Memory as Resistance: From Tiananmen to Hong Kong

A lecture by Rowena Xiaoqing He, Associate Professor of History, Chinese University of Hong Kong; The Luce East Asia Fellow, National Humanities Center (2022-23).

Professor Rowena He is a China specialist and historian of modern and contemporary Chinese society and politics. As a scholar of Tiananmen, the 1989 pro-democracy movement, she is interested in the nexus of history, memory, and power, and their implications for youth values, identity, and social change. Her first book, Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China was named one of the top five China books 2014 by the Asia Society’s China File. The book has been reviewed in the New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New Statesman, Spectator, China Journal, Human Rights Quarterly, and other international periodicals. Her has been a fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and she is currently a Luce East Asia Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Before joining The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as an Associate Professor in 2019, she taught at Harvard University, Wellesley College, and Saint Michael’s College. She received the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence for three consecutive years for the Tiananmen courses that she created. At CUHK, she received the Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award 2019–20 and 2020–21.

Professor He publishes and speaks widely beyond the academy. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, and the Wall Street Journal. She has been a keynote speaker for the Canada Human Rights National Symposium, testified before a US Congressional hearing, and delivered lectures for the US State Department, and the Canada International Council. Her scholarly opinions are regularly sought by international media including ABC (Australia), ABC (US), Asahi Shimbun (Japan), AI Jazeera, Associated Press, BBC, CBC, CNN, Christian Science Monitor, CTV, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Harvard Gazette, Harvard Magazine, Inside Higher Education, Le Monde, London Times, Los Angeles Times, NPR, National Geographic, NBC, the New York Times, Reuters, Time, Times Higher Education, and other media outlets. Her profile interview with the New York Times Chinese edition was ranked the Top 3 Most Popular Original Articles of 2016. She was designated among the Top 100 Chinese Public Intellectuals of 2016. Born and raised in China, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.