Wu Teh Yao


Wu Teh Yao was a Chinese political scientist. He was an educator and a specialist in Confucianism and political science.

Education

Wu completed his senior school certificate at the Anglo-Chinese School in Penang at the age of seventeen. He was admitted to the Chung Ling High School, a well-known bilingual school teaching in both Chinese and English, despite not knowing any Chinese, after an interview with the principal David Chen. After his graduation from Chung Ling in 1936, he was admitted to Nanking University for a course of Bachelor of Arts under Chen's recommendation. He later obtained a Master of Arts degree from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a doctoral degree in political science from Harvard University in 1946.
He was an active athlete during his secondary school years. He represented Malayan Chinese at the National Sports Carnival, Shanghai, China, during the inter-war years.

Career

Academia

Wu joined the United Nations after obtaining his doctorate and participated in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1951, he co-authored the Fenn-Wu Report on the Chinese education system in Malaysia.
He was President of Tunghai University in Taiwan between 1957 and 1971. From then until 1975 he was the head of the Political Science Department, University of Singapore. He was a Professor and the Dean of the College of Graduate Studies of Nanyang University from 1975 to 1980, and was acting vice-chancellor from 1976 to 1977. When Nanyang University and University of Singapore merged in 1980 to form the National University of Singapore, he was appointed the Professor of Political Science. He retired in 1981.

Offices

Professor Wu was a director of the Institute of East Asian Philosophies, which was established by Goh Keng Swee in 1983 in the interest of studying Confucianism. The Institute has since evolved into the East Asian Institute, which is "an autonomous research organization under a statute of the National University of Singapore."

Retirement and death

After his retirement, Professor Wu, a modest person, lived in an HDB apartment in Jurong East, Singapore, and used taxis as his main form of transportation. He died on 17 April 1994 in Taipei, Taiwan, and a memorial service was held for him at the Presbyterian Church in Orchard Road, Singapore. A memorial lecture series was started in his name the following year, with the inaugural lecture delivered by the Confucian scholar Tu Weiming.