To recognize the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing, the College is hosting a three-day conference that begins today called "The Future of Democracy in China."
The conference will feature several panel discussions and a keynote address by Liu Binyan, an author, journalist and political activist, tomorrow night from 8 to 10 p.m. in 13 Carpenter Hall.
The conference is the fourth in a series sponsored by the Dickey Center for International Understanding designed to examine prospects of democracy in various areas of the world. Admission is free and open to the entire community.
The three previous conferences held this year dealt with democracy in the Middle East, Russia and Haiti.
The panels during this week's conference will feature Dartmouth professors from the Asian studies program; the religion, history and government departments; the Dickey Center; and the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center.
Professors from the University of Michigan and Columbia, Cornell, Indiana, Johns Hopkins and Princeton Universities will participate in the panels. The East Asia correspondent for The Times of London, Jonathan Mirsky, will also speak.
Today's panel, which will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. in Collis Common Ground, is titled "China's Legacies: Confucianism, Imperialism, Maoism."
On Friday, both panel discussions -- "China Today: Politics and Economics" from 9 to 11 a.m. and "Building Democracy: Tiananmen and Human Rights" from 1 to 3 p.m. -- will take place in Alumni Hall.
"These 'Great Issues' conferences are designed to deepen our understanding of the dramatic transformations occurring in the post-Cold War world," Dickey Center Director Martin Sherwin said.
"The chance to hear and question speakers who are deeply involved with those changes, or who study them professionally, informs and enriches our community," Sherwin said.
Sherwin said a group of students from the Dartmouth China Society approached him last fall with the idea to organize a conference. He said the conference was a collaborative effort of about six students and faculty who specialize in China studies.
The conference will cost around $15,000, according to Sherwin, and will be funded by the Dickey Center.
"I certainly hope [this series of conferences] will go on for several years," Sherwin said. "I think the future of democracy is one of the major issues in the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries."
Sherwin said the Dickey Center may organize future conferences to look at democracy in South Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, but said it would depend on student interest.
