Liberal Arts in the universities of Greater China: Current Models and the Historical Legacy

The liberal arts are usually regarded as a legacy from the Greek and Roman classics, adapted in American universities, with little awareness of their deep roots in Confucian heritage education.

In this webinar Ruth Hayhoe will begin with an introduction to the liberal arts in Chinese Christian universities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries where Chinese classical scholars cooperated with North American missionaries in creating campuses characterized by a rich flow of ideas and architectural patterns rooted in China’s traditions. Although these institutions were closed 70 years ago, historians and philosophers in China are still publishing research on their legacy today!

The second speaker, Leping Mou, will present three current models of the liberal arts in universities in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China, showing how each has built on this inheritance in a distinctive context. The last speaker, Qiang Zha, will discuss the possibility of reimagining Confucian humanism through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which in turn serves to rephrase the Confucian canons in a universal language.

This webinar is part of the free public seminar programme hosted by the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).