American Lehman and Frenchman Agon set to be conferred Honorary Citizens of Shanghai

Jeffrey Sean Lehman, vice chancellor of NYU Shanghai, and Jean-Paul Agon, chairman of L'Oréal, will be conferred the Honorary Citizenships of Shanghai, with approval from the city's legislature on Tuesday.

Lehman, born 1956, is an internationally acclaimed leader in higher education, having served as dean of the University of Michigan Law School, the eleventh president of Cornell University, and the founding dean of the Peking University School of Transnational Law.

He started to work in China in 2006 and since 2012 has been a resident of Shanghai.

For his contribution to higher education in China and the people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States, he in 2011 received the Friendship Award, which is China's highest honor for foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to the country's economic and social progress. He also received in 2014 the Medal of Merit for Education, which is awarded to 10 foreign experts for distinguished service and contribution to education in China during the period from 1954 to 2014.

He was the recipient of the Magnolia Silver and Gold awards from Shanghai in 2013 and 2015.

Agon, also born in 1956, served as the CEO of L'Oréal from 2006 to 2021. When he was serving as the general manager of the company in Asia, the company established its China headquarters in Shanghai and became one of the first international companies in the beauty industry to set up shops in China.

Now, Shanghai is also home to one of the company's six research and development centers, and the company's China headquarters now covers the entire North Asia region.

Agon has been taking an active part in encouraging more French companies to invest in China and pushing for business and cultural exchanges between China and France.

Under Agon's leadership, L'Oréal donated 5 million yuan (US$774,500) to the construction of the Leishenshan makeshift hospital for coronavirus patients in Wuhan after the outbreak of the pandemic and another 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) of products and materials to medical workers working to save lives.

The Shanghai People's Congress, the city's legislature, established the honorary citizenship program in 1997. The city then decided to incorporate honorary citizenship into its Magnolia Awards program as a recognition of foreign nationals who have made major contributions to its development.