Richard. C. Kagan (born June 24, 1938, in North Hollywood, California, of Jewish immigrant parents from Ukraine and Poland) is an American professor of East Asian history and a political activist. His undergraduate and master's degrees were awarded from the University of California Berkeley. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. For over three decades (1973-2005) he taught East Asian history at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and currently holds the rank of Professor Emeritus.
Kagan's unpublished PhD dissertation on Chen Duxiu and Chinese Trotskyism addresses culture, revolution and polity in early 20th century China. The work was among the first to reference Antonio Gramsci's theoretical contributions to comprehending the political economy of revolutionary China.[citation needed]
In 1972, Kagan supervised and wrote the Introduction for the republication of Ross Koen's The China Lobby in American Politics. The book had been accepted, set in print, but then withdrawn from distribution under pressure from supporters of the Nationalist Government in Taiwan. Warren Cohen 's review of the republication notes that Kagan as a founder of CCAS was committed to scholar's engagement with political public life, and agreed with Kagan that there was no active Left in the 1950s to counter the pressure on China policy from the right.[2]
Taiwan independence
Kagan lived in and studied Chinese language in the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 1965 to 1967, and this initial experience served as the springboard for a lifelong commitment to civil and political rights in Taiwan. Among Kagan's published materials on Taiwan are two biographies of Taiwanese leaders Lee Deng-hui and Chen Shui-bian. One reviewer called the biography of Lee an "important contribution to the study of Taiwan's political development in the last 25 years."[3] Another reviewer, however felt that Kagan's approach to Lee was "hagiographcal,"[4]
Kagan's first trip to the People's Republic of China was in January 1975.[5] and since then he has traveled frequently to both mainland China and Taiwan. Kagan testified before the House Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1980 regarding human rights in Taiwan.
—— (2012), "Multiple Chinas, Multiple Americas", in Liu, Kin-ming (ed.), My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats and Journalists Reflect on their First Encounters with China, East Slope Publishing Limited
