Wm. Theodore de Bary is the John Mitchell Mason Professor Emeritus and Provost Emeritus of Columbia University and past president of the Association for Asian Studies. He has written extensively on Asian civilizations and is the coeditor of Sources of East Asian Tradition, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Sources of Japanese Tradition, and Sources of Korean Tradition. In 2014, he was awarded the President's Medal for Distinction in the Humanities.