The Tufts Institute of Leadership and International Perspective (TILIP) will hold its annual symposium on China: Dimensions of Security next week. The symposium, which will feature experts on China and security, is the culminating event for students who participated in the Hong Kong intern program in April 2001.
According to TILIP's founding director Sherman Teichman, this year's symposium will be particularly interesting because faculty and senior cadets from the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point will participate in open forums on security in Asia. In turn, they will host the Chinese and Tufts delegations at the USMA at West Point the week prior to the symposium.
"This is a very unusual program," Teichman said. "Students get access to cutting edge scholars to discuss cutting edge issues."
The theme of the symposium, chosen last spring, will address broad security issues. Discussions will include strategic dimensions of security, the international and internal roles of the military, personal security and dilemmas of health, human rights and labor, environmental issues, the role of law, and China and the World Trade Organization. US-China relations will also be emphasized.
"Terrorism is as much a smokescreen as anything else," Teichman said. "Since Sept. 11 the US and China have gotten to get closer." He added that president Bush's trip to China the week after the symposium makes the time and context for these discussions particularly appropriate.
TILIP students prepare for the symposium by selecting and arranging the panelists. This year, the students contacted the authors of recently published books that they studied. They also arranged for the participation of leading government figures, directors, and analysts with whom they formed connections while in China.
"The prime responsibilities of the students participating in this is the intellectual public act of designing the symposium," Teichman said.
The symposium is one facet of the Institute for Global Leadership program, which will also sponsor the annual EPIIC symposium during the last week of February. TILIP students were paired with top students in Beijing and Hong Kong to participate in programs such as Leadership and Team Building and Weekly Leadership Lecture Series.
"It is remarkable that we are able to do this. It's particularly interesting because we have students from the finest Chinese universities participating," said Teichman.
The Chinese students participating in the symposium are in the top five to ten percent of the 300,000 students in their senior class. On Tufts' end, according to Teichman, the staff of seven professors that interviews students selects participants based on personality, intellectual curiosity, interest in China, and scholastic achievement. Once enrolled in TILIP, the 13 Tufts students are paired with 13 Chinese students and are prepared for internships in Hong Kong.
Teichman says the internship program and symposium are meant to challenge students. "It is our intent to open the doors for access to an intellectual team. These students are future leaders," he said. "They have already distinguished themselves in many scholastic and extracurricular ways."
Professor Zhu Feng, director of the International Security Program at The School of International Studies, Peking University, will deliver the keynote address at the symposium. He has written on issues ranging from ballistic missile defense to human rights and Sino-US Relations, to the Asian financial crisis and East Asian economic cooperation.
Dr. Shahid Yusuf, Research Manager of the Development Research Group of The World Bank, will deliver the concluding address at the symposium. Yusuf is the lead economist of the World Bank's China Department.
Other panelists include Dr. Su Hao, a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University, and Ms. Veron Mei-Ying Hung, a senior scholar in the China Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
This year will mark the TILIP's fourth Sino-centric symposium and its 18th annual symposium. In recent years symposium themes have included Preparing the Next Generation: Global Leadership Across Cultures, Globalization and Modernization in China, and Globalization and China: Challenging Cultural Boundaries.
General admission for attendees outside of the Tufts community to the Feb. 14-16 event is $20, and non-Tufts students and senior citizens are invited to attend for $5. All panels will be held in the Aidekman Arts Center's Alumnae Lounge, except for Feb. 14th, when panels will be in the Coolidge Room of Ballou Hall.
