I found a book called "The Dean of Shandong" and read that a Canadian professor, expert in the thought and tradition of Confusian thought, accepted a deanship at Shandong University in an area of China where the influence and actual descendants of Confucius live in large numbers. My friend, a graduate of the same high school in Baltimore I attended, is seeing a doctor locally from the Shandong University.
Google says about this university that it is one of the largest public universities in China, with more than 67,000 students. I learned in a history of higher education class that in the US, a university with more than 50,000 students is usually too big to walk across between classes. I know that many older European universities are scattered in buildings quite far off from each other.
The book I am writing about is written by Daniel Bell, a native of Montreal, Canada. He says he is from a working-class family and certainly didn't expect to be a dean at a Chinese university, a dean of political science, no less. In the early pages (all I have read so far), he reviews the complex historical relations between the Chinese people and Confucius. I looked up Confucius thought and found the statement that the main idea is the importance of a good moral character, something that may be missing from much of American politics. Bell explains that he married a Chinese woman and his studies and her background influenced his direction. They later divorced but he married again, to a 2nd Chinese woman.
Bell goes through the history of China and Confucius from veneration to the age of Mao, who felt that over-involvement with its history retarded Chinese growth and progress. Mao and his group tried to destroy connections between its past and modern China but Confucius is making a slow but steady comeback with the Chinese Communist Party.
