Princeton-in-Asia is the outgrowth of a relationship that began in 1898 when the Philadelphian Society sent Robert R. Gailey A.M. 1896 (a football All-American) to north China to pioneer Y.M.C.A. work there. He was subsequently joined by Dwight Edwards '04 (honorary Doctor of Philanthropy 1949), Louis D. Froelick '06 (later editor of Asia magazine), and others. With student and alumni support, they evolved a program, called Princeton-in-Peking, which for twenty years sent Princetonians to China to help staff the Peking Y.M.C.A. Under the leadership of John S. Burgess '05 and Sidney D. Gamble '12, whose social survey of Peking (published in 1921) was the first ever made of an Oriental city, the program in 1930 became the Princeton-Yenching Foundation, which helped to organize a sociology department in Yenching University and to develop it into a college of public affairs.
In the 1950s the organization's name was changed to Princeton-in-Asia, and support was shifted to colleges in Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. With the expansion of the University's efforts in East Asian Studies, the program further broadened its scope, sending recent graduates as teaching fellows to colleges in Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Indonesia, helping alumni and undergraduates to obtain summer jobs in teaching or in business in these countries, and providing scholarships for Asian students in Asian universities.
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton
University Press (1978).
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