Cultural Activities
Shen Tong serves on the board of Poets & Writers since 2008. He studied biology at Brandeis University on a Wien Scholarship and later in doctorate programs in political philosophy at Harvard University and sociology at Boston University with Harvey Mansfield, Peter Berger, Daniel Bell, Samuel P. Huntington, and Michael Sandel.
In films and television, Shen Tong has been an actor, producer, and film festival sponsor and speaker. Shen Tong starred in Out of Exile with co-star Sharif Atkins in 2000. He worked with Arte, ABC News and Jean-François Bizot's Actuel magazine to produce Clandestins en Chine which premiered in a Paris theater and on Arte in 1992. He co-starred with actress Hu Zongwen in a made-for-TV two parts movie, which received the 6th Fei Tian National Award in 1986.
As a writer, he co-authored the book Almost a Revolution, published in 1990, a memoir of his life growing up in China and his experiences at the Tiananmen Square democracy movement. He carried on a diverse writing career with political commentary, scholarly essays, film critics, literary prose, and movie scripts in English and in Chinese, including publications in China under the pseudonym Rong Di. He holds honorary Ph.D. in 1991 from St. Ambrose University.
Shen Tong also founded higher education and culture focused NGO in the mid-1990s, a center in Budapest for liberal scholars, journalists, writers, and educators studying transitional society with funding from Open Society Institute and Central European University of George Soros, a literature review magazine with Chinese dissident poets and writers with support from Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, and Elie Wiesel.
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