Bulletin Autumn 1988

25th Anniversary Lectures Professor Yü Ying-shih Dr. M ilto n Friedman The University held the third, fourth and fifth o f its series o f the 25th Anniversary Lectures in August and September. The audience included academics, stu dents, and members o f the public. The third Anniversary Lecture was presented by the faculty o f business administration on 26th August. Professor Abraham Charnes, director o f the Center for Cybernetic Studies o f the University of Texas at Austin spoke on 'Towards Management Science'. He presented a historical review o f manage ment science in the ninety-minute lecture. Problems and progress over the last twenty-five years in the synthesis o f a science o f management for business and industrial organizations were surveyed through examples in the major functional areas o f planning, operations, and control. He also examined the appli cations o f management science in the areas o f trans portation planning, finance, production, and man power planning. Directions o f future development and research were also discussed. The fourth Anniversary Lecture was presented by the faculty o f arts on 7th September. Professor Yü Ying-shih, chair professor o f East-Asian studies at Princeton University, spoke on 'Radicalism versus Conservatism in Modern Chinese Thought'. Professor Yü is a renowned historian. His out standing achievement in letters, philosophy, and history, especially intellectual history, is well-known to the academic world. Professor Yü in his lecture examined ‘radicalism' and ‘conservatism’ in the con text o f Chinese history and culture and tried to deter mine what was characteristically Chinese about the two modes o f thought and how the two had been related to each other. Professor Yü combined two different approaches in the lecture to tackle this pro blem. One was historical, which traced the develop ment o f the radicalism versus conservatism contro versy since late Qing. The other was typological, which identified different types and sub-types o f radicalism and conservatism in modern China. The fifth Anniversary Lecture was presented by the faculty o f social science on 27th September. Dr. M ilton Friedman, senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution o f Stanford University, spoke on ‘Free Markets and Free Men'. Dr. Friedman is an eminent economist, a Nobel laureate. He is one o f the most persistent and persua sive advocates o f free enterprise and monetarist poli cies. According to Dr. Friedman, free societies, though historically rare, have organized their economic activ ities primarily through private markets, as have some non-free societies. Free private markets thus appear to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for human freedom. Dr. Friedman in his lecture explored the relation between free markets and free men, w ith particular reference to the experience o f Hong Kong. He also considered the basic requisites for preserving a free society.