On May 29th, the academic seminar on ‘New Theory of Public Administration’ was co-held by the department of public administration and the department of international exchange and cooperation. Jong S. Jun, Professor Emeritus from Californian State University at Hayward, was invited to be in BAI as the key-note speaker. This activity was attended by the faculties and graduate students from the department of public administration.
Dr. Jun focused on the philosophy of public administration and he presented his research on some major pragmatic perspectives. Jun argued that the pursuit for high-efficiency public service and ethic value brought about a pragmatism trend in the public administration, which includes ‘instrumental pragmatism’, ‘social-technical pragmatism’, ‘empirical pragmatism’, ‘strategic pragmatism’ and ‘critical pragmatism’. These five trends are more or less applicable to current public administration practice. He pointed out that critical pragmatism is a brand new genre of pragmatism that focus on dialogue, participation, inclusiveness and variety, compared to the traditional pragmatisms that lack fairness and openness.
Jun also reflected on how pragmatism developed in the public administration practice in China and the colleagues in BAI raised lots of questions.
Jun is an old friend of BAI. Californian State University at Hayward had a long history of cooperation with BAI, which includes quite a lot of training programs. Jun himself had also participated as a trainer.