The Indo-American Community Lectures in India Studies

The Indo-American Community Lectures in India Studies enables ISAS to bring prominent individuals from India to Berkeley every other year to deliver a lecture and interact with campus and community members during a one to two-week stay. We are supported in this by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), which pays the visitor’s international airfare.

The lectureship is an offshoot of the Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies Endowment. The endowment was established via a community-based campaign in 1990 and 1991. Helped significantly by the efforts of the Consul General of India in San Francisco, the Hon. Satinder K. Lambah, hundreds of members of the Indo-American community throughout California and the West made contributions to this endowment. The Chair was officially inaugurated with two brilliant guest lecturers in 1991-1992, by Nobel laureate physicist S. Chandrasekhar and former U.S. Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith. In addition to Consul General Lambah, Ambassador Abid Hussain and UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-lin Tien spoke at the Chair inaugural. Also during that year ISAS brought two short-term holders of the Chair to lecture for several weeks at Berkeley, legal scholar Upendra Baxi and sociologist André Beteille both from Delhi University. Since then the Chair has been held by economist Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri, political scientist Subrata Mitra, environmentalist Ramachandra Guha, political scientist Sudipto Kaviraj, literary critic Meenakshi Mukherjee and others. Professor Pradeep Chhibber was named Chair when he joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2001.

Indo-American Community Lecturers (since 2009)