Wednesday, October 11, 2023
4:00 PM
242 Gerlinger Hall
CHINA Town Hall connects leading China experts with Americans around the country for a national conversation on the implications of China’s rise on U.S.-China relations and its impact on our towns, states, and nation. The National Committee is proud to partner with a range of institutions and community groups, colleges and universities, trade and business associations, and world affairs councils to bring this important national conversation to local communities around America for the 17th consecutive year. This year, the national simulcast features a talk with current U.S. Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns. At the University of Oregon, a live talk follows by Margaret K. Lewis, Associate Dean and Professor of Law, Seton Hall University.
Nicholas Burns is U.S. Ambassador to China. Nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate, he was sworn into office on December 22, 2021. As Ambassador, he leads a team of experienced, dedicated, and diverse public servants from 47 U.S. government agencies and sub-agencies at the U.S. Mission in China, including at the Embassy in Beijing and at the American Consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Shenyang. He oversees the Mission’s interaction with the PRC on the full range of political, security, economic, commercial, consular, and many other issues that shape this critical relationship.
Ambassador Burns has had a distinguished career in American diplomacy, serving six U.S. Presidents and nine Secretaries of State over 27 years. His State Department roles have included Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the State Department’s third-ranking official and most senior career diplomat (2005-2008); U.S. Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005); U.S. Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001); and State Department spokesman (1995-1997). Before that, he worked at the National Security Council at the White House (1990-1995) where he served as Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and as Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H.W. Bush during the collapse of the USSR.
Ambassador Burns’ engagement with China also spans decades. He first visited the PRC in 1988, accompanying Secretary of State George Shultz, and then again in 1989 with President George H.W. Bush. He made subsequent visits with Secretaries Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, including during the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the PRC in 1997. As Under Secretary of State, he worked with the PRC government on a diverse range of issues, including Afghanistan, North Korea, United Nations sanctions against Iran and U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific. As a private citizen, he also created and managed an Aspen Strategy Group policy dialogue with the PRC government’s Central Party School.
A graduate of Boston College and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Ambassador Burns is currently on a public service leave from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government where he was the Goodman Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations and founded the school’s Future of Diplomacy Project.
Maggie Lewis is an Associate Dean and Professor of Law at Seton Hall University. Her research focuses on China and Taiwan with an emphasis on criminal justice and human rights as well as on legal issues in the US-China relationship. She is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at National Taiwan University, a visiting professor at Academic Sinica, a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow with the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and a delegate to the US-Japan Foundation’s US-Japan Leadership Program. Lewis is also a Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar of NYU School of Law’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute. She has participated in the State Department’s Legal Experts Dialogue with China, has testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and is a consultant to the Ford Foundation.
Before joining Seton Hall, Lewis served as a Senior Research Fellow at NYU School of Law’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute, where she worked on criminal justice reforms in China. Following graduation from law school, she worked as an Associate at the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York City. She then served as a law clerk for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Diego. After clerking, she returned to NYU School of Law and was awarded a Furman Fellowship.Lewis received her J.D., magna cum laude, from NYU School of Law, where she was inducted into the Order of the Coif and was a member of Law Review. She received her B.A., summa cum laude, from Columbia University, and also studied at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China.