Democracy in Peril: Russia, China & Authoritarian movements

Folio’s second Democracy in Peril panel examines authoritarian movements in Russia and China and the role the United States and its allies play in countering those regimes. 

Moderated by retired journalist and Folio board trustee Mort Kondracke, the panel features Mark Clifford, former Editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, director at Next Digital, (publisher of the shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong), and author of Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China’s Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere; Prof. Glennys Young, chair of the University of Washington history department and a scholar on Russia and the Soviet Union; Prof. Dan Chirot, an expert on authoritarian regimes and tyranny at UW’s Jackson School of International Studies, and Carol J. Williams, award-winning foreign correspondent for 35 years at the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press, and finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. 

About the panelists

Mark Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, the former executive director of the Asia Business Council, and a former board member at Next Digital. He is editorial chair of the Asian Review of Books, and served as editor in chief of both English-language papers in Hong Kong, The Standard and the South China Morning Post. An honors history graduate of UC Berkeley and a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, he holds a Ph.D. in Hong Kong history from the University of Hong Kong.

Glennys Young is a professor of History and the Chair of the History Department at the University of Washington. She also is a professor of Russian studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. She is also affiliated with University of Washington's Comparative History of Ideas Department. From 2016 to 2019, she was the Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor in History. Her research focuses include Russia, the Soviet Union, religion in the Soviet Union, Soviet foreign policy, Russian foreign relations, the Cold War, and twentieth-century Spain.

Daniel Chirot, Herbert J. Ellison Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School, has authored books about social change, ethnic and nationalist conflicts, Eastern Europe, and tyranny. His next book, to be published by Princeton later in 2019, will be called So You Want a Revolution? From Idealistic Radicalism to Tragedy.

Carol J. Williams has reported from more than 80 countries for the Associated Press (1980-1990) and the Los Angeles Times (1990-2015). She served two postings in Moscow before and after the Soviet Union’s breakup and covered armed conflicts in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and Ukraine.