James Reardon-Anderson is Sun Yat-sen Professor of Chinese Studies and dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (SFS) in Qatar. He has been a member of the Georgetown faculty since 1985, and has served as director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies in Taipei (1980-81, 1988), chief librarian of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library of Columbia University (1982-85), director of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China (1990-92); director of Asian Studies at Georgetown (1992-1995); and director of the Master of Science in Foreign Service program (2002-05). Dean Reardon-Anderson is the author of five books on the history and politics of China, most recently Reluctant Pioneers: China’s Expansion Northward, 1644-1937 (Stanford University Press, 2005), a study of Chinese frontier expansion and settlement.