NEWSLETTER April 20, 2018

"With Art, You Don't Have to Limit Yourself" The Mittal Institute's Visiting Artist Rajyashri Goody uses her art to address the idea of memory, religious structures, and identity. As part of the ongoing exhibition, we talked to her about her art, motivations, and what she has been up to at Harvard. "I am especially interested in learning about parallels between race and caste. I attended a conference called Black Portraitures, which was helpful because I saw so many parallels between black narratives and Dalit narratives," she says.

Q+A: Studying the Past Through Genetics Before her participation in the upcoming panel “Are South Asians a Single Population? Insights from Culture, Genetics, and Disease,” The Mittal Institute asked Priya Moorjani about her research. "Genetic data carries a wealth of information about our ancestors. By studying the similarities and differences in genetic variants across individuals or groups, we can learn about how people relate to each other," she says. The talk is scheduled for Monday, April 23rd at 4 PM.

Exhibition Aims to Reclaim South Asian Narratives Earlier this week, The Arts at the Mittal Institute held an opening reception and seminar for its Visiting Artists showcase. The exhibit, titled "Revelations: Reclaiming South Asian Narratives," brings together works by four artists that unravel challenging social issues that often fall outside the limelight. It explores possibilities that lie in making traditionally invisible stories and narratives visible, such as tea garden workers, accounts of healing and trauma, Dalit resistance, and the Partition.

The Mittal Institute Accepting Applications for Crossroads Student Program If you are the first in your family to attend college and you are based in South Asia, the Middle East or Africa, apply now for our Second Annual Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program. It is a collaboration with an important alumni organization, the Harvard Business School Club of the Gulf Cooperation Council, to create a fantastic, fully funded opportunity for talented students. The application deadline is May 31, 2018.

The Mittal Institute Annual Symposium: Knowledge Translation: Across Disciplines, Geographies, and from Research to Action The Mittal Institute's seventh Annual Symposium will explore Knowledge Translation from the vantages of arts conservation, youth and mental health, and the role of science and technology in emerging economies. The event is free and open to the public, and will take place on Friday, May 4 from 10:30 AM - 6 PM in CGIS South.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

The Unholy Trinity vs Man in Uniform In this article, The Mittal Institute Fellow Raile Rocky Ziipao addresses the following question: Is Nagaland facing a shortage of senior IPS officers or a shortage of honest legislators and ministers? “Sadly, the social reality stemming from the state perfectly fits the narratives of outsiders and Naga issues continue to be someone else’s mere data/empirical evidence while enmeshing into the blame game,” he says.

Healthcare Partnership to Advance Research, Education Beth Israel Medical Institute, a Harvard teaching hospital, has partnered with Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences to expand research and education in the areas of critical care, pain medicine, and anesthesiology. The memorandum could mean that Beth Israel will provide continuing medical education courses to doctors at Amrita. Beth Israel residents may be able to spend about a month observing patient care at Amrita as well.

Revisiting the Indus Water Treaty Harvard Law School Graduate Erum Sattar reviews the recent publication from Ijaz Hussain , Indus Waters Treaty: Political and Legal Dimensions . "The scope of the book is immense and the author builds on other excellent work that has been done in the field. This is important history to cover as it is too easily lost and forgotten in official present-day planning and development efforts, which ahistorically treat the operation of the current irrigation system as having somehow transcended and become free of these colonial-era objectives," she writes.

Examining Facebook's Role in Rohingya Hate Speech Zeynep Tufekci, Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Faculty Associate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, discusses the role Facebook has played in spreading hate speech in Myanmar. “The situation in Myanmar and what Facebook allowed is inexcusable, because I know that — I personally know that, at least since 2013, civil society groups have been literally begging Facebook to step up," she says.

CAMBRIDGE EVENTS

Asia Beyond the Headlines Seminar: Forced Migration in South Asia: Past and Present Friday, April 20, 12-2 PM, CGIS South S050 The Mittal Institute Director Tarun Khanna and FXB Fellow Satchit Balsari will run a discussion that focuses on the effects of forced migration, the 1947 Partition of British India, and how moving large groups of people across borders affected countries such as present-day India and Pakistan. This seminar also ties into The Mittal Institute's ongoing research related to the Partition.

Are South Asians a Single Population? Monday, April 23, 4-5:30 PM, CGIS South S010 During this interdisciplinary discussion, four panelists will explore the ways that cultural practices and social structures intersect with biomedicine and genetics. Specifically, they will be examining the ways that endogamy and caste structures in South Asian contexts have produced implications for health practices and medical predispositions.

Building Resilience Through Mobile Money Monday, April 23, 12-1 PM, Taubman Building T401, Harvard Kennedy School Can mobile money help the rural poor become more resilient to climate change shocks? Imtiaz ul Haq, Aman Visiting Fellow at The Mittal Institute, presents new evidence using satellite data from the world’s most successful mobile money market, Kenya, and discusses how the findings translate to South Asia.

Infrastructure Networks and Urban Inequality in Bangalore Friday, April 27, 2-4 PM, CGIS South, S354 As part of the Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics Series, Alison Post , Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies, University of California, Berkeley, will talk about her research, which examines several themes: the politics of regulating privatized infrastructure, the varying ability of subnational governments to provide infrastructure services effectively following the decentralization wave of the 1990s, and the politics of urban policy.

COMMUNITY EVENTS

Access to Affordable Medicines in Pharmaceutical R&D in Latin America Monday, April 23, 9 AM-7 PM, CGIS South, S030

Scripture, Translation, and Authority in Muslim South Asia Tuesday, April 24, 4:15-6 PM, CGIS South, S020

Coming Out and Coming Back: Rediscovering Hinduism After Coming Out Wednesday, April 25, 5-6:30 PM, Stewart Room, Lowell Inn, 1201 Massachusetts Ave

FLASHBACK FRIDAY

Understanding Special Education in Pakistan As part of a grant program Syeda Farwa Fatima spent time researching special education in Lahore. "During my field experiences, I interacted with a combination of different personalities that exposed me to a range of emotions: excitement, passion, and skepticism. So my days had their own highs and lows, reflecting my interactions with varied individuals in easy and difficult settings — crossing across economic, social and cultural capital of the contexts."

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