KNOXVILLE — Clark T. “Sandy” Randt Jr., former U.S. ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, will speak about evolving relations between the U.S. and China on Friday, Oct. 30, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Free and open to the public, the event will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Toyota Auditorium at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, 1640 Cumberland Ave.
“We are fortunate that Sen. Howard Baker, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Japan, has invited such a distinguished diplomat as Sandy Randt to come to the Baker Center and share with us his thoughts about America’s past and the future relationships with the People’s Republic of China,” said Carl Pierce, interim director of the Baker Center. “It is an extremely important topic.”
The title of Randt’s lecture will be “Tectonic Shift: China’s Rise and the Changing World Order.”
Randt was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to China on July 17, 2001, and served until his retirement from the foreign service on Jan. 20, 2009. A lawyer fluent in Chinese Mandarin, he has lived and worked in Asia for more than 30 years, and has been traveling to China on business for more than 30 years. Between 1982 and 1984, he served as first secretary and commercial attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Subsequently he lived in Hong Kong and was a partner with the international law firm of Shearman and Sterling, where he headed the firm’s substantial China practice. A member of the New York and Hong Kong bars, Randt is a recognized expert on Chinese law. He also is a former governor and first vice president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Society of International Law and the Hong Kong Law Society.
Randt graduated from Yale University in 1968. Upon graduation he served in the U.S. Air Force Security Service from 1968 to 1972, and in 1974, he worked as the China representative of the National Council for the United States China Trade. Randt received his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1975, and attended the Harvard Law School where he was awarded the East Asia Legal Studies Traveling Fellowship to China.
Since retiring from the Foreign Service, he has returned to Hong Kong, where he now runs his own consulting company and serves as director of Valmont Industries.
The Baker Center, which opened at UT in 2003, develops programs and promotes research to further the public’s knowledge of our system of governance, and to highlight the critical importance of public service, a hallmark of Sen. Baker’s career.
The Baker Center’s facility includes a museum that tells the story of how government works using Sen. Baker’s life as a backdrop. It also houses the Modern Political Archives, which hold more than 200 collections of political papers from prominent Tennessee leaders.
For more about the Baker Center, see http://www.bakercenter.utk.edu.
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C O N T A C T :
Amy Blakely, (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)