The Donald J. Munro papers (0.7 linear feet) include notes documenting Munro's 1973 visit to the People's Republic of China, color photographs of views of various Chinese cities (such as Guangzhou, Beijing, and Nanjing), and material related to the enrollment and education of Chen Ziming.
Donald Jacques Munro was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on March 5, 1931, to Thomas Munro and Lucile (born Nadler) Munro. He grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and graduated from Ohio's Western Reserve Academy in 1948. After briefly attending Amherst College and studying Chinese at the University of Michigan, Munro transferred to Harvard University and earned his A.B. in Philosophy in 1953. Shortly afterwards, he enrolled in the Navy Officer Candidate School and enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served in the Philippines until his discharge in 1957. He then matriculated to Columbia University, from which he received a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Chinese Studies in 1964. His thesis was entitled The Nei-Wai Distinction in Early Chinese Thought. Munro joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1964 as both an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Associate in university's Center for Chinese Studies. He was promoted to Associate Professor of Philosophy in 1968 and attained the rank of Professor of Philosophy in 1973. From approximately 1991-1996, Munro also held a joint appointment as a Professor of Chinese. His other University of Michigan appointments included serving on the Executive Committee of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) from approximately 1986-1989 and leading the U-M Department of Asian Languages and Cultures as both its interim chair (1993-1994) and chair (1994-1995). Munro also served as an advisor of and teacher to Chen Ziming (spelled in Chinese 陈子明 and 陳子明), who studied at the University of Michigan in the 1990s. Ziming was a political dissident that was accused by the People's Republic of China of being one of the architects of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Munro was particularly active outside of the University of Michigan. His external roles and lectureships included serving as a Visiting Research Philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley (1969) and Visiting Scholar at Peking University's Department of Philosophy (1990). He also held positions in several professional organizations and national committees, especially the American Council of Learned Societies. Notably, in 1973, Munro—at the request of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations—co-led a delegation of educators from the National Education Association to the People's Republic of China to study the Chinese educational system. The visit arose out of conversations between PRC Premier Zhou Enlai (周恩来)and Henry Kissinger, then National Security Advisor of the United States.
In 1996, after officially retiring from the University of Michigan, the university's Regents named him Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Professor Emeritus of Chinese. He remained professionally active post-retirement, as exemplified by his appointment as the Tang Chun-I Visiting Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2006. More recently, in 2016, Munro and his wife, Ann P. Munro, gifted the University of Michigan with funding to establish a tenure-track position in Chinese philosophy in the Departments of Philosophy and Asian Languages and Cultures.
Munro specializes in classical Chinese philosophy, Neo-Confucianism, modern China, and the continued impact of China's imperial dynasties on modern China. His published works include The Concept of Man in Early China (1969), The Concept of Man in Contemporary China (1977), Images of Human Nature: A Sung Portrait (1988), and Ethics in Action: Workable Guidelines for Private and Public Choices (2008). He has also served on the editorial advisory committees of two journals, Chinese Studies in Philosophy and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy.
Munro's accolades include the receipt of several fellowships, such as a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 1978. He has also received several awards from the University of Michigan, including an LSA Excellence in Teaching Award (1992) and the Warner G. Rice Humanities Award (1994). A festschrift in honor of Munro, entitled New Life for Old Ideas: Chinese Philosophy in the Contemporary World, was published in 2019.
