Keynote: Chas W. Freeman, Jr.
Chas Freeman is an American diplomat, author, and writer. He has served for the State and Defense Departments in many different capacities, beginning in 1965, working first in India and Taiwan before being assigned to the State Department’s China desk. There he was assigned as the principal interpreter during United States President Richard Nixon’s 1972 first visit to the People’s Republic of China. He later became the State Department Deputy Director for Republic of China (Taiwan) affairs. After various positions within the State Department he was given overseas assignments as deputy chief of mission in Beijing, China and then Bangkok, Thailand, before being selected as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs in 1986. He became United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in November 1989, serving during Operation Desert Storm, until 1992.
From 1992 to 1993 Ambassador Freeman was a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies. From 1993 to 1994 he was Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs. From 1994 to 1995 he was Distinguished Fellow, United States Institute of Peace. In 1995 he became Chairman of the Board of Projects International, Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based business development firm arranging international joint ventures. He also is a member of the board of several diplomatic institutes, as well as of several corporate and non-profit advisory boards.
He is a past president of the Middle East Policy Council, co-chair of the U.S. China Policy Foundation, and vice-chair of the Atlantic Council. In his over thirty year diplomatic career, Ambassador Freeman has received two Distinguished Public Service Awards, three Presidential Meritorious Service Awards and a Distinguished Honor Award. He speaks fluent Chinese, French, Spanish and Arabic.
Moderator: T.M.( Mac ) Deford
T.M.( Mac ) Deford started his career as a Foreign Service Officer in Vietnam in 1966. Subsequently, he studied Arabic in Beirut, after which he served in Saudi Arabia and Washington. He resigned from the Foreign Service in 1977, as the political counselor at the embassy in Amman, Jordan, to join Merrill Lynch International. He spent most of his Merrill career in Latin America and Asia, retiring in 1997 as the managing director in Hong Kong for Merrill’s Asian Private Banking business. Upon retirement, he relocated to Maine, getting a master’s degree in Theological Studies from Bangor Theological Seminary in 2001. He was the president of the board of the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland and is active on a number of non-profit boards, including International College in Beirut, the Nieman Fellows at Harvard University, the School of Policy and International Affairs at the University of Maine, and the advisory council of the Camden Conference. He is also the president of the Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations in Camden. He writes a weekly foreign column for midcoast Maine’s Free Press.
Pranab Bardhan
Pranab Kumar Bardhan is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley (since 1977). Educated in Presidency College, Kolkata and Cambridge University, England, he had been on the faculty of MIT, Delhi School of Economics, and Indian Statistical Institute, before joining Berkeley. He has been Visiting Professor/ Fellow at London School of Economics, Trinity College, Cambridge, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and University of Siena, Italy.
He has done theoretical and field studies research on rural institutions in poor countries, on political economy of development policies, and on international trade and globalization. A part of his work is in the interdisciplinary area of economics, political science, and social anthropology. He has been on the editorial board of a number of economics journals, including The American Economic Review (1978–81), the Journal of Economic Perspectives (1989–94), the International Economic Review (Associate Editor, 1971–1985), and the Journal of Development Economics (Chief Editor, 1985 to 2003). He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981 and the Mohalanobis Gold Medal of the Indian Econometric Society in 1980.
He is the author of 12 books, more than 120 journal articles, and the editor of 12 other books. He has occasionally written columns in The Times, Scientific American, Business Standard, YaleGlobal Online, Anandabazar Patrika (Kolkata). Outside the US, he has given public lectures or keynote addresses at Beijing, Bogota, Calcutta, Cape Town, Canberra, Copenhagen, Delhi, Istanbul, Manchester, Melbourne, Mumbai, Nairobi, Oxford, Shanghai, Turin, and Vancouver.
Bardhan is also on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-USA), a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and just peace.
Hannah Beech
Hannah Beech is a journalist for TIME Magazine, serving as its Southeast Asia Bureau Chief.
