Speakers:
Michael Puett, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History; Director, Harvard University Asia Center
Amy Zhang, Master’s Student, Harvard Graduate School of Education

What can ancient Confucian philosophy offer for how we design education and live well in the AI age?

Mencius argued that moral life begins not with rules but with cultivating the “four sprouts,” the seeds of moral life, through ritual, relationship, and care. Join Michael Puett, Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology and author of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, and Amy Zhang, graduate student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former producer of Netflix’s Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, for a reflection on their fall independent study on ritual and Mencius on moral development.

Enjoy Chinese tea in this casual talk and salon as we bring together philosophers, artists, and educators to ask what it means to design from this non-Western ontology. 

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Michael Puett (普鸣) is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion and the Director of the Harvard University Asia Center. He is also a non-resident long-term fellow for programs in anthropological and historical sciences and the languages and civilizations of East Asia at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala.

Puett joined the Harvard faculty in 1994 after earning his M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1994) from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. His interests focus on the inter-relations between religion, anthropology, history, and philosophy. In his research, Puett aims to bring the study of China into larger historical and comparative frameworks. He has published many articles on early Chinese history (c. 1200 B.C. – c. 755 A.D.), and on classical Chinese ritual, social, and political theory.

Amy Zhang is a writer, artist, and educator creating narratives and methods that ask how we live, learn, and become human, drawing from non-Western philosophies and ways of being. As a graduate student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she is developing the right to become human — an applied framework across children’s rights and pluriversal philosophy — along with companion theatrical work (Out of Time) and pedagogy (Awake, a summer camp for teens to redesign their lives in the attention age).

Previously, she produced global stories for Netflix’s Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj and worked in documentary theater at Pink Fang (formerly Ping Chong + Company). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Dial, and Joyland Magazine, where her short story on Chinese international students won the 2022 Open Borders Prize. Born in Beijing and raised in Hong Kong, she graduated with honors in anthropology from Wesleyan University and is a descendant of the Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhang Zai.www.amy-zhang.com

With support from the HGSE Dean’s Office Student AI Initiative Fund