Co-organized by the Asian Library and Pomona College’s Asian Languages and Literatures Department, Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s guest lecture examines protest movements in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan and their link to the legacy of student activism in Republican China.

Tanks rolling into Beijing late in the spring of 1989 seemed to mark more than the crushing of a specific movement. The June 4th Massacre seemed to have finally brought an end to a 70-year-long tradition of student-led struggles for change that began with the May 4th Movement of 1919.

While educated youths have not played a central role in sustained nationwide struggles on the mainland since Tiananmen, protests that followed show that old traditions of student activism are not a thing of the past. In 1990, students in Taipei mounted protests that helped democratize Taiwan. In the 2010s, Hong Kong students played central roles in the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the even bigger protest in 2019 which echoed May 4th and Tiananmen themes. White Paper Protests emerged in cities such as Shanghai and Beijing in 2022. This talk will analyze these events from comparative and historical perspectives and argue that they are best understood as struggles that involve novel elements, yet also owe debts to upheavals of the past.

This talk is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided starting at 4 p.m.

About Jeffrey Wasserstrom:
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor's Professor of History at UC Irvine where he also serves as Director of the Honors Program of the School of Humanities and holds courtesy appointments in Law and Literary Journalism. He often writes for general audience publications, ranging from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the Atlantic and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as for scholarly venues. His books include China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2010, 2016 and 2018 editions) and he spent 10 years as editor of the Journal of Asian Studies (2008-2018).

Special thanks to our co-sponsors for helping to make this event possible:

• The Asian Library Innovation Fund
• The Oldenborg Center for Modern Languages and International Relations
• Department of History, Pomona College
• International Relations Program, Pomona College
• Department of Politics, Pomona College
• Asian Studies Program, Pomona College