Biography of Douglas G. Spelman

Douglas Spelman will be giving the keynote talk at 9 a.m. Friday, Oct. 2, in the Elaine Langone Center Forum.

Born in Ohio, Mr. Spelman was educated at Oberlin College (A.B. in Religion, 1963) and Harvard University (M.A. and Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages, 1973). In 1972, he served as an interpreter for the visit to the United States of the Chinese Ping-pong Team. After several years spent teaching Chinese history at Bucknell University and managing student exchange programs in Taiwan (Oberlin-in-Taiwan) and Hong Kong (Yale-China), in 1977 he joined the United States Foreign Service, from which he retired in 2007 with the rank of Minister Counselor in its Senior Service.

His domestic assignments included the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (as a China analyst and Director of the Office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Analysis), the Taiwan Coordination Staff, and the India desk. Overseas, he served in Hong Kong (twice), Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, the Taipei office of the American Institute in Taiwan, and, from 2002 to 2005, as Consul General in Shanghai.

In January, 2009, he became Deputy Director, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D. C.

Mr. Spelman is married to Nancy Latting Spelman, a psychologist (M. A., Bucknell, Ph. D., Hong Kong University), and they have two grown daughters.