LEXINGTON, KY.—Orville Schell, director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and former dean of the graduate school of journalism at the University of California—Berkeley, will deliver Transylvania’s fall Kenan Lecture Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 7:30 p.m. in Haggin Auditorium. The lecture, “The U.S. and China: The Most Important Bilateral Relationship in the World,” is free and open to the public.
Schell has devoted his professional life to studying, writing about and reporting on Asia, with an emphasis on China. He is director of Asia Society’s Center of U.S.-China Relations, based in New York. The society is the leading global organization working to promote understanding and strengthen relationships among the people and institutions of Asia and the United States.
Schell is the author of 14 books, with 10 being on China. His undergraduate degree in Far Eastern history is from Harvard University, and he did graduate work in Chinese history at UC—Berkeley. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia and covered the war in Indochina as a journalist for “The Atlantic Monthly” and “The New Republic.”
Prior to his 2007 appointment with Asia Society, Schell was dean of the graduate school of journalism at UC—Berkeley. Among his many honors is the Harvard/Stanford Shorenstein Award for Asian Journalism. He has written widely about Asia and other topics for “The New York Times Review of Books,” “Time,” “Foreign Affairs,” “The New Yorker” and “Harper’s Magazine.”
The Kenan Lecture Series is made possible by a grant from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust.