Human society is sailing into unchartered water as the Western-centric world order is fading. The center of the gravity of the world economy is shifting toward Asia at accelerating pace. Long-held ideas such as democracy, liberalism, globalization, and liberal international order are all facing mounting challenges. Their primacy, legitimacy and viability can no longer be taken for granted. The prevailing norms, institutions, and mechanisms of governance have been overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and depth of the looming crisis of social and ecological unsustainability. Science and technology have made great strides to improve wellbeing of mankind, but they pale in meeting the challenges of social disorder that technological advances brought about. The two largest economies in the world, the US and China, are at loggerheads with each other over trade and many other issues, casting a long shadow on the global political economy. More recently, the pandemic COVID-19 has thrown the world into the deepest social and economic crisis since the Great Depression. Against this backdrop of multi-dimensional uncertainty, the traditional theories in social sciences and humanities characterized by disciplinary autarky are clearly insufficient to address the burning issues and transformational trends.
It is thus an opportune time to introduce a new educational paradigm where teaching history, economy, management, politics, international relations, technology and ecology are interwoven into a comprehensive and synthetic web of knowledge for tackling real issues facing us today with a long time horizon. This paradigm shall be accompanied by a research platform that invites and encourages contending theories from East and West to debate as the traditional wisdom has been cast into doubt and new ideas need to flourish. It behooves us as social scientists and humanities scholars to respond proactively and creatively to the intellectual challenges arising from such an era.
Inspired by the founding of London School of Economics and Political Science more than a century ago, the TSE Foundation joined forces with National Tsinghua University to establish the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science (TSE) in which new intellectual ideas and potent analytical tools will be developed, and talented young scholars and professionals incubated to tackle the challenges of the 21st century.
TSE represents a new model for higher education in Taiwan and also aspires to make contributions to education globally. Core elements of TSE’s mission include the following :
TSE welcomes international students from all over the world. Through our designed curricula, our students will be trained to be forward-looking, multidisciplinary and holistic. They will be forward-looking because they are encouraged to identify the voids and blind spots in the existing body of social knowledge. They will be multidisciplinary and holistic since their training will be problem-driven, solution-oriented, and develop the capacity to integrate insights and knowledge from different disciplinary perspectives.
TSE promotes collaborations in both education and research with our international partners. Our international faculty provides a solid basis for such new model of higher education. In particular, we focus our research and training on key issues related to sustainable development such as inclusive growth, social justice, good governance, public health, financial stability, regional integration and global governance. In addition to academic research, our faculty members and graduates will also contribute to the international policy community for problem-solving and reforming the existing institutions and regulation.
Taiwan is an indispensable node in the global high-tech supply network. The island has developed dense commercial, financial, and cultural ties with all its major trading partners, including the United States, mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and Southeast Asia. Taiwan’s culture and developmental model exemplify a successful fusion of Asian and Western civilizations. Taiwan is also squarely saddled between Pax Americana and Pax Sinica, the two competing visions for Asia and the world order of the 21st Century. In short, Taiwan is a perfect place to experience the conflux and ponder the validity of theories from East and West, and develop useful and deep knowledge as related to the burning issues of today and the transformational trends that are shaping the 21st century. TSE will take full advantage of Taiwan’s unique cultural heritages, geographic location and transnational networks to establish a leading think tank where solid policy analyses and forward-looking recommendations will be produced for the policy community of Taiwan, Asia and the rest of the world.
We will provide resources for well-established international scholars to make TSE their home. In an era of high international mobility, institutions of higher education all over the world need to find an effective way to make contributions and tap into the pool of international talents. TSE will make itself one of the important hubs for international scholars with innovative ideas and distinctive intellectual contributions.
Centered around socio-economic empowerment, sustainable development, Asian regionalism, and global governance, the research championed by TSE will be predominantly interdisciplinary. We encourage the research that is not confined by any particular academic field. Our faculty members will collaborate with each other and work closely with other key stakeholders to tackle real-world problems. In other words, we not only produce cutting-edge knowledge, but also provide usable knowledge and intellectual tools that can be applied in practice.
For our prospective students, we have following educational goals :
Students will be required to learn how to make sustainable development a primary consideration in seeking an optimal solution to a given policy issue and how to strike a fine balance between trade-offs: sustainability and development, growth and equity, autonomy and interdependence, efficiency and resiliency, freedom and obligation, rights and responsibilities, etc.
Through our training, students will acquire the aptitude and knowledge to understand an issue from different perspectives and be sensitive to the divergent needs and concerns of people with different ethnic, social and religious identities and backgrounds. Students are also expected to be able to untangle a policy issue through the lens of local, national, regional and global perspective.
TSE's pedagogy is based on an integrative vision of enabling students to see the forest and not simply the trees. Our students will be trained to apply interdisciplinary knowledge to do holistic analysis and avoid the pitfalls of partial analysis or unidimensional thinking.
Our students will be trained to draw important lessons and insights from relevant historical precedents and to examine a contemporary issue through a long-term historical perspective. They shall all bear in mind Winston Churchill’s inspiring motto : “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
In addition to the academic training, our students will also receive tutoring for leadership. The world needs new ideas and vision for solving problems. What is equally critical, however, is that it also needs people to articulate compelling solutions and implement them effectively. As a result, we seek to instill leadership in all of our students. At TSE, students will all have opportunities to learn the art and virtue of leadership. We will invite world leaders to visit our school so students will have opportunities to see how such idea is personified.