Henry Kissinger

on February 7, 2014

Henry A. Kissinger served as U.S. Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977 and as National Security Advisor from 1969-1975. At present, Dr. Kissinger is Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. He is also a member of the International Council of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., a Counselor to and Trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an Honorary Governor of the Foreign Policy Association, and an Honor Member of the International Olympic Committee.

Among his other activities, Dr. Kissinger is a member of the Board of Directors of ContiGroup Companies, Inc. and has been on the Board of Directors of American Express Company from 1984 to 2005 and an Advisor to the Board since 2005. He has served as a member of the Defense Policy Board, Department of Defense, since 2001. He serves on the Advisory Board of Forstmann Little and Co., a Trustee Emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Director Emeritus of Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc., and a Director of the International Rescue Committee. He was Chairman of International House from 1977 to 1984 and has remained an Honorary Trustee since 1985. He was Chairman of the Eisenhower Fellowships from 2000 to 2006. His academic career included appointments as a member of the faculty of the Department of Government and the Center for International Affairs at Harvard College, where he became associate director in 1957. Dr. Kissinger was study director in Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, worked for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as director of their Special Studies Project from 1956 to 1958, was director of the Harvard Defense Studies Program from 1958 to 1971, and was director of the Harvard International Seminar from 1951 to 1971.

Dr. Kissinger received a Bronze Star from the U.S. Army in 1945 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, the U.S. Medal of Freedom in 1977, and the Medal of Liberty in 1986. He is the author of several books and has also published numerous articles on U.S. foreign policy, international affairs, and diplomatic history. His column, syndicated by Tribune Media Services International, appears in leading U.S. newspapers and in over 40 foreign countries.

Sun Dongdong

on February 7, 2014

Sun Dongdong is a curator, a critic, and Senior Editor of LEAP magazine. He is a 2005 graduate of the fine arts department of Nanjing University of the Arts. In 2007, he joined the curatorial department of Iberia Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.

Sun has organized a number of exhibitions, including “You Should Learn to Wait: Solo Exhibition of Gong Jian” (2009), “Visual Structure” (2011), “Stranger: Chen Fei Solo Exhibition” (2011), and “Yu Di: Lui Chunkwong, Lee Kit” (2012). He currently lives and works in Beijing.

Steven Jiang

on February 7, 2014

Steven Jiang has been a Beijing-based producer for CNN since 2010. Some of the stories he has covered include the plight of blind activist Chen Guangcheng and the fall of Communist leader Bo Xilai. Previously, Jiang covered Asia for CBS News, NBC News, and France 24. From 1999 to 2005, he was a producer for CNN in Atlanta and Beijing.

Born in Shanghai, Jiang graduated Cum Laude from Northwestern University with majors in Journalism and International Studies.

He Jianan

on February 7, 2014

Jianan He graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science with a Master’s degree in Development Management. She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics, Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. She is an intern at the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, prior to which she interned with the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Steve Dickinson

on February 7, 2014

Steve Dickinson is an Attorney with Harris Bricken, a boutique international law firm. The bulk of his practice is with foreign companies that do business with China. He works primarily with factories, fish plants, and farms that lie outside of Beijing and Shanghai. He conducts business primarily in Chinese and has lived in China for years.

He has lectured in Chinese at the University of Beijing School of Law and the Shanghai Bar Association. He is a frequent speaker throughout the United States and in China (both in English and in Chinese) on various issues relating to International, Chinese, Japanese, and United States law. He also co-authors the China Law Blog.

Dickinson received a B.A., summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in Chinese Language and Literature from the University of Washington and a J.D. with honors from the University of Washington School of Law.

Harold L. Kahn

on February 7, 2014

Harold L. Kahn is a Professor of History, Emeritus at Stanford University. He taught at Stanford for over 40 years. Previously, he was a Lecturer in history at the School of Oriental and African Studied, University of London.

