President Lawrence Bacow of Harvard University visits Tsinghua University

On March 21st, Professor Lawrence Bacow, President of Harvard University, visited Tsinghua University. Tsinghua University President Qiu Yong, Vice President and Provost Yang Bin, and the guests had a meeting at Gongziting.

President Qiu welcomed the visit of Professor Bacow and his delegation to Tsinghua University, stating that there are many special links between Tsinghua University and Harvard University in various areas of research and study. He pointed out that universities nowadays are facing challenges on innovation and globalization. In its second hundred years, Tsinghua University will continue to strive for talent cultivation and further improve the quality of education and teaching.

President Qiu introduced to Professor Bacow a series of measures recently introduced by Tsinghua University in its reform of education and teaching, which includes a compulsory course of writing and communication set up last year to train the logic and critical thinking of undergraduate students. Apart from that, the old school rule that students must pass a swimming test before graduation has also been restored in an effort to carry forward the excellent sports tradition of Tsinghua University. Furthermore, the Tsinghua University Art Museum has also been established to enhance the humanistic and artistic atmosphere of the campus in an all-round way.

President Qiu stated that Tsinghua University attaches great importance to frontier science and cross-disciplinary research, and has established research institutions in frontier fields such as the Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Research Center and the Future Laboratory, Tsinghua University. Tsinghua University is also committed to strengthening innovation and entrepreneurship education, and has made progress in cultivating innovative talents. Under the global strategy implemented since 2016, Tsinghua University has been putting much effort into becoming a global university, including the establishment of research and education centers such as Tsinghua Southeast Asia Center in Indonesia, Tsinghua University Latin America Center in Chile, China-Italy Design Innovation Hub in Italy, and the Global Innovation eXchange (GIX) Institute in the US. In the future, he hoped that there would be more collaboration between the two institutions in scholar exchange and talent cultivation.

Professor Bacow expressed his enormous respect towards Tsinghua University for its outstanding achievements in various fields and disciplines. He stated that Tsinghua University has always been a strong academic partner of Harvard University, and the good relationship between the two universities is very crucial in promoting the advancement of global higher education. He looked forward to more visits and exchanges between the two universities to ensure that the future generation can have the same opportunity to enjoy high-quality education.

After the meeting, Professor Bacow and his delegation visited Schwarzman College and held discussions with 14 Schwarzman scholars from all over the world during a round table lunch session held in the Master Kong Pub at Schwarzman College.

Writer: Wilson Khor
Editors: John Olbrich, Guo Lili