Speaker Bios
Prof. Graham Allison, Intro Remarks
Prof. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University where he has taught for five decades. He is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making. He was the “Founding Dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and until 2017, served as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs which is ranked the “#1 University Affiliated Think Tank” in the world. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Prof. Allison received the Defense Department’s highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for “reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.” Prof. Allison’s latest book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (2017), is a national and international bestseller. Prof. Allison’s first book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971), ranks among the all-time bestsellers with more than 500,000 copies in print.
General Vincent Brooks, Opening Remarks
General Brooks is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a career U.S. Army officer who retired from active duty in January 2019 as the four-star general in command of over 650,000 Koreans and Americans under arms. He is a 1980 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the first class to include women, and he led the 4,000 cadets as the cadet brigade commander or “First Captain.” A history-maker, General Brooks is the first African American to have been chosen for this paramount position, and he was the first cadet to lead the student body when women were in all four classes (freshman or “plebe” to senior or “first classman”). He is also the eighth African American in history to attain the military’s top rank – four-star general in the U.S. Army. He holds a B.S. in Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; a Master of Military Art and Science from the prestigious U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; was a National Security Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Prof. Francis J. Gavin, Panel Speaker
Prof. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. In 2013, Prof. Gavin was appointed the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies and Professor of Political Science at MIT. Before joining MIT, he was the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. Prof. Gavin is the Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Texas National Security Review. His writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971 and Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age. His latest book, Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy, was published by Brookings Institution Press in 2020.
Dr. Paul Heer, Panel Speaker
Dr. Heer is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the National Interest, where he specializes in China and other East Asian issues. He served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. A CIA officer, he began that career in 1983 as a political and foreign policy analyst on Southeast Asia before specializing on China as an analyst and analytic manager. He served on the staff of the President’s Daily Brief, and as a member of the CIA’s Senior Analytic Service and the Senior Intelligence Service. He is a recipient of the CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal and the ODNI’s National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. Dr. Heer was a Wilhelm Fellow at MIT during 2015-16, and later served as Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Relations. He was the Visiting Intelligence Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations during 1999-2000. He holds a B.A. in history from Loras College; an M.A. in history from the University of Iowa; and a Ph.D. in diplomatic history from The George Washington University. Dr. Heer is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).
Dr. Anne Karalekas, Panel Speaker
Dr. Karalekas is an Associate of the Applied History Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. With a dual career in business and as an historian, she has held management and executive positions with McKinsey & Co., the Washington Post, and Microsoft, and she is currently writing the first full-scale biography of Robert A. Lovett, the statesman and financier. Dr. Karalekas is the author of the first published history of the Central Intelligence Agency, which has remained a basic and widely cited source since its release by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee). She is a longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the recipient of the Truman Library Institute’s 2018 biennial Scholar’s Award. Dr. Karalekas was educated at Wheaton College (A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, in European History) and Harvard University (A.M. in Modern European History and Ph.D. in Twentieth Century Diplomatic History).
Prof. Sun Joo Kim, Welcoming Remarks
Prof. Kim is Harvard-Yenching Professor of Korean History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations as well as the Director of the Korea Institute at Harvard University. She has a broad range of research interests in social and cultural history of Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) including regional history of the northern part of Korea, regional identity, popular movements, historical memory, everyday lives of people, history of emotions, law and society, and art history. She is also devoted to making underused yet enlightening primary sources available in English through conventional as well as digital publishing. She is the author of Voice From The North: Resurrecting Regional Identity Through the Life and Work of Yi Shihang (1672–1736), published by Stanford University Press in 2013 and Marginality and Subversion in Korea: The Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion of 1812, published by the University of Washington Press in 2007. Her latest book, Wrongful Deaths: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea, published by the University of Washington Press in 2014, was co-authored with Jungwon Kim at Columbia University.
Dr. John Park, Moderator
Dr. Park is Director of the Korea Project at Harvard Kennedy School. He is an Associated Faculty of the Korea Institute at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a Faculty Member of the Committee on Regional Studies East Asia at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and a Faculty Affiliate with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard’s Belfer Center. Dr. Park’s current research projects focus on nuclear proliferation, economic statecraft, Asian trade negotiations, and North Korean cyber activities. He previously directed Asia Track 1.5 projects at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He earlier worked at Goldman Sachs and The Boston Consulting Group. His publications include: “Stopping North Korea, Inc.: Sanctions Effectiveness and Unintended Consequences,” (MIT Security Studies Program, 2016 – co-authored with Jim Walsh); and “Assessing the Role of Security Assurances in Dealing with North Korea” in Security Assurances and Nuclear Nonproliferation (Stanford University Press, 2012). Dr. Park received an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He completed his predoctoral and postdoctoral training at Harvard Kennedy School.
Dr. Samuel F. Wells Jr., Panel Speaker
Dr. Wells is a Cold War Fellow at the Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has taught at both Wellesley College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the Wilson Center, he founded the International Security Studies Program in 1977 and directed that program until 1985. Since then, he has served as Associate Director and Deputy Director of the Center while also serving as Director of West European Studies. His most recent publications are Fearing the Worst: How Korea Transformed the Cold War (2019); with Sherrill Brown Wells, “Shared Sovereignty in the European Union: Germany’s Economic Governance,” in Ernest R. May, Richard Rosecrance, and Zara Steiner (eds.), History and Neorealism (2010); and “The Korean War: Miscalculation and Alliance Transformation,” in Basil Germond, Jussi M. Hanhimaki and Georges-Henri Soutou, The Routledge Handbook of Transatlantic Security (2010).
