Specialist in Western practical philosophy and Marxist philosophy, member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences, foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi), tenured professor at the East China Normal University, and president of New York University in Shanghai. His research focuses on epistemology, practical philosophy and social theory. Among his numerous publications are The Problem of Modernity in the Dialogue between China and the West and Critique and Practice: Essays on Jürgen Haberma Dialectics of Modernization: Habermas and the Chinese Discourse of Modernization.