CASI Endowment Campaign at SAS Reaches Target
Recognizing the importance and
prominence of India in the global
community, an international group of
alumni, parents, and friends has led the
way in making the scholarly study of
contemporary India a permanent part of
Penn’s collaborative, interdisciplinary
environment.
Penn’s Center for the Advanced Study
of India (CASI) now has what it needs
most to ensure its future –– an endowed
chair that will support in perpetuity a
leading scholar of India in the position
of director. Demonstrating its absolute commitment to the cause, SAS did
something unprecedented for the
School; it added an additional $1 million
to the $2 million raised through the
campaign, all of which is being used to
endow the Madan Lal Sobti Chair for
the Study of Contemporary India.
Dr. Francine R. Frankel, CASI’s current
director and professor of Political
Science, is the chair’s first incumbent.
The initiative for the project came from
an extraordinarily dedicated group led by
Rajiv Sobti, GR’84, Sanjiv Sobti, WG’85,
GR’86, Sreedhar Menon, Sunil Mittal, Dalip Pathak, WG’78, and Raman Kapur,
PAR’07. According to SAS Dean Sam
Preston, the campaign leaders demonstrated
a "remarkable level of commitment and
dynamism" in eliciting support from in-terested
people from different countries,
many with no previous Penn involvement.
CASI is the only research institution in
the U.S. focused on contemporary India;
its mission is to seed a new generation of
policy-oriented scholars focused on India
and trained in interdisciplinary perspec-tives.
By facilitating bilateral exchanges
among academics, business leaders, policy-makers, and other leaders, the Center
generates the continuing information
needed to address pressing issues. It
sponsors collaborative research projects,
organizes conferences in the U.S. and
India, arranges symposia and lecture series,
trains journalists and research assistants, and
disseminates information over the Internet.
In the year ahead, with the generous
support of the GE Fund, CASI will
embark on a program devoted to India’s
economic transition, beginning with a
workshop on "Economic Growth and
Governance."
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The CASI endowment campaign has created the
Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary
India. Madan Lal Sobti (second from right) recently
visited campus with his wife, Promilla, and their
two sons (l to r), Dr. Sanjiv Sobti, WG’85, GR’86, and
Dr. Rajvi Sobti, GR’84.
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