Kahn was born 1930 in Poughkeepsie, New York. He earned a B.A. from Williams College and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard. In addition to teaching, Kahn spent two years in Stockholm, drove a taxi in New York City, and among admired authors artists he lists the Beatles, the Stones, Nureyev, and Fontaine.

Stephen Platt

on February 7, 2014

Stephen R. Platt is the author of Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, a new history of the Taiping Rebellion in global context published. He is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and holds a PhD in Chinese history from Yale University, where his dissertation was awarded the Theron Rockwell Field Prize. He is also the author of Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China (Harvard, 2007), and won the Smart Family Foundation Prize in 2004 for an article on Harvard’s first Chinese teacher. An undergraduate English major, Platt spent two years after college as a Yale-China teacher in Hunan province before returning to graduate school for Chinese history. From 2008 to 2010 he was a fellow of the National Committee on US-China Relations' Public Intellectuals Program, and his research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright program, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.

Platt lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts, with his wife and daughter.

Hamid Biglari

on February 7, 2014

Hamid Biglari is Vice Chairman of Citicorp, the strategic arm of Citigroup.

Dr. Biglari has held a number of senior roles within the organization, including Chief Operating Officer of Citigroup’s Institutional Clients Group, which represents the global investment banking and trading and sales arm of Citigroup/Citicorp.

Prior to joining Citigroup, Dr. Biglari was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, the international management consulting firm, where he co-led the firm’s investment banking consulting practice. His experience spans the entire spectrum of consumer and wholesale financial services.

Prior to that, he was a theoretical research physicist at Princeton University’s Plasma Physics Laboratory, the nation’s leading center for controlled thermonuclear fusion research.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustee of the Asia Society, and a Board member of the US-China Business Council. In 2009, Dr. Biglari was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, given for outstanding contributions by immigrants to the United States.

He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University. Prior to that, Dr. Biglari received a B.S. in Applied Physics and a B.A. in Mathematics from Cornell University.

Stephen Oliver

on February 7, 2014

Steven M. Oliver is a Ph.D. student in the Political Science Department at University of California, San Diego. Steven’s dissertation addresses the incentives of local government officials in the People’s Republic of China to manipulate publicly reported information on environmental quality as well as the consequences of their actions. This research further touches on the informational dilemmas faced by the leaders of authoritarian regimes and the challenges they pose to leaders in managing subordinate officials. While pursuing his PhD, Steven has been a recipient of the 2009 NSEP Boren Fellowship as well as the 2006 Department of Homeland Security Fellowship.

In addition to environmental issues in contemporary China and politics under authoritarian regimes, Steven’s research interests also span the field of security and international relations. Ongoing projects include examining the economic causes and consequences of modern maritime piracy in fragile and failed states. Steven has most recent published research on this topic in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Prior starting his PhD, Steven worked as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratories focusing on questions regarding terrorism and insurgency.

Hai Zhang

on February 7, 2014

Born in Kunming, China, Hai Zhang is an architect by training and profession. Photography was at first a work-related activity that became a tool to question the contexts of his identity, whether rooted in his homeland of China, or the U.S., where he has lived since 2000.

Zhang has been traveling regularly to China since 2008 to photograph the ever-changing and sprawling urbanized landscape. The four-year journey has constituted the exhibition Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost, a project with site-specific installation and projection. This project has been exhibited in France, Bangladesh, and Turkey.

Zhang was a fellow of the Rafael Vinoly Architecture Research Fellowship from 2009 to 2010. The work he did through this fellowship has been included in the book Pressures and Distortions: City Dwellers and Builders and Critics.

Zhang’s long-term project on Alabama, To Kill A Mockingbird, was included in America through A Chinese Lens, an exhibition in the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City, in 2012.

His works have been exhibited in museums, galleries, and cultural venues globally and he has lectured at numerous artistic and cultural institutions in New York, Turkey, and Beijing. Currently, Zhang is working on a project called Unintended Homecoming and commutes between China and the U.S.