Ian Austen has been the Canada correspondent for the International and Business desks of the Times for more than a decade. He first began writing for the Times as a contributor to the Circuits technology section when it began publication in the late 1990s. Before working for the Times, Austen was a correspondent with Maclean’s Magazine, The Financial Times of Canada, and Southam News and a contributor to Canadian Business Magazine, among other publications. Much of his work has focused on Canada’s technology industry, including the rise and fall of BlackBerry. An amateur cyclist, Austen has covered the Tour de France nine times since 1992, including much of the Lance Armstrong era, an experience that also meant reporting extensively about the use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes. A native of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit’s cross border neighbor, he was educated at Ryerson University in Toronto and has been based in Ottawa for the past 25 years.
 

George Freeman is Executive Director of the Media Law Resource Center, which is a a non-profit trade association supporting the media industry in legal matters; its membership includes 125 media companies from ABC to Yahoo! and 200 law firms that represent media clients.

For over 30 years George worked as a First Amendment attorney in the Legal Department of The New York Times Company, leaving in 2012 as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel (a title he had held since 1992). He was primarily responsible for the company’s litigations and counseled the newsrooms of the Times newspaper and the newsrooms of the company’s affiliated newspapers, television stations, and magazines. He also was involved in antitrust and distribution problems, employment relations, and business counseling. He was at the forefront of a number of high-profile cases for The Times, including reporter Judy Miller’s battle not to reveal her confidential sources in the Scooter Libby case and quarterback Ken Stabler’s libel case against The Times.

He is a frequent lecturer and moderator of panels on First Amendment issues and has been on the Practising Law Institute’s Communications Law faculty since 1985. He also was the co-founder and for 20 years was co-chair of the Boca Conference, a winter meeting on First Amendment issues bringing together 250 media attorneys nationwide. He has participated in a conference in Moscow on “Democratic Governance and a Free Press” with Russian government officials and has toured China as a member of the New York Bar Association Delegation.

He is the William J. Brennan Visiting Professor at the Columbia Journalism School and also teaches First Amendment law at New York University and CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Amherst and the Harvard Law School and is an avid tennis player.
 

Dr. Andrew R. Wilson is a Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI, the world’s oldest and most prestigious center for senior military education. An old “China Hand,” Andrew received a B.A. in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and earned his Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. Before joining the Naval War College in 1998, he taught Chinese history at Harvard and at Wellesley College. He has published numerous articles and books on Chinese maritime history, the Chinese diaspora, Sino-Western conflict, and cooperation in maritime Asia, as well as on Chinese military history and China’s strategic culture, especially Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Professor Wilson’s research interests are not limited to Chinese history, he is also engaged on topics such as contemporary Asian security, Chinese politics and Chinese military modernization. In addition, he is an expert on strategic thought and is the Naval War College’s Philip A. Crowl Professor of Comparative Strategy. His books include Ambition and Identity: Chinese Merchant-Elites in Colonial Manila, 1885–1916; The Chinese in the Caribbean; China’s Future Nuclear Submarine Force; and the forthcoming The Acme of Skill: Strategic Theory from Antiquity to the Information Age.

An award-winning educator and dynamic lecturer, Andrew has spoken at numerous military colleges and civilian universities across the United States and around the world, has appeared on the History Channel, NPR, and at One Day University. He is also featured on The Great Courses with lecture series including The Art of War; Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers; and the upcoming Daily Life in Imperial China. Following our cruise he will be leading a 17-day tour along the coast of Southeast China, visiting China’s historical points of contact with the maritime world.