In 2009, Ms. Beech was awarded for Excellence in Reporting Breaking News, Honourable Mention, in the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards for Editorial Excellence (SOPA Awards), for her reporting on Cyclone Nargis in Burma. She also received a 2007 Honourable Mention for Best Opinion Writing.
Ms. Beech graduated in 1995 from Colby College and was the 1994 recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship for Maryland. She did undergraduate internships at U.S. News & World Report and Asian media outlets. In addition, while in Hong Kong, she studied the Chinese print media’s coverage of Asian governments.
Banning Garrett
Banning Garrett is the Director of the Asia Program at the Atlantic Council, a position he has held since March 2009 and held previously from January 2003 through January 2007.
Previously, he was the Director of the Initiative for U.S.-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate at the Asia Society’s Center for U.S.-China Relations. He is the founding Executive Director of the Institute for Sino-American International Dialogue (ISAID) at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. Before joining the Council in January 2003, Dr. Garrett was a consultant for 22 years to the Department of Defense and other U.S. Government agencies carrying on a strategic dialogue with China. He was also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a founding board member of the U.S. Committee for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (USCSCAP).
Dr. Garrett has written extensively on a wide range of issues, including U.S.-China relations and cooperation on climate change, energy, and other strategic issues; U.S. strategy toward China; Chinese foreign policy and views of the strategic environment; globalization and its strategic impact; U.S. defense policy and Asian security; and arms control. Garrett has published in numerous journals, including International Security, The Washington Quarterly, Asian Survey,Arms Control Today, The Far Eastern Economic Review, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis,The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, The New York Times, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Global Times, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Chinadialogue, and YaleGlobal, and has contributed to many edited volumes on Asian affairs.
Dr. Garrett received his BA from Stanford University and his PhD from Brandeis University. He has made nearly 50 trips to China since 1981 for consultations with Chinese officials and analysts as well as numerous similar visits to Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
David F. Gordon
David F. Gordon is Eurasia Group’s head of research and director of global macro analysis. He is a member of the firm’s management committee, and is based in Washington, DC.
Before joining Eurasia Group, David spent more than ten years working at the highest levels of US foreign and national security policy processes. From June 2007 to January 2009, David served as the director of policy planning under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He played a leading role in developing policy ideas for Rice on issues ranging from Afghanistan and Pakistan to US engagement in East Asia to the multilateral response to the international financial crisis. He also led the department’s strategic policy dialogues with more than 20 countries around the globe.
Prior to his work with the US State Department, David served in a top management role at the National Intelligence Council (NIC) from 2004 to 2007, during which time he led the NIC’s integration into the new Office of the Director of National Intelligence and its reemergence as the preeminent analytic center in the US government through enhancing analytic quality and integrity in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate. He provided analytic leadership for the NIC’s groundbreaking reports, Global Trends 2015 and Global Trends 2020.
Other positions that David has held include the director of CIA’s Office of Transnational Issues, an office that covers issues including global economics and energy, illicit finance, insurgency and counterinsurgency, and global health; and national intelligence officer for economics and global issues at the NIC. For six years, David represented the intelligence community on the senior White House interagency body responsible for coordinating international economic policy.
Earlier in his career, David was a senior fellow and director at the Overseas Development Council, a senior staff member on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, and the regional economic policy and democracy/governance adviser for the US Agency for International Development based in Nairobi, Kenya.
In the 1980s, David pursued an academic career with a joint appointment at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. He has also taught at the College of William and Mary, Princeton University, Georgetown University, and the University of Nairobi. David’s latest book is Managing Strategic Surprise: Lessons from Risk Management and Risk Assessment, co-edited with Ian Bremmer and Paul Bracken (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
David is a graduate of Bowdoin College and undertook graduate studies in both political science and economics at the University of Michigan, where he received his PhD in 1981.
