China Town Hall

Dr. Kurt M. Campbell was confirmed by the Senate on February 6, 2024, and sworn in as the 22nd Deputy Secretary of State on February 12, 2024. Prior to assuming this position, Deputy Secretary Campbell served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs on the National Security Council.

He was previously founding chairman and CEO of The Asia Group, LLC, a strategic advisory and capital management group. From 2009 to 2013, Campbell served as the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Earlier, he was the CEO and co-founder of the Center for a New American Security and concurrently served as the director of the Aspen Strategy Group and chairman of the Editorial Board of the Washington Quarterly. Among the other positions he has held during his distinguished career, Campbell served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs, White House Fellow at the Treasury Department, and as Director of the Democracy Office at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration.

Campbell was an associate professor of public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and served in the U.S. Navy Reserves. He is the author or editor of ten books including The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia, Difficult Transitions: Why Presidents Fail in Foreign Policy at the Outset of Power, and Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security.

Campbell received his B.A. from the University of California, San Diego, and his doctorate in international relations from Brasenose College at Oxford University where he was a Distinguished Marshall Scholar. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award.

Dr. Sophia Geng is the Endowed James and Margaret Tseng Loe Chair for China Studies at Saint Vincent College. Dr. Geng’s academic interests lie in oral history, Chinese literature and culture, cultural heritage studies, and diaspora studies. She is a recognized educator for her dedication to teaching excellence and her promotion of the cultural heritage of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). She has worked with community organizations to capture the voices and stories of AAPI communities and has shared her experiences at national and international conferences and workshops. Since 2020, Dr. Geng has served on the Board of Directors of ASIANetwork, a consortium of over 140 North American colleges, promoting education about Asia within the liberal arts. Currently, she serves as a key leader for ASIANetwork’s “AAPI Voices and Stories: Community-Based Digital Storytelling” project. This three-year half-million project is generously funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Before joining the Loe Center for China Studies at Saint Vincent College, Dr. Geng was a full professor of China Studies at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. She served as the director of the Asian Studies Program from Fall 2014 to Spring 2017. Dr. Geng is the recipient of the Robert Spaeth Professor of Distinction Award, Global-local Leadership Award, and Academic Advising Award. She has published on topics of oral history studies, cultural heritage, memory of WWII, and diaspora across the Pacific Ocean.