Robert Lawrence Kuhn
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Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn is an international investment banker and corporate strategist with extensive business and relationships in the People’s Republic of China. He is an author or editor of over 25 books on investment banking and corporate strategy, and the meaning of science and new knowledge. A public intellectual with a doctorate in brain research, he is an author and editor, scientist and scholar, television producer and host, media commentator, private investor, and philanthropist. Kuhn is the creator and host of the public television / PBS series Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future.
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[edit] Investment banking
Kuhn is Senior Advisor, Investment Banking at Citigroup, where he works with major Chinese companies in their capital markets and merger and acquisition (M&A) activities and with multinational corporations on their China strategies. Kuhn is Senior Partner at IMG, the leading sports, media and entertainment company (owned by Forstmann Little and run by Ted Forstmann), where, with Adam Zhu, his long-time partner, Kuhn is developing IMG China. Between 2001 and 2005, Kuhn was managing director at Smith Barney / Citigroup where he worked on liquidity strategies and wealth management for business owners. From 1991 to 2001, Kuhn was president and co-owner of The Geneva Companies, a leading mergers and acquisitions firm representing privately owned, middle-market companies (prior to Geneva’s sale to Citigroup). During this time Geneva initiated and closed over 1,200 M&A transactions and conducted over 10,000 privately owned company evaluations.
[edit] China
Since 1989, when he was invited by Dr. Song Jian, Chairman of the State Science and Technology Commission and State Councilor in the administration of former General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, Kuhn has been an advisor to the Chinese government, particularly in economic policy, mergers and acquisitions, science and technology, and media and international communications. He is advisor to senior officials restructuring China’s media industries and in understanding and improving China’s international image. He is a frequent commentator on China's economic policies in the domestic and international media.
Between February and August 2005, Kuhn toured 19 provinces and 32 cities in China meeting senior leaders in government and business, and lecturing on “China’s Image in World” and on the “Scientific Development Perspective” [Kexue Fazhan Guan], which encapsulates President Hu Jintao’s and China’s new leadership’s overarching policy to seek sets of integrated solutions to complex arrays of economic, social and environmental problems. He contributes frequently to the international and American media, speaking and writing about China and the philosophies and policies of its new leadership under President Hu.
Kuhn is the author of The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin, a high-profile, 720 page biography of China’s long-time senior leader—based on special access and exclusive interviews—that Random House published worldwide in 2005 (English, Korean, Japanese). This biography has been criticised as being propaganda and largely untrue, having been commissioned by Jiang Zemin himself. Responding to critics in Foreign Affairs (January/February 2006), Kuhn wrote, “…The truth is almost the reverse. Jiang didn’t choose me; I chose Jiang. The book was my idea; I planned it, financed it, and wrote it to trace China’s story through eight tumultuous decades of trauma and transformation. I had help—translators, researchers, editors—but I maintained absolute editorial control and made every editorial decision, and no one in China ever thought otherwise….Distracted by conspiracy theories… [critics miss] the big story of my book’s publication in China. My rendition of events, such as the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, differs markedly from that of the official Chinese media. In a publisher’s note, Chinese readers are advised: ‘Certain viewpoints and opinions of the author, as a Westerner, bear a definite distance from those of our own. Hopefully the reader will understand.’ My book is unprecedented—the first biography of a living leader published on the mainland. Furthermore, there is inside information in it that Chinese media and officials aver that they never knew. One reporter complained publicly about the fact that this breakthrough was made by a foreigner.” Kuhn stated that his intention “was to move beyond all the hype and bias about China so as to understand how Chinese leaders think.“
The Chinese edition, Ta Gai Bian Le Zhong Guo: Jiang Zemin Zhuan 《他改变了中国：江泽民传》, was published simultaneously by Shanghai Translation Press / Horizon Media (imprints of Shanghai Century Publishing Group) and became the number one bestselling book in China with sales of over one million and substantial publicity across the country. Since the book was published in February 2005, Kuhn has been featured in numerous Chinese newspapers and magazines; a Web search of his book (in Chinese) returns over 100,000 links. His book is recognized as the first time that a biography of a living Chinese leader has been published on the Chinese mainland.
