Scholar’s work leads to guest professorship, and autographs, in China
BY SALLY ACHARYA
Several scholarly books by David Rosenbloom are popular both in English and in Chinese translation. |
Students have been known to ask him for his autograph.
It’s nice, of course. But a bit unexpected. Particularly since the setting is China, and the autograph hunters seeking out David Rosenbloom are fans of books that don’t ordinarily make a writer a celebrity—at least not in the United States.
But in China, where Rosenbloom has been told he is the “most famous public administration professor” in the country, there is a well-selling translation of Personnel Management in Government. There is also a Chinese version of Public Administration: Understanding Management, Politics and Law in the Public Sector. And coming soon to Chinese campus bookstores: Constitutional Competence for Public Managers: Cases and Commentary.
“I asked the translator, ‘What are you going to do with that? It’s all about U.S. constitutional law!’ And he said, ‘We just want to know,’” says Rosenbloom, a Distinguished Professor of Public Administration, School of Public Affairs, who also holds two guest professorships at Chinese universities and teaches courses there for credit.
Rosenbloom holds a regular teaching position at both Renmin (People’s) University in Beijing and Xi Bei Da Xue (Northwest University) in Xi’an, the ancient capital known for its 2,200-year-old terra cotta warriors.
When he tells the Chinese students in his packed lectures that public administration in the United States is seen as a worthy but not particularly glamorous career, the notion is so outlandish that it always gets a laugh. It’s as if someone told a class of U.S. undergraduates that surgeons aren’t particularly high status. After all, in China— as in much of the developing world—government service is a high-prestige, high-impact career that is viewed as central to the country’s future.
So perhaps it’s only natural that Rosenbloom should receive such a warm welcome. After all, he is one of the leading scholars of public administration in the United States. His books are also used in the Ukraine, Georgia, and Israel.
“He is unquestionably regarded as one of the nation’s experts on legal issues in public administration—on the ways in which the law shapes public policy,” says SPA dean William LeoGrande. He is particularly known for his work on the ways the rights and protections in the Constitution bear upon the daily work of public administration.
Even at AU, Rosenbloom’s students have sometimes asked him to sign copies of his books. “There’s no question he’s one of public administration students’ favorite professors,” LeoGrande says. “He’s always at the top of students rankings for the quality of his courses.”
When he teaches abroad, he’s not trying to transplant American notions to a foreign land. “I don’t try to tell them what to do. I don’t visualize myself as an outside expert,” he says. “I visualize it as, ‘Let’s have a conversation. I’ll tell you what I know; tell me what you know.’”
Reprinted from American Weekly, Sept. 20, 2005.
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