From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Perry Link | |||||||||
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林培瑞 | |||||||||
| Born | 1944 (age 81–82) | ||||||||
| Alma mater | Harvard University | ||||||||
| Scientific career | |||||||||
| Thesis | The rise of modern popular fiction in Shanghai (1976) | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Chinese | 林培瑞 | ||||||||
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Eugene Perry Link, Jr. (Chinese: 林培瑞; pinyin: Lín Péiruì; born 6 August, 1944 Gaffney, South Carolina) is Chancellorial Chair Professor for Innovative Teaching Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages in College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside and Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. He has published studies of modern Chinese literature, Chinese language, introductory language texts, and is known for supporting Chinese dissidents and democracy activists.
Link taught Chinese language and literature at Princeton University (1973-77 and 1989-2008) and UCLA (1977-1988).[1] Link has been a Board Member of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) since 2021. CFHK is a US-based non-profit organisation, which presses for the preservation of freedom, democracy, and international law in Hong Kong.[2]
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Link received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1976. The University of California Press published his PhD thesis as Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Cities (University of California Press, 1981). The Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies novels had been neglected by most scholars because they appealed to the broad middle class public rather than to elite readers. The scholar Milena Doleželová-Velingerová, writing in an extensive review article, praised Link for his "ambitious project" to "place China's popular fiction of the 1910s and 1920s in a context of literary history," showing that popular fiction of the May Fourth era was worthy of attention. [3]
Link has translated many Chinese stories, writings and poems into English. Along with Andrew J. Nathan, he translated the Tiananmen Papers, which detailed the governmental response to the 1989 democracy protests. In 1996, China blacklisted Link, and he has been denied entrance ever since. In 2001, Link was detained and questioned upon arriving in Hong Kong because of his involvement in the Tiananmen Papers. After roughly one hour, he was allowed to enter Hong Kong, where he spoke at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club. He has been banned from the People's Republic of China since, however.[4]
Following the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protestsLink helped Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi and Fang's wife obtain refuge at the U.S. Embassy.[5] Fang remained at the embassy for a year until negotiations resulted in Fang's being allowed to leave and settle in the U.S.[5]
Link gathered short publications in the anthology, The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China, published in 2025. Jeffrey Kinkley wrote that these pieces presented the facets of Link's "academic dynamism and dogged activism" along with "several shared motivations and traits: love of the Chinese language in all its forms, written and spoken; admiration of Chinese popular culture and the enduring grassroots social, moral, and ethical values it embodies..." [6]
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From 2022 to 2024, Link faced disciplinary action at U.C. Riverside after expressing concerns in a faculty search committee about prioritizing a Black candidate’s race over qualifications. Link was removed from the search committee and subjected to a disciplinary process, including hearings resembling a trial, where termination was suggested as a penalty. Link said his comments were intended to caution against elevating race as the “overriding criterion,” and that the comments were reported to the university without his knowledge. Although a faculty committee unanimously found that Link did not violate any conduct codes, UC Riverside chancellor Kim Wilcox issued Link a formal letter of censure.[7][8][9]
The university recommended that Link keep the process confidential and warned that the disclosure of any details of his disciplinary process “may result in discipline.” In December 2024, Link went public about his experience in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.[10]
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