Chris Wyatt

on April 6, 2019

Colonel William M. (Chris) Wyatt is Director of African Studies at the United States Army War College and a professional military officer with more than 36 years of experience in security, international development, and education in Africa, Europe, Southwest Asia, and North America. He received his commission as a Military Intelligence Officer from Ohio University in 1989. He is a graduate of the Military Intelligence Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, the Counterintelligence course, the Signals Intelligence course, Combined Arms Services and Staff School, Air Assault School, Command and General Staff College, and the United States Army War College. Prior to his arrival at Carlisle Barracks, he was assigned to the U.S. Mission to the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was the Senior Military Advisor to the mission and the U.S. Africa Command Liaison Officer to the African Union.

Source: U.S. Army War College

Ilaria Carrozza

on April 5, 2019

Ilaria Carrozza recently completed a PhD in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, with a thesis on China's engagement with the African peace and security architecture. She is currently a teaching assistant for the LSE Summer School course “Power Shift: The Decline of the West, The Rise of the BRICs and World Order in a New Asian Century.” She was the editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 45, and has previously worked as a consultant for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. She holds degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the University of Pisa, and speaks seven languages.

Are Confucius Institutes Good for American Universities?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Kenneth Hammond, Lawrence C. Reardon & more on April 4, 2019

Confucius Institutes continue to incite controversy in America. Since 2006, China’s government has given more than $158 million to dozens of U.S. universities to host the institutes, which offer Chinese language classes and hold events. To critics, the institutes threaten academic freedom on U.S. campuses, but many supporters view them as an innocuous means of funding Chinese language learning. ChinaFile hosted an extensive discussion of the program in 2014. In February a bipartisan U.S. Senate report warned that “the Chinese government controls nearly every aspect of Confucius Institutes at U.S. schools.” Without “full transparency” about how Confucius Institutes operate, and “full reciprocity” for American programs in China, the report argued, “Confucius Institutes should not continue in the United States.”

Vaclav Kopecky

on April 2, 2019

Vaclav Kopecky is a Research Fellow at the Association for International Affairs, a foreign policy think tank in Prague. He specializes in China’s relations with Europe and Chinese foreign initiatives. He is also an external lecturer at the Charles University in Prague, focusing on China’s relations with Central Europe. Apart from his academic activities, he works as Senior Consultant at CEC Government Relations, a Central European public affairs consultancy.

Kopecky obtained an MA in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, and BA in Area Studies at Charles University in Prague. He spent one year at Tsinghua University in Beijing, half a year in Sichuan University in Chengdu, and one year at University of Kent, Canterbury, Great Britain.