The Enduring Value of Studying in China: A Conversation with the HNC’s Adam Webb.

In this episode of China Field Notes, Scott Kennedy talks with Adam Webb, Co-Director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. Drawing on Kennedy’s own experience as an HNC student and Webb’s long tenure on the faculty, they discuss what makes the Center unique in the landscape of international higher education institutions and how this dual-language, dual-university model fosters exchange and mutual understanding. Webb also reflects on how the Center has navigated political shifts, the pandemic, and growing skepticism towards engagement, while preserving academic freedom and open dialogue. The conversation concludes with a discussion of shifting national identities in the United States and China, how these dynamics are felt on campus and in the classroom, and the importance of broadening debates beyond the two countries. 

Adam K Webb is Co-Director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Centre (HNC), where he also serves as Resident Professor of Political Science. He has been a faculty member since 2008. He previously taught at Princeton and Harvard and was a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research interests cut broadly across political thought, globalization, and critiques of modernity. He is the author of four books, including Beyond the Global Culture War (2006), A Path of Our Own: An Andean Village and Tomorrow’s Economy of Values (2009), Deep Cosmopolis: Rethinking World Politics and Globalisation (2015), and his most recent book, The World’s Constitution: Spheres of Liberty in the Future Global Order (published January 2025) which offers a radically different vision of future world order that could work in a global space while shifting the balance of power from state back to society. He received his AB summa cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard and his MA and PhD in Politics from Princeton.