Zeidman Memorial Lecture
Each spring Sidwell Friends School hosts the John Fisher Zeidman Memorial Lecture, which brings to campus an extraordinarily distinguished group of experts on various dimensions of Chinese history, culture, and society. The Zeidman Lecture is viewed as an important and valuable event within the larger China-interest community in Washington.
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Past Zeidman Lecturers
1983 - John King Fairbank, Professor of Chinese History, Harvard University, “Chinese-American Relations: Problems and Prospects” 1984 - John Hersey, Professor of English, Yale University; author of A Bell for Adano (1945 Pulitzer Prize) and Hiroshima, "Readings from Treadup of the China Field” 1985 - Jonathan Spence, Professor of History, Yale University, "The Dream of Love in Ming China and Shakespeare’s Mind” 1986 - Harrison Salisbury, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New York Times, “China’s New Long March to Modernization” 1987 - Arthur Miller, Playwright and author of Death of a Salesman (1949 Pulitzer Prize), “Salesman in Beijing: Directing an American Play on the Chinese Stage” 1988 - Han Xu, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the United States, "Forging Bonds of Friendship between the Chinese and American Peoples” 1989 - Harry Harding, Dean of the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University, “The Challenge of a New Relationship: The United States and China in the 1990s” 1990 - Michel Oksenberg, Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, “Reflections on the Sino-American Relationship” 1991 - Perry Link, Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University, “Politics and the Chinese Language” 1992 - Nien Cheng, Author of Life and Death in Shanghai, “China under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping” 1993 - Oleg Troyanovsky '37, Soviet Union Ambassador to Japan, the United States, and China, "Sino-Russian Relations: Past, Present, and Future” 1994 - Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitizer Prize-winning journalists for The New York Times, “China’s Revolution Today” 1995 - Warren Cohen, Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, “A New Epoch in Sino-American Relations” 1996 - Nicholas Hope, Director of the World Bank's Operations in China and Mongolia, “China’s Economic Development in the Next Century” 1997 - Mary Gardner Gates, Director of the Seattle Art Museum, “Artistic Treasures of Ancient China” 1998 - Andrew Nathan, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, “Taiwan, China, and the U.S.: A Tail Wagging Two Dogs?” 1999 - Li Zhaoxing, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the United States, “An Exploration of U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-first Century” 2000 - Jonathan Spence, Professor of History, Yale University; author of Mao Zedong (1999), “Judging Mao: Is the Verdict In?” 2001 - James Lilley and Steven Mufson, Lilley served as Ambassador of the United States to Korea (1986-1989) and the People’s Republic of China (1989-1991); Mufson served as the Beijing correspondent for The Washington Post, 1994-1998, "The Tiananmen Papers: Contending Forces Then and Now” 2002 - Maxine Hong Kingston, Chinese-American author, “Readings from The Fifth Book of Peace” 2003 - Yang Jiechi, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the United States, “China-United States Relations in the New Century” 2004 - Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, “The China Miracle: Long Boom or Bubble?” 2005 - Huston Smith, Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University; author of The World’s Religions, “China’s Place in World History” 2006 - Carma Hinton, Filmmaker and Da Chen, Writer, moderated by Anne F. Thurston, Independent Scholar, "Forty Years Later: The Legacy of China's Cultural Revolution" (Right-click on link to save and play audio file - 38 MB) 2007 - John Pomfret, The Washington Post Los Angeles Bureau Chief and Author of Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China, "A Gambling Nation: Four Bets China Is Making on Its Future" (Right-click on link to save and play audio file - 64 MB) 2008 - Rob Gifford, former Beijing correspondent for National Public Radio and Author of China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power, "China at the Crossroads: Future Directions of a Rising Power"
