Tu Weiming was born in 1940 in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. (With ancestors’ home in Nanhai, Guangdong Province). Tu is a preeminent Chinese scholar, a representative figure of contemporary New Confucianism, and a crucial practitioner on the research and transmission of Confucian culture. 

After graduation from Harvard University, Professor Tu taught at Princeton University (1967-71) and the University of California, Berkeley (1971-81). He became a Harvard Professor in both Chinese History & Philosophy studies and Religious Studies in 1981. Later, he served as the Chairman of Harvard Research Committee of Religious Studies (1984-87), the Chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations (1986-89), and the Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute (1996-2008).

Professor Tu is currently the Peking University Chair Professor (2010- ), the Founder and Director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies (IAHS, 2010- ), the Director of World Ethics Center of Peking University (2010- ). So far, Professor Tu Weiming has supervised over 30 PhD and Post-doctorate students and educated thousands of undergraduates all over the world. 

For over 50 years, Professor Tu has devoted himself to the interpretation of Confucian Classics, to the evaluation of Confucianism from a perspective of cultural diversity in the world, and to the revival of Chinese culture by a creative transformation of the ancient tradition. The intellectual activities and academic discourses advocated by him, such as “Cultural China”, “Civilizational Dialogue”, “Reflections on the Enlightenment”, and “the Third Phase of Confucianism”, have rendered profound influence in the international circle of thoughts. His broad scope of academic interests, his sympathetic concern towards both empirical and transcendental knowledge, his retrospection and strategic vision of human civilization, made him one of the most insightful and influential thinkers in the world.