David Firestein — Shift: America's Changed Strategic Assumptions About China

About this event

@ The Interdisciplinary Studies Guest Speaker Series continues in the Mullen & James Humanities Hall with David Firestein, who will discuss America’s changed strategic assumptions about China. The talk will explore changing perspectives on U.S.-China relations. This event is presented by the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and UNC Asheville’s Global Studies and Law, Ethics, and Social Policy programs. This is the second of three events in the 2026 Interdisciplinary Studies Guest Speaker Series. Additional events include a discussion by Professor Saman Majeed, Ph. D. on September 17 and a presentation from Professor Austin Hooe, Ph. D. on November 5. About David Firestein David J. Firestein is the inaugural president and CEO of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations (Bush China Foundation) and a founding and current member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors. Prior to joining the Bush China Foundation, Firestein was the founding executive director of The University of Texas at Austin’s (UT) China Public Policy Center (CPPC) and a clinical professor at UT’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Before moving to UT, Firestein served as senior vice president and Perot Fellow at the New York City-based EastWest Institute (EWI), where he led the Institute’s track 2 diplomacy work in the areas of U.S.-China relations and U.S.-Russia relations; Firestein, who held EWI’s lone endowed chair, remains one of the longest-serving senior executives in EWI history. A decorated career U.S. diplomat from 1992–2010, Firestein specialized primarily in U.S.-China relations. Firestein is the author or co-author of three books on China, including two China-published Chinese-language best-sellers, as well as a large number of China-focused monographs, policy reports and articles (and publications on non-China-related topics). As a writer, Firestein broke new ground in a number of ways: in the mid-1990s, he became the first foreign citizen to…

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