Nirupama Rao, who finished her tenure as India’s ambassador to the United States earlier this month, has been appointed a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies for 2014, the University announced last week.
Rao is the third recipient of the Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellowship and the first full-year fellow, said Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Brown-India Initiative and professor of international studies and social sciences.
“I bring greetings from India, a strategic partner and genuine friend of the United States,” Rao wrote in an email to the Herald.
Rao added that she is “deeply thrilled about the prospect of a year at Brown.” She hopes to “translate (her) experience in diplomacy into academic work (that) would benefit students and scholars of India” and to “engage in serious research and academic work in a world-class university like Brown,” she wrote.
Meera and Vikram Gandhi created the fellowship in 2011 through a gift to the Brown-India Initiative, Varshney said. The fellowship is meant to bring Indian policymakers, reporters and public intellectuals to campus. Previous fellows include Yogendra Yadav, a professor of political science at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in India, and journalist Barkha Dutt.
Rao’s appointment is jointly funded by the Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellowship and the Watson Institute, Varshney said.
Varshney said Rao is “essentially free” to organize any activity that “advances the purposes of the fellowship.”
Rao will hold office hours and may recruit students as research assistants, Varshney added. “One or two students (may get) the opportunity to work closely with her,” Varshney said.
Rao wrote that she plans to write a book about “the use of public diplomacy in managing key foreign policy relationships for India.”
Rao, who holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in English literature, has previously published a collection of poetry, “Rain Rising.” In her email, she described poetry as “a mirror of your deepest emotions and sensibilities.”
Rao has previously visited Brown twice — she attended the inauguration of the Brown-India Initiative in 2012, and this February, she presented a lecture on India and the American “pivot” to Asia.
Rao wrote that she “was struck … by the intellectual energy and dynamism of the environment at Brown.” She also described “the historic feel of Providence and the architecture of the place.”
Rao’s lecture was chaired by President Christina Paxson and attended by Provost Mark Schlissel P’15. “During that visit … it became clear that (Rao) might be interested” in coming to Brown after her ambassadorship ended, Varshney said.
The Brown-India Initiative’s steering committee nominated Rao, and the administration approved it earlier this semester, Varshney said.
Rao was a fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard during the 1992-1993 school year.
Sonia Feigenbaum, associate provost for international affairs, said the Office of International Affairs supports “faculty, staff and all of the departments” to recruit more “scholars and lecturers from (an) international background.”
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