Trani to take leave to finish book

Ask VCU President Eugene P. Trani to describe Americans’ perceptions of Chinese and Russians, and he’ll tell you: “Americans love the Chinese and hate the Russians.”

The divided relationship actually runs so deep, “it’s in our blood,” the longtime scholar of international relations claims.

To prove his assertion, Trani is writing a book, “Perception and Policy: America’s Russian-Chinese Relations in the 20th Century,” which explores how Americans’ attitudes toward the two countries have developed – one for better and one for worse – since the United States aligned with Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904.

Trani and co-author Donald Davis, a retired history professor at Illinois State University, argue in their book that Americans adopted negative views of Russia mainly from Eastern European and Jewish