Tu Weiming, Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, was born in Kunming, China in 1940. He received his B.A. in Chinese Studies at Tunghai University (Taiwan), M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has taught at Princeton University and University of California at Berkeley. Since 1981, he has been on the Harvard faculty.

He is a memeber of the "Group of Eminent Persons" invited by Kofi Anna to facilitate the Dialogue among Civilizations and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published six books in English and four in Chinese. His five-volume of collection of works was published in China in 2001. He is the recipient of three honorary degrees and three honorary professorships. He is on the editorial board of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies and Philosophy East and West. His research interests are Confucian humanism, Chinese intellectual history, philosophies of China, and Asian and comparative religious thought.