John Kuo Wei Tchen,[1] also known as Jack, is a historian of Chinese American history and the Inaugural Clement A. Price Chair in Public History and Humanities at Rutgers University.[2]
Tchen received his B.A. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1973. He did his M.A. at New York University in 1987 and finished his Ph.D. at NYU in 1992.[3] He was the founding director of the A/P/A Studies Program and Institute at New York University. In 1979–1980, Tchen co-founded the Museum of Chinese in America and continues to serve as its senior advisor.[4] In 2018, Tchen was named the Inaugural Clement A. Price Chair in Public History and the Humanities at Rutgers University and became Director of the Clement Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture & the Modern Experience.[5]
Tchen received several awards during his academic career: the Charles S. Frankel Prize from the National Endowment for the Humanities(1991),[6] and MLK Humanitarian Award from NYU (2012).[7] His monograph, New York Before Chinatown, was the winner of the History/Social Science Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies in 2001.[8]
Tchen was featured in the film 9-Man (documentary)[9] and is a frequently called-upon expert on Chinatown and Asian American topics.[10][11][12]