Academician Wang Ning at Luojia Forum

On April 14th, Mr. Wang Ning, professor of the Department for Foreign Languages and Literature of Tsinghua University and foreign member of the Academy of Europe, delivered a report entitled “the Function of Humanities in the Global Context” at Luojia Forum. The Deputy secretary of the party committeeof the Wuhan University Mr. Luo Yuting conferred him a commemorative certificate.

What are the virtues of humanities? Wang shared his observations as follows. First, he thought that the humanities wereindispensable in college mechanism.Althoughhumanity disciplines are unlikely to yield an instant result, they could exert long-lasting impact on people’s mind. Second, a sound humanity and academic atmosphere would drive up exchanges of different insights so that fresh thoughts, achievements and even masters could emerge. Last but not least, humanity disciplines would benefit the society and create economic and social values.

Exploiting the implications of globalization, Wang pointed out the need to communicate with western and other international counterparts and to internationalize the research achievements for more powerful voice in global academic circle. He also appealed that “it is the aspiration and duty of Chinese humanities scholars to get their voice heard not only on domestic issues but also on those universal and widely-observed issues across the world.”

Wang Ning was the graduate of Peking University of Class1989. After his doctoral studies on English and on Comparative Literature, he got post-doctoral fund by Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and engaged in research at Utrecht University. He was listedinthe “Yangtze Scholars Program” in 2012 and became the first foreign member of Academia Europaea from Chinese mainland in 2013. He is very prolific, and his researches on modernity theory, postmodernism, globalization and literature and other fields have considerable impacts all over the world.(intern journalist Xiang Li)