At our most recent Project Pengyou Leadership Training Summit at Harvard, we were honored to have Dr. Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, attend as our keynote speaker. He spoke to us about the current state of affairs between North Korea, the United States, and China, his theory on the Thucydides’s Trap, as well as his new book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? 

Dr. Allison shared with us how young people now can change the future of US-China relations. “Radical ideas are not coming from my generation,” he said. Instead, we are the ones capable of deciding what our future holds. Dr. Allison also simplified what he believed to be the three big unifying factors that will draw the US and China closer together, 1) nuclear weapons, 2) the globalized economy, and 3) climate change.

It was a rare treat to have a giant in the field such as Dr. Allison speak to our Pengyous, and we all learned so much from his wisdom and experience. Thank you, Dr. Allison for so generously sharing your time and wisdom, and we know our pengyous appreciated the time you took to answer their questions and sign their book copies!

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Graham Allison was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He attended Davidson College and Harvard College (graduating magna cum laude in History), received a B.A. and M.A. First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University, and received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

Dr. Allison served as the Director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 1995 to July 2017. He is a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy, with a special interest in nuclear weapons, terrorism, and decision-making. During the Clinton Administration, he served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense, where he 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.”

Dr. Allison is also widely published; his latest book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? is a national bestseller. His previous works include Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, and Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dr. Allison is the founding dean of the modern Kennedy School, and he was instrumental in growing the then small program into a major professional school of public policy and government.