This thesis researches Chinese professors’ experience and identity in Canadian universities. Taking theoretical insights from the scholarship on “patterns of adaptation” from Philip Kuhn’s work on overseas Chinese marginal experience in North America, as well as Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “conscious pariah”, I structure the cultural analysis of these four Chinese professors with a life story narrative approach. My main research questions are: To what extent and how do Chinese diasporic academics see their circumstances as “conscious pariahs” in Canadian society and the Chinese community respectively? And how do their cultural identities change over time? Drawing on interview data and participants’ published writings, this study synthesizes participants’ perspectives on their cultural identity, and their experiences of marginalization. These four professors can be categorized as conscious pariahs (self-critical outsiders), and parvenus (submissive social climbers) to different extent. The findings suggest future research agendas that move beyond system-level comparison to focus on how institutional logics are enacted and negotiated in practice. Such work could examine how frameworks of Indigenization and diversity are interpreted at different organizational levels, and how racialized scholars navigate agency, risk, and collective affiliation within these constraints. This research provides insight into the experiences of Chinese professors, and makes an original contribution to research on Canadian universities. The study also provides an example of “elite interviews,” in which research interviews become vibrant scholarly dialogues. The ethical challenges of a student studying professors, i.e., “studying up,” are discussed; these practical and ethical quandaries provide windows into hidden yet significant dimensions of Canadian academic culture. The study positions the experiences of Chinese professors within a broader comparative frame by placing them in relation to Jewish cultural and historical trajectories and public figures, thus contributing to anti-racism discourse by showing how different diasporic traditions—Chinese and Jewish—offer intersecting yet distinct insights into the challenges of reflection, assimilation, adaptation, and admission in academic life.
Harriet Dai (Thu,) studied this question.