Fang Lizhi

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This is a Chinese name; the family name is Fang.

Fang Lizhi (Chinese: 方励之; pinyin: Fāng Lìzhī born February 12, 1936) was a professor of astrophysics and vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China whose teachings inspired the pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. He was expelled from the Communist Party of China in January 1987.^[1]

Fang gained fame and notoriety after his essays were collected and distributed by the Communist Party of China to many of its regional offices, with the directive to its members to criticize the essays. As the story goes, many who read his essays found them to be thought-provoking, and Fang was inadvertently provided a platform for his views. During the Tiananmen Square protests, Fang and his wife, Li Shuxian, were granted asylum at the U.S. embassy in Beijing. They entered the embassy on June 5, 1989 and remained there in hiding until June 25, 1990 when he and his family flew on a U.S. Air Force C-135 transport plane to England. ^[2] Fang later moved to the United States.

In campus speeches Fang, who works as Professor of Physics at the University of Arizona, has spoken on topics such as human rights and democracy as matters of social responsibility. In 1989, he was a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.