Robert Elliott Allinson is Professor of Philosophy at Soka University of America, USA and former Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
He lived through, taught, wrote and researched during the day to day making of modern Chinese history, commencing the year after the death of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, experiencing first-hand the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, through the period of Deng Xiaoping and through the era of others who were to take his place.
He was full professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, teaching both Chinese and Western Philosophy. He was one of the first Americans to visit and lecture in China. He was a Visiting Fellow to Yale University, Oxford University, and Erskine Fellow to the University of Canterbury. He was Visiting Professor at Fudan University, was personally invited by Sir Joseph Needham to be a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, and by the renowned Chinese scholar Tang Yijie to become Visiting Professor at Peking University.
He has written extensively in the field of Chinese philosophy, author of Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots (1990) and co-editor of His Harmony and Strife: Contemporary Perspectives, East and West (1989).
