He secializes in the modern history of East Asia, including China, Vietnam and Japan, and recognized as a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor.
John Powers writes that Chinese and Tibetan writers attack each other in emotional language, and that the two sides "stake out extreme and uncompromising positions."
Grunfeld, continues Powers, paints a picture of a "brutal, exploitative, and primitive society," one that was stratified into a nobility living in opulence while the majority of the people were serfs and slaves.
Regarding American journalist Edgar Snow (1905–1972), Grunfeld has concluded that he was not a Communist Party member, although he was sympathetic: Having read through several decades (1920s-1960s) of Snow's diaries, countless pages of correspondence, his FBI file, two biographies, at least one MA thesis and countless articles leads me to believe he was not a member of the CPUSA... That he was sympathetic to some of their ideas and activities is, to my mind, beyond doubt.
[2][3] Grunfeld wrote his doctoral dissertation on "Friends of the Revolution: American Supporters of China's Communists, 1926–1939" (New York: University Microfilms International: 1985).