On March 20th, Professor James Hankins from Harvard University made a speech entitled "Political Meritocracy in Early Modern Europe: Why Matteo Ricci Thought China was a Utopia?" in the Lecture Hall of the Library in Qingdao Campus at the invitation of the School of Political Science and Public Administration (SPSPA) of Shandong University. Daniel A. Bell, Dean of SPSPA, hosted the lecture.

Professor Hankins first introduced the background of the lecture. Later, he presented some basic situations of the era of Matteo Ricci, talking about the interweaving of humanism, scholasticism and virtue politics in Europe at that time. He then put forward some comparative perspectives between humanistic virtue politics and Chinese Confucian political traditions and moved on to discuss why political meritocracy (virtue politics) failed in the West but survived and succeeded in China.

After the main content of the presentation, Professor Kong Xinfeng summarized and commented on the lecture with his own understanding. Dean Bell also put forward his own comments. Professor Hankins responded to the comments of the two professors as well as questions from other professors and students. The lecture was a complete success and received enthusiastic applause from the audience.

Ames Hankins, is professor in the History Departmebt of Harvard University, and an intellectual historian specializing in the Italian Renaissance. He is also the General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library and the Associate Editor of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. He took Ph.D. degrees in History from Columbia University (1985). At Columbia he worked with Eugene F. Rice and the historian of philosophy Paul Oskar Kristeller, serving as the latter’s research assistant for six years. Hankins' monographic work centers on the history of philosophy, theology, literature and political thought. In 2012 he was honored with the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award of the Renaissance Society of America.