John Leighton Stuart - Missionary and Academic

Missionary and Academic

In 1904, after his marriage, he returned to China with his wife, Aline Rodd, of New Orleans, and became a second-generation missionary in China from the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Together, they had one child, John L. Stuart Jr., who later became the fifth-generation Presbyterian minister in his family.

In 1908, Stuart became a professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at the Nanking Theological Seminary. During his tenure, he published 'Essentials of New Testament Greek in Chinese' and 'Greek-Chinese-English Dictionary of the New Testament' (1918). His missionary work in China was sponsored by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's church in Washington, D.C., where Stuart preached and visited Wilson in the White House on home leave. Stuart considered himself a Wilsonian idealist, and his family had shared close ties with Wilson's family in Staunton, Virginia, where Stuart's father, John Linton, had been named after Wilson's uncle.

In January 1919, Stuart became the first president of Yenching University. He established physical, financial, and education foundations of the institution. He quickly made the university among the top universities, and the premier Christian institution, in China. He developed the Yenching campus (now home to Beijing University) in traditional Chinese architectural styles, even though many Chinese faculty argued for a campus more western in design. Stuart's hope was that China would one day absorb the institution as its own, rather than view it as an imposition of the west. He also served on the Board of Trustees of Tsinghua University. He forged partnerships between Yenching and Harvard University, and helped to create the Harvard－Yenching Institute, an important legacy in cultural exchange, in 1928. He also formed partnerships with Princeton University, Wellesley College, and the University of Missouri. He cared much about students and teachers and their interactions and is remembered fondly by Yenching alumni for hosting an ongoing salon for student intellectuals on campus. Princeton awarded him an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 1933. In 1936, Yenching threw him a 60th birthday banquet, where kitchen and cleaning workers presented him with a plaque to hang above his door: "His kindness knows no class boundaries." It spoke volumes about his character and became his most prized possession.

Shortly after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Yenching University ceased to exist. In 1952, Peking University relocated to the Yenching campus.