Joanna Lewis
Joanna Lewis is an assistant professor of Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA) at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Her research focuses on renewable energy industry and policy development, mechanisms for low-carbon technology transfer in the developing world, and expanding options for multilateral engagement in a post-2012 international climate change agreement. Most of Professor Lewis’ research is based in China. Current projects include studies of China’s wind power industry development, the security implications of climate change impacts for China, and the future of the bilateral relationship between the United States and China on energy and climate change.
Dr. Lewis serves as an international advisor to the Energy Foundation China Sustainable Energy Program in Beijing. She is a member of the National Academies Committee on US-China Cooperation on Electricity from Renewables, the Advisory Board of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations, and the Strategic Advisory Board of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE)’s US-China Program. She has consulted for many domestic and international organizations including UNIDO and USAID.
Previously, Dr. Lewis was a Senior International Fellow at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and a researcher in the China Energy Group at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She also served as the primary technical advisor for the Asia Society’s Initiative for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate, and she has also worked at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the National Wildlife Federation and the Environmental Defense Fund. From 2003-2004 she was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Energy, Environment, and Economy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Thomas R. Pickering
Thomas (“Tom”) R. Pickering currently serves as Senior Advisor at Hills and Company, an international trade firm based in Washington DC. Ambassador Pickering retired from the State Department as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In a diplomatic career with service in each of the major continents, Ambassador Pickering reached the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. He served as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador; Nigeria, and Jordan. He also was the U.S. Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York, where he led the U.S. effort to build a coalition in the UN Security Council during and after the first Gulf War. He has held additional positions in Tanzania, Geneva, and Washington, including as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Oceans, Environmental and Scientific Affairs and as Executive Secretary of the Department and Special Assistant to Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger.
After retiring from the State Department in 2000, Ambassador Pickering joined The Boeing Company as Senior Vice President International Relations and member of the Executive Council, where he was responsible for the Company’s relations with foreign governments and the globalization of Boeing. He also serves on several not-for-profit boards.
Ambassador Pickering holds a B.A. from Bowdoin College, an M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a second M.A. from the University of Melbourne in Australia, where he studied under a Fulbright Scholarship. He speaks French, Spanish, and Swahili fluently and also is proficient in Arabic, Hebrew and Russian.
Charles L. (Jack) Pritchard
Charles L. (Jack) Pritchard is the President of the Korea Economic Institute (KEI) in Washington. Prior to joining KEI, he was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC from September 2003 until February 2006. Ambassador Pritchard served as ambassador and special envoy for negotiations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and United States representative to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization in the administration of President George W. Bush from April 2001 until September 2003. Previously, he served as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Asian Affairs in the administration of President William J. Clinton. During the Clinton administration, Ambassador Pritchard was also the Director of Asian Affairs in the National Security Council and deputy chief negotiator for the Four Party Peace Talks, which aimed at reducing the tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Ambassador Pritchard is a former United States Army officer and attaché in Tokyo, Japan. He retired from the U.S. Army in 2000 as a Colonel after serving 28 years on active duty. He received a B.A. in political science from Mercer University, Macon, Georgia; an M.A. in international studies from the University of Hawaii; and a diploma from the Japanese National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo. He is the recipient of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal.
Lanxin Xiang
Lanxin Xiang is a Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. A faculty member since 1996, Professor Xiang was previously Associate Professor at Clemson University, United States. He held the Kissinger Chair of Foreign Policy and International Relations (2003-2004) at the Library of Congress, United States. He founded the Trilateral Forum for top-level policy-makers to discuss China. He was McArthur Foundation Fellow in Germany (1989), and Olin Fellow at Yale University (2003). Professor Xiang has held chairs at Fudan University in Shanghai and China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. He is a contributing editor for the publication Survival at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London, and Dushu Magazine in Beijing. His main research focus is East Asia, foreign and security policies, and modern China. His main publications include: “Tradition and Chinese Foreign Relations”, “The Origins of the Boxer War” (2003, Chinese version nominated for national book awards), “Recasting the Imperial Far East” (2005), and “Mao’s Generals” (1998). Professor Xiang received his PhD from the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.