduled for this fall include a conference entitled “Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Post-Reform China,” organized by Margaret Woo, Mary Gallagher, and Merle Goldman, to be held on October 12–13; the 2007 Annual Neuhauser Lecture, with the speaker this year Alan Romberg, Director of the East Asia Program at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., speaking on “The US ‘One China’ Policy: Time for a Change?” on October 17; the latest in a series of conferences on Tibet co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center, which is scheduled to take place on November 28–29, organized by Lobsang Sangay, Research Associate at the Harvard Law School; and a conference, “Rule and Reform in the Giants: China and India Compared,” organized by Liz Perry and Devesh Kapur, to be held November 30–December 2.

As is the case every year, the Fairbank Center will also play host to a rich variety of ongoing workshops on many different aspects of Chinese society (e.g., Chinese business, current events, gender studies, religion, 20th-century history, Taiwan studies) as well as public lectures by local and visiting China scholars. More information on some of these events will be found later in this newsletter. For newcomers, the best way to keep track of the seemingly bewildering variety of talks, conferences, and other events at both the Fairbank Center and our sister centers in the Asia Center at Harvard is to subscribe to the online Asia Bulletin.

Whether you are a student, faculty member, visiting scholar, or affiliate from the larger Boston community, I hope you will come by 1730 Cambridge Street often to sample the various talks and activities that make the Fairbank Center such an exciting place in which to try to understand better the world’s most populous and dynamically changing society! And don’t forget the Center’s periodic social gatherings, the first of which will be the Open House of all of Harvard’s Asia centers on Wednesday, October 3, from 5 to 9 p.m. at CGIS South.

—Martin K. Whyte
Professor of Sociology and Acting Director

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