Fifty years ago, only a handful of American universities
taught courses for undergraduates on Asia and none offered a
broad-based general education on Asian civilizations. Most
courses on Asia were highly specialized, dominated by
classical language study at the graduate level.
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Today, there is hardly a college campus in the country that
does not offer some undergraduate courses on Asian
humanities and civilizations. On May 7, Columbia University
celebrated the pioneering initiatives of its faculty
following World War II in developing general education
courses on Asia to add to its renowned undergraduate Core
Curriculum on Western civilization.
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As the first college in the country to develop a broad-based
study program on Asia for undergraduates, Columbia's
leadership and excellence has long been recognized as the
spark for programs elsewhere.
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In the fall of 1948, Professors Moses Hadas of the Greek and
Latin faculty and Herbert Deane, a political scientist, were
the first to teach what was then called the Oriental
Colloquium. This course was followed in 1949 by Oriental
Humanities and a year later by Oriental Civilizations.
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"The fact that the early instructors were not specialists in
Asia demonstrates the willingness of scholars in those days
to venture beyond their own fields," says Columbia Professor
Wm. Theodore deBary, one of the foremost scholars of Asian
humanities who for many years guided Columbia's Asia
humanities and civilizations program.
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The general study of Asian humanities was so new then in the
West that source materials in English for reading and
discussion were almost non-existent, said deBary, who with
support from the Carnegie Corporation translated original
source material and wrote a series of books for use in the
Columbia Asia courses: Sources of Japanese Tradition (1958);
Sources of Chinese Tradition (1960) and Sources of Indian
Tradition (1960).
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Professors Donald Keene and Burton Watson were major
contributors to the series, which to date includes more than
150 titles for use in general education on Asia. It is now
supplemented by Sources of Korean Tradition and by
Translations from the Oriental Classics. For many years, the
Sources books have been top sellers for Columbia University
Press.
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During the 1960's courses were added on Asian music and art.
Today, Columbia offers undergraduates a sequence of one-year
courses on the civilizations and major texts representing
the four major Asian traditions: Middle Eastern, Indian,
Chinese and Japanese.
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Through the 1990's, the University Committee on Asia and the
Middle East has been engaged in a major revision and
expansion of the Sources books, now six volumes in all, as
well as the completion of Volume II of Sources of Korean
Tradition.
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Many students who enrolled in Columbia's early Asian
humanities programs and who went on to become leading
specialists in this field will participate in the day-long
50th anniversary convocation for Asian humanities and
civilizations.
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Several dozen professors, instructors and students past and
present spent the day on campus recalling the beginnings of
Asian humanities and civilization courses at Columbia and
discussing the state of Asian studies today.
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Organized by deBary and Irene Bloom, chair of the University
Committee on Asia and the Middle East, the convocation
brought together other major academic figures in the field,
including Donald Keene and Ainslie Embree, professors
emeritus of Columbia, and Robert Goldman of the University
of California at Berkeley and John C. Campbell of the
University of Michigan.
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Many students who participated in the program have gone on
to distinguished careers in academia, business, public
affairs and other fields, including Kenneth Lipper,
Chairman, Lipper & Co. and former Deputy Mayor of New
York City; Philip Milstein, President, Emigrant Savings Bank
and Columbia Trustee; Morton Halperin, Director of Policy
Planning, U.S. State Department, and Norman Podhoretz,
Editor-at-Large, Commentary Magazine, who was a student in
the first Oriental Colloquium.
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DeBary, who at age 79 continues to teach Columbia
undergraduates as a member of the Society of Senior
Scholars, said faculty in Columbia's Core Curriculum foresaw
the need to include Asia as early as the mid-1930's. "Though
in the minds of many Asia only came into focus after World
War II, the implementation of this early vision at Columbia
was actually interrupted by the war," said deBary.
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"It was the outgrowth of an educational vision that went
beyond their own academic specialities," said deBary of the
pioneers of Asian studies. "They thought of themselves as
responsible, not only for scholarship in their own fields,
but for the overall education of young people, at a
formative stage in their lives, as citizens and more broadly
as human beings."
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DeBary's own interest in Asia began as an undergraduate at
Columbia, where he took up the study of Chinese. He
continued his studies at Harvard in 1941. With the outbreak
of World War II, he was commissioned in the Navy and
attended Japanese language school. He went oversees in 1943
as a Naval intelligence officer and was stationed with
Admiral Chester Nimitz' Pacific headquarters staff. After
the war, he earned a doctorate and returned to Columbia
where he was put in charge of designing undergraduate
education in Asian studies.
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