Madeleine Albright '59, Hank Paulson to discuss U.S. China Relations, January 24

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ‘59 and Former Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson will visit Wellesley College on January 24 for a public dialogue on “The United States and China in the 21st Century.” Cokie Roberts ‘64, Senior Correspondent for ABC News and NPR, will moderate. This event is free and open to the public and will be live-streamed.

Paulson, who served as Secretary of the Treasury from 2006 to 2009, and his wife, Wendy Judge Paulson ’69, are distinguished visiting professors for the 2013 Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs. Named to honor Secretary Albright, the Institute supports the College’s mission of educating students for leadership in a complex and interdependent global environment. Albright and Paulson will discuss U.S.-China relations and the importance of that relationship to global politics. 

“If the U.S. can find a way to work with China, most global problems will become easier to handle; if the U.S. cannot work with China, solving global problems will be much more difficult,” said Paulson, who currently chairs The Paulson Institute, a non-profit and non-partisan institution that promotes affirmative economic and environmental relations between the United States and China.  The conversation will include a discussion of political leadership in China, trade policies, environmental policies, and how these issues might be addressed during President Obama's second term.

The talk will take place in the Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall Auditorium, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, Mass., on January 24 at 4:00 p.m. The live stream URL is: http://web.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Live/

Wellesley has longstanding ties with China. In 1906, a Chinese delegation visited Wellesley to learn about the education of women, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek graduated from the College in 1917. This month, Wellesley President Kim Bottomly announced The Wellesley College-Peking University Partnership for Women’s Leadership in a Global Era, the first in a series of collaborations Wellesley plans to develop with distinguished institutions throughout the world.