Contemporary Issues Forum
Mao's Hijacked Generation:
What Can We Learn?
- SAT, AUG 17, 2024
- 3:00-4:15 PM
- Hall of Philosophy
SPEAKER:
Robin Radin, International lawyer and the book editor of Mao’s Hijacked Generation
TOPIC:
Robin Radin discusses his partnership with a leading Chinese dissident intellectual on his final life’s project to publish a book about what was one of Mao Zedong’s most extreme social engineering programs, which exiled a generation of urban young people to remote corners of China and deeply affected the way Chinese people think and behave today. What can we learn?
Book Signing:
Mao’s Hijacked Generation, Edited by Wang Youfen and Robin Radin, Translated by Wang Youfen, Foreword by Michel Bonnin
Speaker Bio:
Robin Radin has enjoyed a diverse career as an historian of Japan and China, an international lawyer, mainly in financial transactions and regulation, and a business entrepreneur.
As a member of the History faculty at the University of Miami, he created and served as the Director of, the Japanese Studies Program (1974-1976). After changing his career path from academic history to law, and graduating from Harvard Law School in 1979, he practiced law in New York City for eight years and another eight years in Tokyo and Honk Kong, where he was head of legal affairs for the Asia-Pacific Region for Morgan Stanley and then CSFB.
He returned to Harvard in 1996 as a senior associate of the Program on US-Japan Relations and moved over to Harvard Law School as Associate Director of the Program on International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School (1998- 2003), where he co-founded its Japan-U.S. Financial Symposium in 1998, the premier annual bi-lateral forum for the past 26 years.
Robin is a graduate of the University of Chicago (BA’63) UC- Berkeley History (Ph.D.abd’69) and Harvard Law School (JD’79) and was a Visiting Foreign Scholar at Kyoto University (1969-1971) under both Fulbright and Ford Foreign Area Fellowships.
As a business entrepreneur, among other projects, Robin was (i) a founder and CEO of a biotech company (CropTech LLC); (ii) a founder and senior executive of a mobile app technology platform company (Toura LLC); and (iii) a founder and senior executive of a minerals distribution company (White Gold Mountain Partners LLC), a unique business joint venture between a small U.S. group and North Korea (1997 to 2002).
Since his retirement from full-time professional activities, Robin has lived in Longboat Key and Sarasota, Florida and during summers a Chautauquan with his partner, Georgia Court for now seven years.