China

Since the Communist Revolution of 1949, China has emerged as a world power that poses a threat to the West. This first CCA of the 2019-2020 academic year will consider the history, culture, and challenge of China. Frank Dikötter is chairman and professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Previously, he taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, from which he earned his Ph.D. He has written numerous books, including The Discourse of Race in Modern China, China before Mao: The Age of Openness, and Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China. Dr. Dikötter is the author of People’s Trilogy, a work that documents the impact of communism on the lives of ordinary people in China. The first volume, Mao's Great Famine, won the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. The second, The Tragedy of Liberation, was short-listed for the Orwell Prize in 2014. The final installment, The Cultural Revolution, w

Since the Communist Revolution of 1949, China has emerged as a world power that poses a threat to the West. Mark Blitz is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. He earned his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Previously, he taught political philosophy at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. He served during the Reagan administration as associate director of the United States Information Agency, where he was the senior United States official in charge of educational and cultural programs abroad. Dr. Blitz has also served as a senior staff member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and as vice president of the Hudson Institute. He is the author of numerous books, including Conserving Liberty, Plato’s Political Philosophy, Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life, and Heidegger’s Being and Time and the Possibility of Political Philosophy.