[I’m bringing this up to the front for those people who had intended to add–but let slip during the summer–what they know about the programs they are or have been affiliated with. I’m still compiling more information behind the scenes and will try to have a relatively complete draft of programs by end of September. You can send me attachments of documents or confidential (or otherwise sensitive information) via email; or you may simply post your comments–questions too!–on this string.]

I thought it would be a useful and beneficial service to the academic study of Chinese philosophy for this blog to offer a non-ranked informational list of Ph.D. and M.A. programs (or the relevant graduate equivalents) that offer training to research and teach Chinese philosophy.

To make the list as useful and non-political as possible, I propose—at least—the following protocols:

Information and/or evaluation will be provided in two ways (both moderated and edited for blog presentation, by me):

1. By people who are directly or indirectly involved in administering those programs. They may provide any sort of information they see fit, promotional or otherwise, so long as it does not involve ranking of their programs relative to other programs. These people will not be anonymous.

2. By people who have experienced those programs as participants. These people may be granted blog-anonymity if they have a good rationale for it, though they cannot be anonymous to me. I’m not involved in administrating any M.A. or Ph.D. program, nor do I have any stake in raising or lowering the reputation of any particular one, so I think I can have this type of moderation-control without conflict of interests.

I’d like to generate a good deal of information over the Summer before posting the results on this blog, in the Fall when it will be most useful for those applying to programs.

I welcome any suggestions or additions in terms of the type of information I should try to collect and include. You can simply comment in response to this post or send me an email.

I’ll move this post up to the front from time to time to get more feedback and to try to get the word out about the information we need. I’ll try to post a “results” page in the Fall, around mid-September.

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This is really a follow-up to the discussion I initiated a couple of years ago on Brian Leiter’s Leiter Reports blog about the state of Chinese Philosophy training in the English-speaking world.

Some issues that came up in that discussion perhaps worth revisiting on this post’s comment string, are:

• considerations relevant to choosing between Philosophy programs and Asian Studies, Asian Literature, or Asian History programs;

• considerations relevant to choosing between programs in the U.S., Canada, Australia and those in Asia (principally, in Hong Kong, Singapore, China (PRC), or Taiwan (ROC)–perhaps in other countries as well? let me know!);

• considerations relevant to choosing and getting a degree from a program that does not actually have a specialist in Chinese philosophy, but working-at-a-distance with specialists at other institutions.

Please feel free to comment (in whatever capacity this matters to you)!