Beida Lectures (First Series)

Author: Editorial Committee
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-20
Features: What is a "lecture"? It is when scholars speak on stage and students listen in their seats. Some have jokingly said: "You can skip classes at Peking University, but you must not miss a lecture." Today, in our campus, posters in the bulletin boards announce various lecture schedules. Before the lectures, classrooms are packed with students, desks filled with items used to claim seats. During the lectures, there is a sudden awakening as if a sweet and sour elixir is poured into one's mind. After the lectures, there are questions, debates, and deep reflections. All of this has become a distinctive campus scene at Peking University. Through this scene, you can see the "residents" traditionally considered to be within the ivory tower their haughty gazes, beginning to reflect on themselves within the campus; you can also see the outside world, with admiration, curiosity, and inquiry, watching the hurried scholars within the tower, even beginning to pause and linger on campus. Lectures not only enrich the sacred land of Peking University but also make this ancient campus more vibrant and youthful, becoming a valuable spiritual treasure for its students. Universities aim to cultivate well-rounded talents, broaden students' knowledge, and naturally, change teaching methods and course arrangements are the most fundamental. However, achieving this in the short term is very challenging. Through numerous lectures, university students can learn about other disciplines, spark their interest in learning, be guided to study more basic humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, understand the latest developments in contemporary technology, and the hot topics in socio-economic development, helping them better understand society and integrate into it. Lectures have thus become one of the most dynamic components of campus culture. Lectures are an open classroom for quality education. Peking University's lectures are the best in China, and those who give lectures at Peking University are naturally the best in reality. With the spirit of exploring truth, theyly share their research findings in lectures. To prevent the voice of thought from fading with the wind and to let more people hear it, this book collects influential lectures from the past two years at Peking University. The lectures collected in this book cover many fields such as economics, politics, and art, striving to embody the principle of inclusiveness. In the compilation, the editors have tried to maintain the original on-site feel of the lectures, hoping to give readers a sense of being there.