An Oasis
of Academic
Freedom

It was an audacious idea, born not long after Richard Nixon’s celebrated 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1979. Steven Muller, then President of Johns Hopkins University, was visiting SAIS’s Bologna Center in Italy — which had been created to meet a growing need for international expertise in the wake of World War II — and thought, “Why not do this in Asia?”

A remarkable feat of diplomacy, not only across cultures, but between two visionary university presidents and their own constituencies, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) will celebrate its 35th anniversary this fall. Not only has it endured, it has become ever more valuable, a testament to Muller’s vision of a rigorous academic program designed to address an expanding definition of what it means to understand the world.

“He saw China as the country of the future,” says Muller’s widow, Jill McGovern, who has been involved with the HNC since 1981, when her career in educational administration brought her to the JHU president’s office and she helped facilitate the program’s creation.

“Steve was convinced we needed to broaden the scope of what SAIS has to offer. International relations could not be just European relations,” says McGovern, who now serves on the Hopkins-Nanjing Council as well as the SAIS board of advisors and continues to support students through the McGovern-Muller Fellowship she and her husband created together.

Muller envisioned a completely cooperative venture, jointly operated by two universities ranked among the most prestigious in their countries. Chinese and American students would live together in small suites, Chinese students studying mostly in English, non-Chinese students mostly in Mandarin, in an oasis of academic freedom that featured China’s first uncensored open-stack library. The goal: close daily contact in a bilingual setting to promote a deep and genuine understanding.

“It was undoubtedly a visionary leap to create this kind of an institution at the time,” says John Lipsky, the Peter G. Peterson Distinguished Scholar at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at SAIS who serves as chair of the Hopkins-Nanjing Council. “The reforms in China that so strikingly changed the economy and the culture and their engagement with the rest of the world were just getting underway, and it wasn’t immediately obvious how important each country was going to become to the other.”

There was a lot of skepticism in the beginning, and the project would likely never have gotten off the ground without Johns Hopkins physics professor (now emeritus) Chih-Yung Chien, a naturalized U.S. citizen, born in Sichuan Province and raised in Taiwan, who introduced Muller to then Nanjing University President Kuang Yaming. Because he understood both cultures, Chien was key to drafting the original agreement. He knew, for instance, that certain words, like leaders and sovereignty, meant different things politically to the Americans and Chinese. He helped avert misunderstandings, studied how Chinese universities were run, and helped navigate the bureaucracy to get things done.

“The agreement was signed in 1981, but it took five years to launch the program,” says McGovern. “We had to recruit faculty and students who had the language skills, which has always been a challenge. There were no cellphones, no internet, so most of the negotiations were by Telex and postal delivery, and Steve had to get everyone to agree to two important ideas. One was the construction of dorms with small suites, each with its own bathroom, which was unheard of in that era, but he wanted Chinese and American students to live together. The other was the open-stack library. Two or three years into negotiations the Chinese said, ‘No open-stack library,’ but Steve said that was a deal-breaker and, ultimately, he prevailed.”

Over the years, the HNC has survived its share of crises. In 1988 and 1989 there were anti-African riots in Nanjing. In 1989 there was Tiananmen Square. In 1999 HNC students hosted a forum to ease tensions over the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. And in 2003 the program relocated to the East-West Center in Honolulu for a semester to escape SARS.

“But in terms of duration, COVID-19 is the biggest crisis we’ve faced,” says Adam Webb, HNC’s American co-director. “A year into the pandemic it still isn’t easy for non-Chinese students to get into China. Still, our virtual delivery of course material turned out much better than anyone expected. And last fall some of us relocated to SAIS Europe in Bologna where we were able to hold classes in person.”

The pandemic has, in fact, strengthened ties between the HNC and the larger Hopkins and Nanjing University communities, says Webb, a professor of political science at HNC since 2008. Appointed co-director in 2019, Webb sees great potential in the center’s ability “to link the English-speaking and Chinese-speaking academic universes. We’d like to see more integration of our faculty research and we’d like to make other parts of Nanjing and Hopkins more aware of what our students and faculty are doing. The way people have embraced technology during the pandemic has broken down a lot of the psychological barriers of distance, made us more aware of one another, and generated a lot of ideas of things we can keep doing together.”

The HNC curriculum continues to evolve, incorporating, for instance, popular courses in energy, resources, and the environment. And Webb is encouraging a focus on understanding the Chinese experience and China’s role in the world — dramatically expanded since 1986 — from a broader global perspective.

While the relationship between the Chinese and U.S. governments is at a low point these days, Webb says the relationship between the Chinese and American faculty members, administrators, and students at HNC is stronger, and undoubtedly more necessary, than ever.

“People who come to study here see past the politics,” says Webb. “They want to engage with people, understand how other people live and think. We help our students build the skills to navigate and even prevent political crises because they come to understand one another’s challenges and perspectives.”