This is the fifty-sixth chapter in Other People’s Thoughts, a China Heritage series inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read

Contra Trump 危邦不入
亂邦不居 The rubric of this miniseries on the crisis in American higher education comes from a famous passage in The Analects of Confucius: 子曰：篤信好學，守死善道。危邦不入，亂邦不居。天下有道則見，無道則隱。邦有道，貧且賤焉，恥也；邦無道，富且貴焉，恥也。 — 論語．泰伯 Translated by Simon Leys as: The Master said: “Uphold the faith, love learning, defend the good Way with your life.… Read

Contra Trump 你儂我儂 Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Australia. He interviewed me about how Donald Trump’s America is becoming more like Xi Jinping’s China.… Read

Contra Trump 秀才遇到兵 In ‘The brutes have entered the grove’, the first part of this cycle of essays on the crisis in American higher education, we featured a plea for unity by Professor James A.… Read

Contra Trump 政治掛帥 In recent years, the gunpowder stench of militant ideology has become stronger. It reeks of a trend to ‘impose discursive hegemony’, although in reality it is a perverse use of the public to impose ideological punishment.… Read

Contra Trump ‘It was one thing to anticipate this prolonged political moment; it has been, these past weeks, quite another to live it’, wrote David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, in early March 2025.… Read