Building Foundations for a Future in Foreign Policy
Through his history classes, Thomas Lin MC ’28 is discovering a passion for the study of statecraft and diplomacy.
Thomas Lin MC ’28 chose Yale College for its excellence in the humanities and arrived on campus keen to pursue a liberal arts education. As a first-year student, he joined the interdisciplinary Directed Studies program, which he credits with helping him discover his interest in history. “We gained a profound sense of how the classical texts we analyzed are relevant to the world today, to our current political situation, and to problems that we see throughout the twentieth century,” says Lin. “It was fascinating to understand modern thinking through texts that are hundreds, even thousands of years old.”
After spending his first Yale summer studying Mandarin at Tsinghua University in Beijing with support from the Richard U. Light Fellowship, Lin returned to New Haven excited to take classes in East Asian and Cold War history. “In my class on the history of modern China, the professor, George Remisovsky ’25 PhD, offered more than just a detailed set of facts. He presented a coherent story of China’s development and helped us understand how the country ended up where it is today,” says Lin. Survey courses like this one, along with topical seminars he’ll be taking his junior and senior years, can equip Lin with the foundational knowledge he’ll need to pursue his other great area of interest: foreign policy.
It’s so helpful to engage with the scholars and practitioners I look up to and hear them discuss what they’re thinking about. Surprisingly, they’re often wrestling through the same questions I am.
Last spring, Lin and a few of his classmates helped launch the Yale Dialogue on US-China Relations, a new club designed in partnership with Tsinghua University to foster undergraduate student interest and engagement on US-China global issues. They’ve organized recurring dialogues between Yale and Tsinghua students over Zoom that are focused on issues shaping relations between the two countries, including trade, soft power, and national security. “We’re getting a handle on what diplomatic-style dialogues are like at the civilian level. As a participant, I’ve already learned so much about how to choose my words carefully and how to be understanding while also holding my ground,” he says. “We want to keep the club going in future semesters as a part of the Yale global affairs ecosystem.”
Looking ahead, Lin hopes to spend his remaining two years at Yale College researching and writing a thesis about China’s electric vehicle industry—a topic of great interest in Congress. As he continues to prepare for a career in public policy or international relations, Lin also looks forward to attending guest speaker events across campus, particularly at the Jackson School of Global Affairs and Yale Law School. “It’s so helpful to engage with the scholars and practitioners I look up to and hear them discuss what they’re thinking about,” says Lin. “Surprisingly, they’re often wrestling through the same questions I am.”
