 |
Visiting Chair, Lectureship in Indian Studies CreatedBy Suzanne Trimel visiting professorship and an annual lecture series in Indian political economy have been established at Columbia through a fundraising campaign led by the Southern Asian Institute and prominent Indian Americans in the New York metropolitan area.
The first lecturer in the new series of distinguished lectures will be given by P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister of India, who is to speak at 4:00 P.M. on Oct. 29 on "The Three Revolutions in India" at the School of International and Public Affairs. His predecessor, Manmohan Singh, who initiated with Chidambaram the immense economic reforms in India that began in 1991, also has agreed to lecture at Columbia at a future date. More than $1.5 million has been raised to date through donations by individuals and corporations both in the United States and India, and through a series of benefits, including: a reading by the poet Javed Akhtar; the U.S. premiere of "In Custody" by Indian producer Ismail Merchant, and the U.S. premiere of "The Making of the Mahatma" by the noted Indian director Shyam Benegal. The campaign also has received support from other prominent members of the Indian and American business and arts communities with large donations made by the State Bank of India, Air India, the American Express Foundation and The Starr Foundation. Another 700 donors have contributed. A final fundraising drive is underway, which will allow the University to establish a permanent chair in Indian Political Economy at the School of International and Public Affairs. "The endowment will be a major contribution to maintaining Columbia in a leadership position in Indian studies in the United States, said Jagdish Bhagwati, the Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at Columbia, who is chairman of the Columbia University India Chair Program Committee. "This will enable greater numbers of students to be trained in Indian studies, helping to create ever more interest in India in the United States as the two nations increasingly draw together in friendship, trade and investment." Bhagwati said the position of visiting professor will be filled in the spring 1998 semester by Associate Professor Asutosh Varshney of Harvard, a leading scholar of India's political scene. At Columbia, the campaign has been spearheaded by Professors Padma Desai, Ainslee Embree, John Stratton Hawley, Philip Oldenburg, E. Valentine Daniel, current director of the Southern Asian Institute, and Barbara Gombach, an assistant dean at SIPA.
| ||||||
