As a practising academic Stephen is committed to the principle of praxis, whereby the scholar engages with society as much as with books, whereby academic institutions are built as specialist aspects of civil society, and whereby academic freedom is no more than a specialist derivative of freedom of speech.
Stephen has for three decades been both a champion of Africa and of the view that the Western world must take seriously the intellectual and scholarly traditions, methodologies of thought and political expressions of the world now emerging to resist and challenge the West.
Stephen has led an international cosmopolitan life. The firstborn son of Chinese refugees to New Zealand, he was a national student president, publisher, newspaper editor, and international civil servant before he became an academic, firstly in Africa, and later in Britain.
The Commonwealth at 60
Can the Commonwealth reinvent itself for the 21st Century? Or should it retire gracefully from the world stage?
Noam Chomsky: Crises and the Unipolar Moment
More than 1,300 people watched Noam Chomsky speak at an event hosted by the School of Oriental and African Studies on 27 October. It was the largest crowd ever to attend a SOAS event. Stephen joins him on stage during the questions following the lecture
