Ohio Wesleyan Graduate, Harvard Professor Ezra F. Vogel to Discuss Deng Xiaoping, Transformation of China
Ezra F. Vogel '50
DELAWARE, OHIO – Delaware native Ezra F. Vogel, Ph.D., an Ohio Wesleyan University graduate and a retired Harvard University professor, will discuss his critically acclaimed new book, “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China,” at 7:30 p.m. April 11 in the Benes Rooms of Ohio Wesleyan’s Hamilton-Williams Campus Center, 40 Rowland Ave.
Vogel also will sign copies of his book from 1:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. April 11 at the OWU Bookstore, located on the lower level of the campus center. The 928-page biography, published in September, has been praised as a “masterful new history of China’s reform era,” examining in intricate detail the legacy of Xiaoping, a leader of the People’s Republic of China from 1978 to 1992.
According to Washington Post reviewers: “Vogel has a monumental story to tell. His main argument is that Deng deserves a central place in the pantheon of 20th-century leaders. For he not only launched China’s market-oriented economic reforms but also accomplished something that had eluded Chinese leaders for almost two centuries: the transformation of the world’s oldest civilization into a modern nation.”
Praise for Vogel’s book also has come from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter who called it “an impressive and important biography of one of the most important men of the twentieth century.”
Vogel, a 1950 Ohio Wesleyan graduate, studied sociology/anthropology at the university. He currently is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard and the former director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the Asia Center. From 1993 to 1995, he served as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council in Washington, D.C.
Vogel’s presentation is sponsored by Ohio Wesleyan’s Woltemade Center for Economics, Business and Entrepreneurship and by the East Asian Studies Program.
Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier small, private universities, with more than 90 undergraduate majors, sequences, and courses of study, and 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. Located in Delaware, Ohio, just minutes north of Ohio’s capital and largest city, Columbus, the university combines a globally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities that translate classroom theory into real-world practice. OWU’s close-knit community of 1,850 students represents 47 states and 57 countries. Ohio Wesleyan was named to the 2012 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with distinction, is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” and is included on the “best colleges” lists of U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review. Learn more at www.owu.edu.