Above: Professor Murray Rubinstein at a talk in the Modern Taiwan Lecture Series at Columbia University in 2015.
The Weatherhead East Asian Institute notes with sadness the passing of former Senior Research Scholar Murray Aaron Rubinstein on February 6, 2025.
A specialist in the history and culture of Taiwan, Professor Rubinstein taught East Asian history at Baruch College of the City University of New York for more than 40 years. He was a longtime Weatherhead affiliate and a member of the greater Columbia community for even longer, serving as a Visiting Professor in the 2010–2011 academic year and as a dedicated member of the Modern China Seminar, among other roles.
With former Weatherhead Director Myron L. Cohen, Professor Emeritus in Columbia’s Department of Anthropology, Professor Rubinstein presided over the Modern Taiwan Lecture Series, offered under the joint auspices of the Anthropology department and WEAI. Recordings of several of the 2015 lectures are available to stream on Weatherhead’s YouTube account.
Professor Emeritus Cohen said in a statement:
“Murray Rubinstein was both a close friend and a treasured colleague. Three times over the course of several years, we co-organized the Seminar on Modern Taiwan as a lecture series/graduate seminar. Murray's outstanding scholarship moved in several directions, but it was in Taiwan studies that his contribution was foundational to the development of the field.
“He was an active contributor to the academic life of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and to the Columbia University seminars on Traditional China and Modern China. He will be sorely missed, as a person and as an intellectual force.”
In addition to scores of scholarly articles, Professor Rubinstein’s publications include the monographs The Protestant Community on Modern Taiwan: Mission, Seminary, and Church (1990) and The Origins of the Anglo-American Missionary Enterprise in China, 1807-1840 (1996). His many edited volumes include The Other Taiwan, 1945–92 (1993) and Taiwan: A New History (2018); he also co-edited Technology Transfer Between the US, China and Taiwan (2018) and Women in the New Taiwan (2020).
University of Lancashire Professor of Anthropology and Human Geography Niki Alsford, for whom Professor Rubinstein was a PhD external examiner at SOAS University of London, wrote on LinkedIn:
“Murray was one of the pioneering figures in the international study of Taiwan, helping to establish the field as a serious and distinct area of scholarly inquiry. His work on religion, identity, politics, and modern Taiwanese history shaped generations of researchers, and he was widely respected as a generous mentor, examiner, and intellectual guide to scholars across the world.”
We send our condolences to Professor Rubinstein’s wife, Arlene Rubinstein, and his children and grandchildren.
