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PDFFriday, January 7, 2011. Electing Leaders without a Territory: Challenges to Tibetan Democracy in Exile
6:30 PM, Friday, January 7, 2011. RSVP to rsvp@savetibet.org Location: International Campaign for Tibet, 1825 Jefferson Place, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Directions here. Event is free and open to the public. Venue is not handicapped accessible.
This lecture will be webcast LIVE at http://www.savetibet.org/. Please visit the ICT home page for the webcast link starting 6:15PM EST on Friday, January 7. Questions and comments can be emailed to comments@savetibet.org.
March 20, 2011 marks an important milestone for the Tibetan exile community as they will elect the head of government, the Kalon Tripa (Prime Minister) and members of the Parliament. As the Dalai Lama moves to retire from his role in the Dharamsala-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), popularly known as the Tibetan Government in Exile, attention has focused on the authority and affairs of these elected leaders. The CTA provides many services of a government to people who reside in different countries, including in the United States. It has an executive branch, a legislature and a judiciary and functions under the guidelines of the “Charter of the Tibetans in Exile” that was passed by the Parliament in 1991. Given the nature of its existence and the fact that that its “constituents” are spread across several continents, the election process of the CTA has unique challenges.
In this session we will get a Tibetan and a Chinese perspective of Tibetan democracy in exile. Prof. Xia Ming and Mr. Nima R.T. Binara will discuss aspects of Tibetan democracy and the upcoming elections through their personal connections. Prof. Xia Ming is a Chinese scholar who has visited Dharamsala several times and has written on Tibetan democracy in exile. Mr. Nima R.T. Binara is co-editor of the popular website The Tibetan Political Review that has been monitoring the ongoing Tibetan election process and providing analysis of the process as well as the campaign statements by the candidates.
About the speakers: Professor Xia Ming is Professor of Political Science, at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. He is a columnist for BBC World Service Chinese Section and China in Perspective electronic magazine. He is also an associate editor for Modern China Studies journal. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Fudan University and a Ph.D. degree from Temple University, USA. He once taught at Fudan University and served as a residential fellow at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore. He was the recipient of the Bernard Watson Best Dissertation Award from Temple University (1997) and the recipient of the Dolphin Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement from the College of Staten Island (2003). He is the author of The Dual Developmental State: Development Strategy and Institutional Arrangements for China’s Transition (Ashgate 2000) and Toward a Network Mode of Governance: The Provincial People’s Congresses in China (Routledge 2008). He is also a co-producer of Oscar-nominated HBO documentary, “China’s Unnatural Disaster, The Tears of Sichuan Province” (2009) and co-editor for The Crown of Thorn: Liu Xiaobo and the Nobel Prize, Hong Kong, Morning Bell Publisher, 2010 (in Chinese).
Nima R.T. Binara, is an Attorney-Advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice. He previously served as Senior Counsel to Intelsat Corp. and Associate at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP. He received his J.D. from Columbia Law School and his LL.M. in Public International Law from the London School of Economics. Prior to law school he worked at the China Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the board of directors of Tibet Justice Center, and the editorial board of The Tibetan Political Review. He is speaking in his personal capacity.
Todd Stein, Director of Government Relations at ICT, will moderate the program. Prior to joining ICT, he worked for many years on Capitol Hill, primarily as a foreign and military policy aide for a bipartisan caucus and members of the House and Senate.
International Campaign for Tibet, 1825 Jefferson Place, NW, Washington, DC 20036 info@savetibet.org | 202-785-1515
