On November 7th, Professor Nicholas B. Dirks, Chancellor of University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) was conferred Honorary Professorship of Peking University (PKU), and delivered a speech at the Lee Shau Kee Humanities Buildings. Professor Wang Enge, President of PKU, Dr. Li Yansong, Vice President of PKU, Professor Gao Yi, Dean of the Department of History, Dr. Xia Hongwei, Director of the Office of International Relations, Professor Scott Biddy, Vice Chancellor of UC Berkeley and Professor Wen-hsin Yeh from UC Berkeley attended the event.
President Wang Enge said in his opening remarks that Chancellor Dirks is an innovator in higher education and is widely acknowledged for his contributions in the development of undergraduate education, globalization of the university and in cross-disciplinary programs. In recognition of Chancellor Dirks’ contributions and academic achievements, PKU has decided to confer honorary professorship on Chancellor Dirks. President Wang extended congratulations to Chancellor Dirks for becoming a member of the PKU community. He also noted that communication between University of California, Berkeley and PKU boasts time-honoured history, which can trace back to 1980s, and enjoys fruitful results; PKU is willing to cooperate with University of California, Berkeley in a deeper manner.
After receiving the honorary professorship, Chancellor Dirks delivered a speech on the topic of Autobiography of an Archive: History, Anthropology, India, in which he covered the research method in anthropology and shared his experience of studying the impact of British colonial rule in South Africa.
After the speech, Zhu Shanlu, Chairman of PKU Council, met with Chancellor Dirks at Linhuxuan. He first expressed sincere congratulations for the honorary professorship recipient, and thanks for attending and addressing the Beijing Forum. Zhu stressed that PKU, despite its long history, was still a young institution compared to UCB. PKU was therefore eager to cooperate with more universities and institutions in pursuit of constant progress and improvement. PKU was especially willing to strengthen its relationship with UCB and combined their strengths to achieve greater heights. Zhu raised big data as one field that he would especially like to explore cooperation in.
Chancellor Dirks said that he felt honoured to receive the honorary professorship. University of California, Berkeley and PKU have many common interests in various fields and he is interested in Zhu Shanlu’s proposal. Big data demanded for more sophisticated computers and models, which poses challenges in technical aspect as well as social science and policy study aspects. Such challenges should be taken up by pooling the wisdom of the two universities’ best scholars and researchers.
Written by: Zhang Rutian and Xin Yuan
