Yales India Initiatives

Updated on: Monday, June 01, 2009

When University President Richard C. Levin announced the details of the Yale-India Initiative late last year, he said that it would create new faculty positions and a new curriculum across the arts and science disciplines, as well as at Yale’s professional schools of architecture, environmental studies, law etc. Since then, the India Initiative has been the most ambitious interdisciplinary effort of its kind to date and Yale is hoping it will position the university amongst the world’s pre-eminent institutions for the study of and engagement with India and South Asia.

The Initiative is slated to expand Yale’s visibility in and engagement with India and South Asia through intensified student recruitment efforts, faculty and student exchanges, research partnerships, and leadership education. Yale has committed US $17.5 million of its own unrestricted endowment resources (down from the initial commitment of US $30 million) to this enterprise and it expects to raise more from donors within the next year. Said Levin, “The rise of India since the 1990s into a nation of global economic and geo-political consequence compels Yale to provide a deep and rich curriculum covering all aspects of Indian civilisation — its languages and literatures, religions, and history, as well as its politics, economics, and society.”

An array of new and enhanced curricular, scholarly, and programmatic activities on India underscores how rapidly Yale has moved to build its engagement with India. And even though the global meltdown may have forced the university to reduce its workforce by 300 it has in no way affected the university’s initiatives in India. According to reports from IANS, a group of parliamentarians will leave for the US in June to take part in the third edition of the India-Yale Parliamentary Leadership Programme 2009.

Yale has already admitted 14 Indian students for under-graduate courses this year said sources at the university. At the PhD level, Yale guarantees a total support of US $300,000 and “the figure remains unchanged”, said the official adding, “We do not want students from India to think that since endowments have declined (largely due to the recession), studying in the US is no longer possible.” The downturn is certainly affecting everybody, but that has not deterred the university. “Yale is now collaborating with the Jawaharlal Nehru University in the social sciences; with Delhi University in history and with the IIM in Bengaluru in business, marketing, finance and consumer culture,”

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Yales India Initiatives

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