China Seminar | 12 January 2012

China Seminar Going on 40: Food for Thought

Daniel W. Y. Kwok

The China Seminar celebrates its 35th anniversary, a significant milestone by any stretch of imagination for a grassroots program! And what’s more fitting than inviting Seminar’s founder, Prof. Daniel Kwok, to speak commemoratively about the Seminar’s history, from the “birther” questions of its beginnings, through the personages and events of the intervening years, and on “why food for thought.” As he understands it, new members of the China Seminar might find this story interesting and many long-standing members might find the “remembrance of things” edifying of the many luncheon hours they spent both as speakers and participants. Prof. Kwok promises it won’t be just a listing of “who did what.”

Daniel Kwok is professor emeritus of history at the UHM, where since 1961 he served at intervals as Director of Asia Studies, Chair of the Department of History, Director of the Center of Chinese Studies, founder of the Gannett/Freedom Forum Asia Fellowships for Journalists while offering courses in Chinese intellectual history, the general history of China, Asian Civilizations, and World History. He has held visiting distinguished professorships at University of Hong Kong, Nanyang University and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. An honorary professor of the Committee on Humanities Research of the Chinese National Education Commission, Kwok was also a Senior Fellow (1968-69) and a Senior Adjunct Fellow (2008-09) at the East-West Center. He publishes mainly in Chinese intellectual history.