Ted de Bary

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William Theodore de Bary (1919 - ) is an East Asian studies expert at Columbia University, with the title John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and Provost Emeritus.

De Bary graduated from Columbia College in 1941 and briefly took up graduate studies at Harvard before the US entered the Second World War. De Bary then left the academy to serve in American military intelligence in the Pacific Theatre. Upon his return, he resumed his studies at Columbia, where he earned his PhD.

He has edited numerous books of original source material relating to East Asian (primarily Japanese and Chinese) literature, history, and culture, as well as making the case, in his book Nobility and Civility, for the universality of Asian values. He is recognized as essentially creating the field of Neo-Confucian studies.

Additionally, DeBary was active in faculty intervention during the Columbia University protests of 1968 and served as the university's provost from 1971 to 1978. He has attempted to reshape the Core Curriculum of Columbia College to include Great Books classes devoted to non-Western civilizations. DeBary is additionally famous for rarely missing a Columbia Lions football game since he began teaching at the university in 1953. A recognized educator, he won Columbia's Great Teacher Award in 1969, its Lionel Trilling Book Award in 1983 and its Mark Van Doren Award for Great Teaching in 1987.

Now the director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities and still teaching, De Bary lives in Rockland County, New York.

[edit] Major works

Living Legacies at Columbia (2006)
Nobility and Civility : Asian Ideals of Leadership and the Common Good, Harvard University Press (2004)
Asian Values and Human Rights : A Confucian Communitarian Perspective. Harvard University Press (1998)
Confucianism and Human Rights (1998)
Mahābhārata (translation, 1998)
Sources of Korean Tradition: Volume 1 (1997)
Waiting for the Dawn : a Plan for the Prince (translation, 1993)
Learning for One's Self : Essays on the Individual in Neo-Confucian Thought (1991)
The Trouble with Confucianism, Harvard University Press (1991)
Approaches to the Asian Classics (1990)
Message of the mind in Neo-Confucianism (1989)
Neo-Confucian Education : the Formative Stage (1989)
East Asian Civilizations : a Dialogue in Five Stages, Harvard University Press (1988)
The Rise of Neo-Confucianism in Korea (1985)
The Liberal Tradition in China (1983)
Yüan thought : Chinese Thought and Religion under the Mongols (1982)
Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-And-Heart (1981)
Principle and Practicality : Essays in Neo-Confucianism and Practical Learning (1979)
Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism (1975)
The Hindu Tradition: Readings in Oriental Thought (1972)
Self and Society in Ming Thought (1970)
The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan (1969)
Approaches to Asian Civilizations (1964)
Guide to Oriental Classics (1964)
Sources of Japanese Tradition: Volume 1 (1964)
Sources of Chinese Tradition: Volume 1 (1960)
Approaches to the Oriental Classics: Asian Literature and Thought in General Education (1959)
Sources of Indian Tradition (1957)