Xiang Lanxin Named Kissinger Scholar at Library of Congress

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Xiang Lanxin, professor of international history and politics at the Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales in Geneva, Switzerland, as the new Henry Alfred Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, effective Sept. 2. Billington made the appointment upon the recommendation of a six-person selection committee consisting of members of the academic community and high-ranking foreign policy experts.

Xiang is the third scholar to occupy the Kissinger chair since the position was created in 2000 through the generosity of friends of the former secretary of state to honor him and emphasize the importance of foreign affairs. Aaron Friedberg, director of the research program in international security and acting director of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University, was the first to hold the position. The 2002-2003 holder of the chair was Klaus Larres, Jean Monnet Professor, European Foreign and Security Policy at the School of Politics, Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The Kissinger chair program offers outstanding thinkers and practitioners a unique opportunity to pursue advanced research in the largest and most international collection of library materials in the world. As occupant of the Kissinger chair, Xiang will spend 10 months at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He has chosen “The Idea of Democracy and Sino-U.S. Relations” as his area of research. Xiang earned his doctorate from the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in 1990. He is the author of numerous articles and books on both 20th-century and contemporary Chinese history and on Chinese domestic and international affairs in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. He is a noted authority on the changing relationship between China and the West. Xiang’s most recent book, The Origins of the Boxer War, was published by Curzon Press in 2002. Other published works include Mao’s Generals (University Press of America, 1998) and Recasting the Imperial Far East (M.E. Sharpe, 1995).

Through a generous endowment from its namesake, the Library of Congress established the John W. Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world’s best thinkers to stimulate, energize, and distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources and to interact with policymakers in Washington, D.C. The Kluge Center houses five senior Kluge Chairs (American Law and Governance, Countries and Cultures of the North, Countries and Cultures of the South, Technology and Society, and Modern Culture); other senior-level chairs (Henry A. Kissinger Chair, Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics, and the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education); and nearly 25 postdoctoral fellows.#

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