Lionel M. Jensen is an American academic who is an associate professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, concurrent associate professor of History, and a fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
[5] In 2011, Jensen said that his interest in studying the history of China began at Williams, where he "became inspired by the courage, tenacity and willfulness of the Chinese people in waging a revolution against poverty, hunger, superlative disadvantage and international resistance to found a new independent socialist republic.
Jensen has been public a critic of China's interpretation of the Hong Kong Basic Law.
[12] Jensen has also publicly criticized China's treatment of human rights lawyers, which he has described as "an extra-legal or illegal pattern of apprehending civil rights lawyers whose success in laboring in the courts against the government’s routine.
"[13] In his 1998 book, Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization, Jensen argues that the modern conception of the person of Confucius was invented by the Jesuits.