Columbia’s South Asian Global Center in Mumbai opened Monday, the fourth in Columbia’s growing collection of international bases.
Last week, Columbia launched its European Global Center in Paris. The first two global centers—in Beijing and Amman, Jordan—opened last year.
“Columbia’s intellectual history and engagement in South Asia have deep roots and our global center in India will allow us to build on this foundation in new and innovative ways that enhance our knowledge and contribute to society,” University President Lee Bollinger said in a press release.
The statement also notes that over 800 Columbia alumni currently live in India.
“The Mumbai center launches with an interdisciplinary research agenda,” the press release reads. “With more than 15 years of work in India advising the political leadership and other senior policy-makers, the Columbia’s Earth Institute is well placed to help scale-up strategies that have already demonstrated success.”
The center will also feature the Studio-X Mumbai program, designed by the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. It aims to promote “collaborative research, exhibitions, and public dialogue about the future of the built environment,” according to the statement.
Vice President of Global Centers Kenneth Prewitt said in an interview that the lead-up to the launch had been encouraging. Feedback on the Studio-X Mumbai program has been positive, he said, and Columbia representatives have been dining with Indian philanthropic families and government officials.
“All of the events leading up to the launch have gone extremely well,” he said.
Prewitt mentioned that about half of the funding for the Mumbai center is from private donations—the Indian government will be contributing to certain programs that will be held through the center.
Bollinger, Prewitt, Executive Vice President for the Arts and Sciences Nicholas Dirks, GSAPP Dean Mark Wigley, Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs, and Mumbai center Inaugural Director Nirupam Bajpai will also be speaking at the opening ceremony.
“By bringing together scholars, students, public officials, private enterprise and innovators from many fields for research and learning that cuts across many regions, we hope to transform our own academic perspective in the years ahead,” Prewitt said in a statement.
Director of the South Asia Institute Janaki Bakhle was also in India to represent the institute at the launch. Bakhle said in an email that while the institute plans on collaborating with the Earth Institute and GSAPP, “we hope to develop both study abroad internship opportunities for undergraduate students as well as a number of initiatives in the humanities and socials sciences.”
Dirks, an India scholar, said the center’s launch was “a very exciting and gratifying moment.” He described his five-year endeavor to see the center opened, one that involved multiple alumni events and outreach to constituencies in India. Like Bakhle, he said he is working to establish study abroad and internship programs for students, as well as research initiatives. “Now we have a base for this to work, and it is a base that sits on a deep record of Columbia’s engagement in India,” Dirks said in an email.
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