Kuhn’s more recent book in Chinese, Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future, presents leading scientist discussing the implications of state-of-the-science. In the Preface, Kuhn analyzes President Hu Jintao’s Scientific Development Perspective in the context of contemporary scientific thinking and political realities in China, including the ideas and actions of China’s next generation of senior leaders. Kuhn is the editor in chief of China’s Banking & Financial Markets: The Official Report, (John Wiley 2007), which brings to international audiences, for the first time, the only annual publication of record of the Chinese government on the contemporary development of its banking and financial markets and industries (prepared by the Institute of Finance & Banking of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the leading think tank of the Chinese government).
[edit] Author / Editor
Kuhn is the author or editor of more than 25 books, including the seven-volume Dow Jones-Irwin Library of Investment Banking; Investment Banking: The Art and Science of High-Stakes Dealmaking (Harper & Row); Handbook for Creative and Innovative Managers (McGraw-Hill); Frontiers in Creative and Innovative Management (Ballinger / Harper & Row); Generating Creativity and Innovation in Large Bureaucracies (Ballinger / Harper & Row); DealMaker: All the Negotiating Skills and Secrets You Need (John Wiley); Closer to Truth: Challenging Current Belief (McGraw-Hill); To Flourish Among Giants: Creative Management for Mid-Sized Firms (John Wiley); and Made in China: Voices from the New Revolution (TV Books, distributed by HarperCollins).
Five of his books have been translated into Chinese: Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future, The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin, DealMaker (Jiao Yi Ren), Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief (Zou Jin Zhen Shi), and Investment Banking (Tou Zi Yin Hang Xue, the first investment banking book of its kind published in China).
His article “Science as Democratizer,” featured in American Scientist magazine (September / October 2003), argued how the scientific way of thinking can influence global society.
[edit] The Kuhn Foundation / Closer To Truth
Kuhn is Chairman of The Kuhn Foundation, which he founded and funded to disseminate new knowledge in science, support cultural endeavors, and promote good relations between America and China. Projects include the continuing public television (PBS) series and website Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future, which Kuhn created, produces and hosts to present leading scientists and scholars exploring the meaning of leading-edge knowledge (e.g., brain & mind; biology & medicine; cosmology & astronomy; science & religion; science & our world -- see Closer To Truth websites, hosted at PBS [1] and hosted at Caltech [2]. Closer To Truth has been called "the program of record for new knowledge" and explores the latest scientific research, philosophical thinking, and expressions of human creativity. The series is broadcast on numerous PBS and university-related cable stations across the United States. Closer To Truth is also being broadcast in Israel and Korea. Forty-three shows have been produced. A new season of Closer To Truth, estimated to present approximately 60 shows, is in production. The theme, energized by critical thinking, is cosmology / fundamental physics, the philosophy of cosmology, the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and the relationship between science and religion. Featured are leading scientists and philosophers.
The Kuhn Foundation produced the award-winning film “Khachaturian,” on the life of the Armenian-Soviet composer, which won the Best Documentary award at the 2003 Hollywood Film Festival. Dora Serviarian Kuhn (Kuhn's wife)[3], a concert pianist known for her performances of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto, is executive producer as is Kuhn. The Foundation also sponsors cross-cultural symposia between Chinese and American experts in finance, media, reform, and science.
Kuhn was the creator and executive producer of the 90-minute PBS primetime special In Search of China which was followed by his first book about China as a companion to the television series. In 2000, Robert Kuhn helped stage a series of Chinese arts and cultural exhibitions in New York and 10 other cities for the Information Office of the State Council of China.
[edit] Education / Academic
Kuhn holds an A.B. in human biology from Johns Hopkins University (1964, Phi Beta Kappa); a Ph.D. in anatomy / brain research from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA, 1968); and an M.S. in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management (Sloan Fellows program, 1980).
He was adjunct full professor of business and financial strategy at New York University (NYU Stern School of Business, 1981-1989). He is Senior Fellow at the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas at Austin (1983- ); a trustee of Claremont Graduate University; and serves on the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Kuhn is co-founder and vice chairman of the new Beijing Institute for Frontier Science (2004- ).
[edit] External links
- "Science as Democratizer", American Scientist, September-October, 2003 -- [4]
- Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future -- [5] (hosted at PBS)
- Closer To Truth -- [6] (hosted at Caltech)
- The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin, Crown Publishers - ISBN 1-4000-5474-5
- Commentary on The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin -
- China Daily - Picture of the book The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin with a story about Kuhn - [12]
- Kuhn's book tour in Wuhan, Hubei Province - [13]
- People’s Daily - Scientific Concept of Development - March 21, 2005
- People’s Daily - Macro-Control Policies -- August 8, 2004 [16]
