Eugene Perry Link, Jr. (Chinese: 林培瑞; pinyin: Lín Péiruì; born 6 August, 1944 Gaffney, South Carolina) is Chancellorial Chair Professor for Innovative Teaching Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages in College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside and Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. Link taught Chinese language and literature at Princeton University (1973-77 and 1989-2008) and UCLA (1977-1988). He specializes in modern Chinese literature and Chinese language. [1]
Link is a Harvard University alumnus who received his B.A. in philosphy in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1976. Link has been a Board Member of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) since 2021. CFHK is a US-based non-profit organisation, which presses for the preservation of freedom, democracy, and international law in Hong Kong.[2]
Tiananmen Square
Link helped Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi and Fang's wife obtain refuge at the U.S. Embassy following the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.[3] Fang remained at the embassy for a year until negotiations resulted in Fang's being allowed to leave and settle in the U.S.[3]
Link has translated many Chinese stories, writings and poems into English. Along with Andrew J. Nathan, he translated the Tiananmen Papers, which detailed the governmental response to the 1989 democracy protests. In 1996, China blacklisted Link, and he has been denied entrance ever since. In 2001, Link was detained and questioned upon arriving in Hong Kong because of his involvement in the Tiananmen Papers. After roughly one hour, he was allowed to enter Hong Kong, where he spoke at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club. He has been banned from the People's Republic of China since, however.[4]
Controversy at U.C. Riverside
From 2022 to 2024, Link faced disciplinary action at U.C. Riverside after expressing concerns in a faculty search committee about prioritizing a Black candidate’s race over qualifications.
Link was removed from the search committee and subjected to a disciplinary process, including hearings resembling a trial, where termination was suggested as a penalty.
Link said his comments were intended to caution against elevating race as the “overriding criterion,” and that the comments were reported to the university without his knowledge.
Although a faculty committee unanimously found that Link did not violate any conduct codes, UC Riverside chancellor Kim Wilcox issued Link a formal letter of censure.[5][6][7]
Link was recommended by the university to keep the process confidential and warned that the disclosure of any details of his disciplinary process “may result in discipline.”
In December 2024, Link went public about his experience in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.[8]
Link, Perry (1993), "Ideology and Theory in the Study of Modern Chinese Literature: An Introduction", Modern China, 19 (1): 4–12, doi:10.1177/009770049301900102, JSTOR189326. Accessed 17 Dec. 2024.
Edited volumes
Stubborn Weeds: Popular and Controversial Chinese Literature after the Cultural Revolution. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Chinese Literature in Translation, 1983). ISBN 0253355125.
Roses and Thorns: The Second Blooming of the Hundred Flowers in Chinese Fiction, 1979-80. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). ISBN 0520049799
with Richard Madsen and Paul Pickowicz, Unofficial China : Popular Culture and Thought in the People's Republic. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989). ISBN 0813309239.
with Liang Zhang, Andrew J. Nathan, The Tiananmen Papers. (New York: Public Affairs, 2001). ISBN 158648012X.
Eugene P. Link Papers, 1907-1993. M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany, State University of New York
