Rowena He is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a historian of modern China. A specialist of the 1989 Tiananmen Movement and its subsequent Massacre, she is interested in the nexus of history, memory, and power, and their implications on human rights, nationalism, and war and peace. Her first book, Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, was named Top Five Books 2014 by the Asia Society’s China File. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, the Wall Street Journal, and the Nation. Dr. He’s engagement with the younger generation beyond classrooms has been featured by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She received the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence for three consecutive years. She joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019 and received the Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, the Chinese Communist government in Hong Kong denied the renewal of her work visa, and her position as an Associate Professor of History was terminated “with immediate effect.” Born and raised in China, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.
