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Orville Schell

EMERITIS PROFESSOR AND DEAN

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Biography


Orville Schell has devoted most of his professional life to reporting and writing about Asia. Author of 14 books, nine about China, including “Discos and Democracy,” “Mandate of Heaven,” and “Virtual Tibet, ” Dean Schell also has written for WIRED, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Nation, Salon, The New Yorker, Harper’s and Newsweek. In the broadcast sector, Schell has served as correspondent for several PBS “FRONTLINE” documentaries and an Emmy-winning program on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, an Overseas Press Club Award and the Harvard/Stanford Shorenstein Award for covering Asia. Schell has a bachelor’s degree in Far Eastern history from Harvard University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. (ABD) in Chinese history from the University of California at Berkeley.

For Orville Schell's C.V., bibliography and recent activities, see
orvilleschell.com

A Message from Dean Orville Schell to Prospective Colleagues

Articles by Orville Schell

Wen Jiabao: China's Mr. Pragmatic Gets to Work
For Time Magazine, Dean Orville Schell writes about China's Wen Jiabao. "Less irascible and blunt than his hard-driving predecessor Zhu Rongji, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has earned the reputation of being a modest, even-tempered and practical person capable of getting things done through consensus. Along with President Hu Jintao, he is part of a leadership composed largely of technocrats rather than revolutionary military veterans."
Posted June 5, 2006

Baghdad: The Besieged Press
For The New York Review of Books, Dean Orville Schell writes about covering the war in Iraq.
Posted March 21, 2006

Living In China's World
An interview with Dean Orville Schell is featured in California Magazine, a publication of the California Alumni Association, whose most recent issue focused on the cultural and political interplay between China and California.
Posted January 18, 2006

China: Boom or Boomerang?
For Truthdig, Dean Orville Schell writes about the contradictions inherent in China's culture. "Perhaps no other country has so many positive and negative trends as the home of a quarter of the world's population."
Posted December 13, 2005

Memory, Forgiveness and Forgetting
For Time Asia, Dean Orville Schell writes about China's need to move beyond its history. "If China is to find true greatness, it needs to be honest about its turbulent past."
Posted March 22, 2005

Watching The Presidential Debate With Arabs In Berlin
For FRONTLINE/World, Dean Orville Schell provides a behind-the-scenes view of a private conference of Arab leaders in Berlin, as they watch the first presidential debate. He gauges this powerful group's reactions to President Bush and Senator Kerry, as well as their response to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Posted October 19, 2004

China's Hidden Democratic Legacy
China is finding it ever more difficult to straddle the divide between its anachronistic political system and its booming market economy, Dean Orville Schell writes in Foreign Affairs.
Posted August 1, 2004

Bush Puts Us in a Room of Fun-House Mirrors
Dean Orville Schell writes in the San Francisco Chronicle about the Bush administration's disdain for the press and how it's been taken to heart - by the press.
Posted July 25, 2004

No exit from Iraq for America's market men
Dean Orville Schell writes in the San Francisco Chronicle how US Administration known for appointing officials with a depth of business experience have failed in the case of Iraq to follow the most basic principles of management.
Posted November 30, 2003

China's Paradoxical Future
Opposite scenarios both have plausibility when it comes to China's future, Dean Schell writes in Le Monde.
Posted November 20, 2003

Journalist Casualties In Iraq
Dean Schell writes in The New York Times about the 17 journalists who have died in Iraq, including how five of them have been the victims of "friendly fire."
Posted September 7, 2003

Is Iraq Becoming a New Vietnam?
Dean Orville Schell writes in YaleGlobal Online about whether the United States is becoming trapped in a Vietnam-like guerrilla war in Iraq.
Posted July 14, 2003

From Sands to Quagmire
Dean Orville Schell writes in the San Francisco Chronicle about how Iraq may be drawing on the "people's war" strategy of Mao Zedong in the urban guerrilla warfare it's using to combat U.S. troops.
Posted March 31, 2003

Sending 'Liberal Media' Truism to the Fact-Checker
Is the American media really controlled by the left, as conservative commentators frequently declare? Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal Media?" takes the gloves off to find out. Dean Orville Schell reviews Alterman's book for The New York Times.
Posted March 20, 2003

A Ming Emperor Would Have Grounded the Shuttle
In The Washington Post, Dean Orville Schell examines the insular attitudes of 15th-century China as an example of how America should not react to the recent Columbia shuttle disaster.
Posted March 2, 2003

At War with Iraq
Dean Orville Schell participates with other journalism faculty members in an online discussion about the potential war with Iraq on @cal, UC Berkeley's alumni community website.
Posted February 18, 2003

We Must Not Do This Alone
For the San Francisco Chronicle, Dean Orville Schell writes about the confrontation with Iraq.
Posted October 11, 2002

How Big Media Missed the Big Story
For Newsweek, Dean Orville Schell writes about how megamergers, market mania and misplaced priorities caused the press to miss blowing the whistle on the excesses of corporate America.
Posted July 18, 2002

Gross National Happiness
In a story for Frontline World, Dean Schell writes about the intrusion of technology into the isolated mountain kingdom of Bhutan.
Posted May 1, 2002

The Medium is the Mess: What to do about Broadcast News?
For San Francisco Chronicle, Dean Orville Schell writes about a meeting of journalism school deans to reform the media.
Posted April 28, 2002

Proving the Singular Value of a Voice in the Dark
For the The New York Times, Dean Orville Schell writes about what it's like to be interviewed by National Public Radio's Terry Gross.
Posted December 30, 2001

Chinese Puzzle
Dean Orville Schell writes in the San Francisco Chronicle urging Chinese leaders to make peace with the Dalai Lama.
Posted June 24, 2001

Bearing Witness
Dean Orville Schell writes about Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" in a review originally published in The New York Times.
Posted December 14, 1997

New World Man
For Cigar Aficionado Magazine, Dean Orville Schell profiles David Tang, one of Hong Kong's best known public figures.
Posted August 1, 1997

What to Think About China
Dean Schell writes about China's "ambiguous twilight zone" in a story originally published in The New York Times.
Posted June 29, 1997

Tunnels That Run Deep, In Earth and Memory
Dean Schell writes about a trip to Vietnam and the famous tunnel system of Cu Chi, now a tourist destination, in a story orginally published in The New York Times.
Posted April 20, 1997

Suspicions in the East, Confusions in the West
Dean Orville Schell reviews "The Coming Conflict with China" in a review originally published in The New York Times Review of Books.
Posted March 10, 1997

Deng's Revolution
In an article originally published in Newsweek, Dean Orville Schell writes about Deng Xiaoping's appearance and speech after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Posted March 3, 1997

Articles about Dean Schell:

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