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This event is introduced and chaired by Ibrar Bhatt (Queen’s University Belfast, UK), and organised by the Multilingual University Network. For more details about the network and its activities, please click here. 

Overview

Chinese and Islamic Philosophies for Higher Education: A Dialogue for Contemporary Times brings together two scholars of philosophy, Muhammad Faruque and Shuchen Xiang, to explore the relevance and contributions of Chinese and Islamic philosophical traditions to contemporary higher education. At a time when universities around the world are reflecting on the foundations of knowledge production and teaching, this dialogue considers how philosophical perspectives beyond ‘Western’ frameworks can help re-imagine the purposes and practices of higher education. The conversation links with ongoing debates around decolonisation in higher education, particularly the need to better theorise the philosophical foundations that shape how educational paradigms are conceptualised, reproduced, and/or critiqued. Chinese and Islamic philosophical traditions represent rich civilisational knowledge systems that predate modern Western academic frameworks and continue to inform intellectual, social, and ethical life across much of the non-Western world. Examining these traditions, and putting them into dialogue, offers an opportunity to reconsider the assumptions that underpin contemporary university systems and how higher education is done.

Through a moderated dialogue, the two philosophers will reflect on key principles within their respective traditions and discuss how these ideas might enrich higher education today. Discussion will encompass the aims of teaching and learning, institutional structures, and broader conceptions of knowledge and scholarship in higher education. The session will begin with questions from the convener, followed by a conversation between the speakers as they engage each other’s philosophical perspectives. The event will conclude with an opportunity for audience members to participate in the discussion through questions and reflections.

By bringing Chinese and Islamic philosophies of higher education into conversation, the event highlights the importance of plural intellectual traditions in shaping contemporary knowledge production. It aims to open space for deeper engagement with diverse philosophical foundations and to consider how more plural and globally grounded perspectives can contribute to the future of higher education.

Speaker bios

Muhammad U. Faruque is the Inayat Malik Associate Professor and a Taft Center Fellow (AY 2023-24) at the University of Cincinnati. He also holds a Visiting Scholar position at Harvard University. He earned his PhD (with distinction) from the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Exchange Scholar at Harvard University and as George Ames Postdoctoral Fellow at Fordham University. He was also educated at the University of London and Tehran University. He is author of the award-winning book Sculpting the Self (University of Michigan Press, 2021) which addresses what it means to be ‘human’ in a secular, post-Enlightenment world. His forthcoming book The Interconnected Universe (University of Pittsburgh Press) offers a new framework for understanding the relationship between human beings, the climate, and the more-than-human world, drawing on environmental humanities, climate science, ecological economics, and Sufi philosophy.

Shuchen Xiang is Mount Hua Professor of Philosophy, Xidian University, Xi’an, China. She gained a BA first class honours from the University of Cambridge and PhD (summa cum laude) from Humboldt University Berlin and King’s College London. She is the author of A Philosophical Defense of Culture: Perspectives from Confucianism and Cassirer (SUNY, 2021), Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton, 2023) which won honourable mention at the American Sociological Association and has been translated into Chinese and Portuguese. She is co-editor of The Islamic-Confucian Synthesis in China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) and How China Shaped the Enlightenment: A Transcultural History of Modern Thought (Routledge, 2026). Her third monograph is entitled, Our Deepening Coexistence: A Confucian Alternative to the Liberal-Capitalist Subject. She is the translator of History of Chinese Philosophy Through Its Key Terms (Springer). She is currently working on two monographs entitled The Concept of the Political in the Confucian-Legalist State and Tianxia and Decoloniality: Chinese Philosophy and the Project of Global Liberation. Author of over forty academic articles, she has also served as peer reviewer for Oxford University Press, University of Hawai'i Press, Brill, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Metaphilosophy, amongst others.

Discussants:

Professor Rui Yang (楊 銳) is Dean of the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong. He is an internationally recognised authority in comparative and international education whose work sits at the meeting point of Chinese and Western academic traditions. His research spans higher education policy, the sociology and philosophy of education, and the modern transformation of Chinese educational traditions. He is author of the book ‘The Chinese Idea of a University: Phoenix Reborn’ (The University of Chicago Press).

Professor Syed Farid Alatas is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Malaya;. He headed the Department of Malay Studies at NUS from 2007 till 2013. He has authored numerous books and articles, including ‘Ibn Khaldun’ (Oxford University Press, 2013); ‘Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology’ (Routledge, 2014), (with Vineeta Sinha) ‘Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon’ (Palgrave, 2017), and a forthcoming book entitled ‘Decolonial Thought from the Malay World’.

Dr Farah Ahmed is Assistant Research Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Her work sits at the intersection of dialogic education, philosophies of Islamic education, and ‘Southern’ critical and indigenous research methodologies.