Unmasking the Chinese Communist Party

Andrew G. Walder is a renowned sociologist and the Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor at Stanford University, where he is also a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. With a career marked by significant contributions to the understanding of communist regimes and their successor states, Dr. Walder has been a leading voice in examining the sources of conflict, stability, and change in these systems. His academic journey includes a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, followed by teaching positions at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Joining Stanford’s faculty in 1997, Dr. Walder’s research has spanned from the socioeconomic organization of early Mao-era China to the political mobilization of the late 1960s and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state. His focus also extends to post-Mao China, analyzing patterns of stratification, social mobility, and inequality. 

Dr. Walder’s distinguished career is marked by fellowships and grants from prestigious institutions, including the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Science Foundation. His scholarly work has been recognized with awards from various academic associations, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as a Guggenheim fellow. Dr. Walder’s recent publications, such as “Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement,” “China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed,” and “Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China’s Southern Periphery,” reflect his deep engagement with the complexities of China’s political and social history.

Michael I. Kotlikoff, Professor of Molecular Physiology, became the 16th Provost of Cornell on August 1, 2015. As the university’s Chief Academic Officer, Chief Budgeting Officer, and First Deputy Officer to the President, Dr. Kotlikoff works to enhance the university’s excellence in teaching, scholarship, and outreach. His signature initiative, Radical Collaboration, recruits faculty and supports infrastructure in seven key multidisciplinary areas: nanoscale science and microsystems engineering; genome biology; data science; sustainability; digital agriculture; infection biology; and the critical inquiry into values, imagination, and culture (CIVIC). Dr. Kotlikoff was previously the Austin O. Hooey Dean of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, where he enhanced programs in education, animal healthcare, and research, and launched an $87 million capital project to upgrade infrastructure and teaching facilities, thus enabling an increase in the pre-clinical class size. His research laboratory, continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for over 30 years, is internationally recognized in the area of cardiovascular biology and heart repair.