Newsletter No. 25

CUHK Newsletter No. 25 December 1991 A Donation of HK$20 Millio n f rom Sino Land The University recently received a major donation of HK$20 million from Sino Land Co. Ltd. for academic and campus development programmes. In a ceremony held on 8th November to honour the benefactor, the vice-chancellor presented a souvenir to the chairman of Sino Land Co. Ltd. and thanked them for the timely contribution towards the University's expansion plans. The money will be used to set up a research and development fund, and a new teaching block on the Chung Chi campus will be named after the donor in appreciation of their generosity. The new building will provide facilities primarily for the Faculty of Social Science. W e i L u n Visiting P r o f e s s o r T a l k s a b o u t t h e F u t u r e of C a p i t a l i sm Prof. Immanuel Wallerstein, distinguished professor of sociology, State University of New York, visited The Chinese University last month as Wei Lun Visiting Professor and gave two public lectures on the theme of capitalist civilization. The two lectures entitled ‘A Balance-Sheef and Future Prospects' took place on 19thand 21st November respectively. In the first lecture, Prof. Wallerstein examined the virtues and shortcomings of capitalism as it has existed for the past 500 years. In the second lecture, he analysed the likely development of the world system in the next half century, and pointed out that capitalism, like all other historical systems, would eventually come to an end someday. Prof. Wallerstein is the founder of the 'world-system' approach to sociological and political economic theories. He is the recipient of many awards and has lectured in universities in Canada, USA, France and Italy. The full text of Prof. Wallerstein's two lectures will be published in the WeiLun Lecture Series in due course. Two Inaugural L e c t u r e s i n November Prof. Robert Li of the Department of Information Engineering and Prof. Andrew Parkin of the Department of English delivered their professorial inaugural lectures last month. Prof. Robert Li spoke on the 'Evolution of the Switching System’ in Lecture Theatre 6 of the Lady Shaw Building on 15th November. He briefly reviewed the history of switching communication, described the state of the art, and explained how the Hong Kong environment was uniquely suitable for pioneering broadband switching services. He believed that broadband switching could offer a cost efficient opportunity for Hong Kong to quickly join the ranks of high technology exporters. Two weeks later on 29th November, Prof. Andrew Parkin gave his inaugural lecture entitled ‘English and the Place of Poetry’ in the same lecture theatre. The professor of English first defined literature and outlined the history of English literature as a university subject. He then went on to comment on contemporary literary criticism and the place of poetry in literature and its study. 2

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