Photo caption: Qian Xuesen, left, confers with counsel during a deportation hearing in 1950.

In the story of Qian Xuesen, Tianyu Fang sees a cautionary tale for our time. 

Consequent to an uncertain McCarthy-era accusation of Qian's affiliation with the Communist Party USA, Eisenhower deported Qian back to China where the MIT- and Cal Tech-trained engineer, who had been developing rocket engines in Cal Tech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, went on to boost China's space and ballistic missile technologies.

In March 2019, the spring of Fang's junior year at The Governor's Academy, Foreign Policy magazine published his 1600-word article on Qian. Fang is featured, along with a couple of university professors, in the BBC Radio's half-hour documentary about China's Rocket Man, aired this past October (listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1642). 

This remarkable publicity stems from the historical research paper that Fang wrote in his AP US History class during the 2018-19 school year.

Tianyu M. Fang, a 2020 graduate of The Governor's Academy, is a first-year student at Stanford University and a freelance journalist based in Beijing and California. His articles have appeared in Foreign Policy, South China Morning Post, SupChina, and other publications around the world. 

This is a virtual event. Register here and a Zoom link will be forwarded closer to the date. Registration closes at 4:30 p.m. on day of the event.

Reserve your spot now. Limit 100.

Presented by the Museum of Old Newbury and co-sponsored with The Governor's Academy, this is the 10th installment of the popular "Student Symposium" series.

Tianyu Fang, '20, The Governor’s Academy.