Two October lectures in the series “Unmasking the CCP: History, Politics, and Society in Post-1949 China” will examine the history and global legacy of communism, contemporary tensions between democratic and autocratic systems, and China’s role in a shifting international order.
On Oct. 23, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul will give a talk, “Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder,” based on his new book. Cornell University President Michael I. Kotlikoff will introduce McFaul at 4:45 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium in Klarman Hall. A reception and book signing will precede the talk at 3:45 p.m. in Groos Family Auditorium. Pre-registration for McFaul’s lecture is required; register here.
McFaul’s lecture exemplifies Cornell’s commitment to open, evidence-based and interdisciplinary inquiry, debate and discussion on complex issues of global significance, according to the organizing faculty members. The event will also give undergraduates Aniket Martins ’27 and Skyler Albert ’28 the opportunity to serve on a panel and to engage with a senior U.S. diplomat. Atticus Johnson ’28, a history major and student editor at The Cornell Daily Sun, will sit down with McFaul for a one-hour interview.
The lecture series is organized by the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). McFaul’s talk is co-sponsored by the Dean's Office of the College of Arts & Sciences, the Department of History, Cornell Center for Social Sciences, The Einaudi Center and The East Asia Program (all A&S).
On Oct. 27, the series will turn to the history of communism in China with a University Lecture by modern China historian Frank Dikötter, the Milias Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong.
His lecture, “Red Dawn over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity,” will be introduced by Cornell University Provost Kavita Bala at 4:45 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium, 201 Rockefeller Hall. A reception and book signing will precede the lecture in 291 Clark Hall. A mini-panel featuring doctoral students Henry Cheng (history) and Hanna Lin (government) will follow. Pre-registration is required; register here.
About the lecturers:
McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science at Stanford University, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.
McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored ten books and edited several others, including “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia,” a New York Times bestseller; “Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can;” and “Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.”
McFaul earned his B.A. in international relations and Slavic languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D.Phil. in international relations at the University of Oxford in 1991. His honors include the Order for Merits to Lithuania, Ukraine’s Order of Merit (Third Class), and Stanford’s Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. In August 2026, McFaul also received the 2026 Hubert H. Humphrey Award from the American Political Science Association (APSA) in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist.
Dikötter’s books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He is the author of “The People’s Trilogy,” which includes “Mao’s Great Famine (2010),” “The Tragedy of Liberation” (2013), and “The Cultural Revolution” (2016); his recent books include “How to be a Dictator” (2019) and “China after Mao” (2022).
Dikötter graduated from the University of Geneva in 1985 with a degree in history and Russian. He then spent two years in the People’s Republic of China before earning a Ph.D. in history at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in 1990. He published a revised version of his dissertation as “The Discourse of Race in Modern China” with Stanford University Press (1992). He spent close to twenty years at SOAS, recasting the history of Republican China in a series of five research monographs that culminated in the long essay “China before Mao: The Age of Openness” (2005).
In 2006, Dikötter joined the University of Hong Kong. There he used archives of the Communist Party of China to write “The People’s Trilogy,” documenting the fate of ordinary people under Mao. One book of the trilogy, “Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe,” won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, Britain’s most prestigious literary award.
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