Word: fairbanking
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...annual lectures in History 1711, "The United States and East Asia," he has recited the series of questions members of McCarran's committee once fired at him with a characteristically Fairbankian sense of deadpan humor. But, as few who know him at all can fail to mention, Fairbank often compresses some of his most serious observations into what Thomson has called his "inscrutable wit." On the doorjamb of his wonderfully book-laden study in Widener, for instance, Fairbank has scrawled four words that are almost Chinese in their terseness: "People sometimes; book, never," the door reads. Fairbank's humorous...
...some of his colleagues will testify, the McCarthy period probably only helped to confirm Fairbank's long-standing cynicism about the possibilities of cross-cultural understanding and social change. As Benjamin I. Schwartz '38, Williams Professor of History and Political Science, who was one of Fairbank's graduate students after the war says, "Everyone would accept the view that we have a tendency to be culture-bound, but not everyone would stress it as much." And Thomson calls Fairbank an "historical pessimist" who "does not believe in the perfectibility of people or their institutions...
Maybe it is this underlying pessimism that explains Fairbank's frequent emphasis on the continuities rather than the disruptions of history. While never denying the importance or the achievements of the Chinese communist revolution, Fairbank has also pointed out in lecture, students say, that the communists' current debate over whether to wage an economic or a social revolution is only a modern-day version of a debate that has been going on among Chinese for centuries. More than a decade after the end of the McCarran Committee investigations, Fairbank is reported to have told a group of young China-language...
...most obvious (and most optimistic) continuity in Fairbank's life has been his complete dedication to his China mission. It is not surprising that the first major task of his retirement will be to edit the new Cambridge History of Modern China. Some say that Fairbank's editing of the extensive series, in addition to his writing one of the volumes himself, may take the professor the rest of his life. But the Fairbanks seem to have the gift of the East for age as well as wisdom. Fairbank's mother, who is over 100, is still living...
...Harvard-Radcliffe admissions office operates with a dual admissions standard--considerations of both academic excellence and personal diversity enter into the selection process. The task force, chaired by John K. Fairbank '29, Higginson Professor of History, completely endorsed the dual principle...