Nancy Bernkopf Tucker Lecture Series in U.S.-East Asia Relations Starting 2013

The Wilson Center will establish an annual lecture series on U.S.-East Asian relations from 2013, named after noted diplomatic historian and Wilson Center Senior Scholar Nancy Bernkopf Tucker.

Making the announcement Wilson Center Director, President and CEO, Jane Harman, said:

“Dr. Tucker exemplifies the Wilson Center’s mission to strengthen the link between first-rate scholarship and public policy. It is only fitting we honor her extraordinary accomplishments in US-East Asian diplomacy by establishing this annual lecture series in her name to continue the important tradition of encouraging scholars and policy makers to learn from one another.” 

Dr. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker is Professor of History at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. An American diplomatic historian whose work has focused on U.S.-East Asian relations, particularly U.S. relations with China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Dr. Tucker is the author or editor of seven books, most recently The China Threat: Memories, Myths and Realities in the 1950s, which appeared earlier this year.  Her Uncertain Friendships: Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States, 1945-1992 received the 1996 Myrna F. Bernath Book Prize, awarded biannually by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.   Her articles and essays have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Political Science Quarterly, Diplomatic History, and many of the other leading historical and foreign affairs journals.

In addition to her scholarly achievements, Dr. Tucker has twice served in the U.S. government, first as a China specialist in the Department of State and the U.S. embassy in Beijing (as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow), and subsequently in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).  In 2007, she was awarded a National Intelligence Medal of Achievement for distinguished meritorious service in ODNI as the first-ever Assistant Deputy Director for Analytic Integrity and Standards and Analytic Ombudsman.