The SAI Retreat, held on Friday, September 27, 2013, was an opportunity to meet and reflect on SAI’s role at Harvard and South Asia in light of its tenth anniversary, and to discuss SAI’s future direction. Select faculty, students, senior administrators from across Harvard, faculty from peer institutions, and donors participated in the meeting. To a room filled with 60 people, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust gave welcome remarks, noting the importance of SAI and its capability of reaching across the university. Faust mentioned that SAI has helped open doors in South Asia and across Harvard, and identified SAI’s interdisciplinary project, Mapping the Kumbh Mela, as a model for programs at Harvard, as it shows how strong we can be when we work together.
SUMMARY Alan Garber, Harvard University Provost, Jorge Dominguez, Vice Provost for International Affairs, Krishna Palepu, HBS Professor and Senior Advisor to the President of Global Strategy, and Leah Rosovsky, Vice President of Strategy and Programs, were among some of the senior faculty and administrators at the retreat. Professors Diana Eck, FAS and HDS, Venki Murthy, FAS, and Jennifer Leaning, HSPH, presented an overview of SAI coordinated multi-year interfaculty projects that are underway. Eck presented Mapping the Kumbh Mela, a study of pilgrimage and ephemeral urbanism that studies the world’s largest religious festival, which occurs every twelve years and lasts 55 days. The 2013 festival attracted an estimated 70 million pilgrims who came to bathe in the holy waters of Ganga, which makes it an important laboratory for the study of humanities, public health, urban planning, business and technology. Faculty and students from across Harvard are researching issues of urbanism, population growth, engineering infrastructure, health and sanitation, transportation, market forces and the environmental impact of constructing and deconstructing a temporary city. Murthy highlighted the Resonance Program, a collaboration with Professor Pawan Sinha from MIT, and IIT Delhi, which conducted a course in neuroscience, where undergraduate and graduate students from across India were taught by postdoctoral students from MIT and Harvard. (See page 17). Leaning cited some examples where SAI has collaborated with HSPH, the FXB Center, HGHI, and HMS on efforts relating to gender disparity in education, urban poverty, gender-based violence, human trafficking, non-communicable diseases, and disaster response. After the morning session, participants convened in smaller groups to discuss how to further the University and SAI’s mission to advance research on South Asia focusing on three key issues: governance, health and education.
Tarun Khanna, right, SAI and HBS, with Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard University
Meena Hewett (left), SAI, speaking to Jorge Domínguez, Vice Provost for International Affairs at Harvard University
Diana Eck, FAS and HDS
Parimal Patil (right) DSAS, talks to Mukesh Prasad ‘93, founder of SAI Prasad Fellowship
Jennifer Leaning, HSPH, leads the health workshop
David Barron, left, HLS, and Venki Murthy, FAS
Governance: Facilitated by David Barron, HLS, this group suggested that a way to look at governance is through focus areas such as urbanization, health and education. An outcome would be to create a best practices model in all or one of the three focus areas on how governance works at the local and/or central level. Information from this research could be used to build a course at Harvard and produce a volume on what good governance looks like, which can then be used in the region. Health: Co-facilitated by Jennifer Leaning, HSPH, and Sue Goldie, Director, HGHI, the group suggested that SAI could be a key connector at the university to inform what other schools and centers are doing across Harvard on health in South Asia. An outcome would be building a research program on global health
Faculty, students, donors and SAI staff discuss education
and an increase in student-faculty exchange, through programs that have significant financial support. New courses that are co-produced, and more interdisciplinary programs like the Mapping of the Kumbh Mela were some other recommendations. Education: Facilitated by Fernando Reimers, HGSE, the group agreed that SAI could help build collaborations between the region and Harvard related to education reform. An outcome could be to convene highlevel decision makers and civil society leaders from the region and bring them together at Harvard to address specific areas, such as education, health, etc. Through fruitful dialogues on how people connect with their roots and identity, we can help the next generation of leaders involved in human development.
A Year in Review 2013-2014 9
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