Joseph Passman

Joseph Passman is an Ernest May Fellow in History at the Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. A former Marine Corps infantry officer, Joseph is a historian of East Asia exploring how Chinese intellectual and educational developments intersect with global military history. He earned his Ph.D. in History from University of California, Berkeley with a dissertation called “Schools of Violence: Military Academies in the Fight for Modern China,” which investigates the advent of modern military education in China during the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and its development into the communist era. He draws on archival research from his time as a Fulbright Fellow in Taiwan, in-depth readings of Classical Chinese and modern Mandarin documents, his military experience, and his historian’s nose for finding new sources to challenge long-held assumptions about Chinese modernity, state-organized violence, and civil-military relations. 

As an Ernest May Fellow, he is working to turn “Schools of Violence” into a book that will appeal to both professional historians and military and policy practitioners. In addition to his research as a Fulbright Fellow in Taiwan, Joseph has studied at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, Tsinghua University, and Peking University. Though a historian of modern China, Joseph has a passion for Classical Chinese, and has published a book chapter called “The Heart of Man and the Art of War: Wang Yangming (1472–1529) and the Sunzi.”