Arif Dirlik is now an Independent Scholar living in Oregon. Arif Dirlik was Professor of History at Duke University from 1971 – 2001. He was then Knight Professor of History and Anthropology and Director of Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies at the University of Oregon. Dirlik is one of the leading experts on the political culture and party politics of the People’s Republic of China. He is the author of more than a dozen books on Chinese Communism, Revolution, Chinese Historiography, and historiography from such presses as Oxford, California, and Duke. He has taught and lectured in the world’s major universities and has been Visiting Professor at UCLA, Beijing, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as well as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. In recent years, Dirlik has expanded his range of research to problems of globalization, world history, and other dominant modes of current academic practice, linking them to developments in the real world of political economy.