News from campus and beyond

Professor Kate Kaup gives address at summer commencement

|Furman President Elizabeth Davis will preside over the commencement ceremony.

Last updated August 11, 2017

By News administrator

Kate Kaup commencement address

Kate Kaup, the James B. Duke Professor of Asian Studies and Politics and International Affairs at Furman University, told the university’s summer graduates to embrace their freedoms, be open to new ideas and be prepared to enter a whole new world after graduation.

“Explore new ideas, new approaches, new places,” said Kaup, who delivered the address at summer commencement Aug. 12. “And explore precisely in order to compare, to test, to challenge your own ideas and fundamental values. And do this constantly, to better shape and strengthen what you stand for, so that you can speak up and speak out, supporting your views with reasoned evidence.”

The university awarded 51 undergraduate and graduate degrees during the ceremony. Furman President Elizabeth Davis presided over commencement.

Kaup joined the Furman faculty in 1997 and teaches world politics, Chinese politics and Asian politics in addition to a wide variety of seminars. Her research focuses on ethnic minorities and rule of law developments in China, as well as human rights concerns, and she regularly lectures in Furman’s OLLI program and in public venues across the country.

Kaup is author of Creating the Zhuang: Ethnic Politics in China and editor and contributor to the textbook, Understanding Contemporary Asia. She has served as special adviser for Minority Nationalities Affairs at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and has been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Yunnan Nationalities University.

Kaup has been chair of the Asian Studies Department and the Furman Faculty, and she serves on the Board of Directors for the Cura Foundation, a non-profit supporting at-risk middle school students in Greenville. A graduate of Princeton University, she holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.

For more information, contact Furman’s News and Media Relations office at 864-294-3107.

Contact Us
Clinton Colmenares
Director of News and Media Strategy