CFR Welcomes Sue Mi Terry and Rush Doshi as Asia Fellows

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) welcomes Sue Mi Terry and Rush Doshi to the David Rockefeller Studies Program.

Terry will be joining CFR on March 25 as a senior fellow for Korea studies based at CFR’s New York headquarters, where she will research and write on policy issues relevant to the Korea Peninsula, U.S.-Korean relations, and security issues in Northeast Asia.

Doshi will be joining CFR on April 15 as senior fellow for China and Indo-Pacific studies and director of CFR’s new cross-cutting initiative on China strategy, based in Washington, DC. He will research and write on China’s foreign policy, U.S. strategy toward China, cross-strait affairs, and Indo-Pacific security, among other issues.

“I’m delighted to welcome two distinguished scholar-practitioners on Asia to the Council. Sue is one of our nation’s foremost experts on Korea. Rush is one of the best strategic thinkers on China and will guide our new cross-cutting initiative on strategy toward China. They both bring unparalleled expertise to our already strong Asia studies bench,” said CFR President Michael Froman. 

Sue Mi Terry

Terry is a leading expert on the Korean Peninsula and East Asia, with experience in intelligence, policymaking, academia, and think tanks. She previously served at CFR as a national intelligence fellow from 2010 to 2011.

Terry was most recently director of the Asia program and the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Wilson Center from 2021 to 2023. She also was a senior fellow with the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 2017 to 2021. From 2015 to 2017, she was managing director for Korea at Bower Group Asia. Terry was a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute from 2011 to 2015.

Terry was deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council from 2009 to 2010. From 2008 to 2009, she was the director of Korea, Japan, and Oceanic affairs at the National Security Council under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Terry served as a senior analyst at the CIA from 2001 to 2008, where she produced hundreds of intelligence assessments.

She has taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Seoul National University, and the University of Chicago, where she was a 2019 Pritzker Fellow at the Institute of Politics.

Terry is a producer of Beyond Utopia, an Academy Award-shortlisted and BAFTA-nominated documentary film about refugees escaping North Korea, and coauthor of South Korea’s Wild Ride: The Big Shifts in Foreign Policy from 2013 to 2022 (Routledge, 2023). She has written numerous articles in publications including Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and Chosun Ilbo.

Terry has testified multiple times before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. A former MSNBC commentator, she is also a regular guest on television, radio, and podcasts, including CNN, ABC, PBS, BBC, and NPR.

Terry received a BA in political science from New York University and an MA and PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Rush Doshi

Before joining CFR, Doshi was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, where he served from 2021 to 2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first China directorate. During his tenure, Doshi coordinated U.S. government policy on China and Taiwan, drafted the administration’s China strategy, and negotiated with PRC counterparts. For five months in 2021, he was the U.S. government’s lead action officer coordinating the negotiations that launched AUKUS that year.

Doshi is also an incoming assistant professor in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He is the author of The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Oxford University Press, 2021), which won the Mershon Center’s Edgar S. Furniss Book Award, was a finalist for the Arthur Ross Book Award and the Lionel Gelber Prize, and was named a Financial Times “best book” of 2021. Doshi was also coeditor of Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World (Brookings, 2021). His research has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, as well as in peer-reviewed academic publications such as International Organization and Asia Policy. He has testified before the Senate Commerce Committee and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Prior to his government service, Doshi was a fellow at the Brookings Institution and Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. Doshi also served as coordinator of the Asia policy working group for the Biden 2020 presidential campaign. He was previously a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, special adviser to the CEO of The Asia Group, and a Wilson Center China Fellow. He has also served five years as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.

Doshi received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in public policy with a minor in East Asian Studies and his PhD from Harvard University focusing on Chinese foreign policy. He was also a Fulbright fellow in China and is proficient in Mandarin.