Former National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley '69 will explore “U.S. National Security Policymaking and the Future of U.S.-China Relations” in a fireside chat on Wednesday, April 17, with Jessica Chen Weiss, the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the government department in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is also a faculty member in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

The talk, hosted by the Cornell Levinson Program in China and Asia-Pacific Studies (A&S), will be at 5 p.m. in Room 120, Physical Sciences Building, followed by a reception at 6:15 p.m. in the Baker Portico.

Those attending in person can register to attend here. The event is hybrid; those attending online can register here. 

“With China-U.S. relations at a tipping point, the insights offered by Steve Hadley will be of particular interest to the Cornell community,” Weiss said. “I look forward to an illuminating conversation that goes in-depth into U.S. foreign policy and China.”  

From 2005 to 2009, Hadley served as the assistant to the president for national security affairs, and from 2001 to 2005, he was the assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, serving under Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser. Hadley had previously served on the National Security Council staff and in the Defense Department, including as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy from 1989 to 1993. 

Hadley – who majored in government in A&S – is a principal of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm founded with Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates and Anja Manuel. He is an executive vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council and is also the former board chair of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). He has served on a number of corporate and advisory boards, including: the National Security Advisory Panel to the Director of Central Intelligence, the Department of Defense Policy Board and the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is editor of the book “Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama.”  

Weiss is a nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis. From August 2021 to July 2022, she served as senior adviser to the secretary of state’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars (IAF-TIRS). She is the author of “Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations.” She has published widely, both in scholarly journals and media including commentary in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, the Los Angeles Times and The Ezra Klein Show. Weiss was profiled by The New Yorker and named one of Prospect Magazine’s Top Thinkers for 2024.  

The event is co-sponsored by the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Department of Government (A&S), and East Asia Program. 

Linda B. Glaser is news and media relations manager for the College of Arts and Sciences.