Tom Gold - Main Episode

08/22/23 • 44 min

Thomas (Tom) B. Gold is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Harvard University, he was among the group of first eight American exchange students in China, spending a year at Fudan University in Shanghai. Priorly, he worked part-time for many years as a Chinese language escort-interpreter for the State Department. From 2000 to 2016, he has also served as Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP). At UC Berkeley, he has also served as Associate Dean of International and Area Studies, Founding Director of the Berkeley China Initiative, and Chair of the Center for Chinese Studies.

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John Thomson - Remainder of Interview

John Thomson was a career diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service from 1970 to 1997, serving in Mainland China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Sweden, and Washington D.C. He was a First Secretary of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing from June 1978 to February 1979, and Counselor of Embassy 1979-1981 during which he played a key role in normalizing U.S.-China relations. After leaving the Foreign Service, John was Resident Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the first City of Chicago representative in China, and Director of the University of California Beijing Center. Before beginning his study of Chinese language in 1965, John served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps.

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Thomas Fingar - Main Episode

Thomas (Tom) Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.

From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

As you'll hear in the first part of the interview, he also played a key role at Stanford University and the United States Government from the 1970s onward in negotiating the exchange agreement between Stanford University and the Chinese government. This agreement served as a template for the general educational exchange agreement between America and China.