Ashley J. Tellis holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy with a special focus on Asia and the Indian subcontinent. He is a counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Research Director of its Strategic Asia program and co-editor of the program’s fifteen most recent annual volumes, including this year’s Strategic Asia 2019: China’s Expanding Strategic Ambitions. He is the author of India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture (2001) and co-author ofInterpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future(2000). In addition to numerous Carnegie and RAND reports, his academic publications have appeared in many edited volumes and journals. He earned his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. He also holds an MA inpolitical science from the University of Chicago and both BA and MA degrees in Economics from the University of Bombay.
Robert D. Blackwill is the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also the Diller–von Furstenberg Family Foundation Distinguished Scholar at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His current work focuses on U.S. foreign policy writ large as well as on China, Russia, the Middle East, South Asia and geoeconomics. Blackwill served as counselor to CFR in 2005. Most recently, he was a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, from 2008 to 2010, after serving from 2004 to 2008 as president of BGR International. As deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for strategic planning under President George W. Bush, Blackwill was responsible for government-wide policy planning to help develop and coordinate the mid- and long-term direction of U.S. foreign policy. He also served as presidential envoy to Iraq and was the administration’s coordinator for U.S. policies regarding Afghanistan and Iran. Blackwill went to the National Security Council (NSC) after serving as the U.S. ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003. He is the recipient of the 2007 Bridge-Builder Award for his role in transforming U.S.-India relations, and the 2016 Padma Bhushan Award from the government of India for distinguished service of a high order.
Wang Jisi is aprofessor in the School of International Studies and president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University. He is honorary president of the Chinese Association for American Studies, and was a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of China’s Foreign Ministry in 2008-2016. After working as a laborer in the Chinese countryside in 1968-78, Wang Jisi entered Peking University and obtained an MA degree there in 1983. He taught in Peking University’s Department of International Politics (1983-91), and then served as director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences until 2005. From 2005 to 2013, Wang Jisi served as dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University. He was concurrently director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies of the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China from 2001 to 2009. Wang Jisi was avisiting fellow or visiting professor at Oxford University (1982-83), University of California at Berkeley (1984-85), University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1990-91), and Claremont McKenna College in California (2001).
