October 31, 2001
Contact: Jennifer McNulty (831) 459-2495; jmcnulty@cats.ucsc.edu

South Asia experts host public forum on crisis Nov. 8 at UC Santa Cruz

SANTA CRUZ, CA--A free public forum, "The Current Crisis: Focus on South Asia," will take place on Thursday, November 8, at 7 p.m. in Classroom Unit 2 on the UC Santa Cruz campus.

The symposium will feature a panel of distinguished scholars who specialize in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the global dimensions of the crisis that began September 11. The event is sponsored by the UCSC South Asia Studies Initiative.

Participants include a UC Davis professor who has spent 25 years studying the caves, rivers, and mountains of Afghanistan and a UCSC language instructor who spent the past six years in Pakistan. Each speaker will offer remarks that will be followed by a moderated discussion and questions from the audience. A brief description of each presentation follows.

- Afghanistan: Mountains, Peoples, Cultures
Nigel J. R. Allan, a professor of environmental design at UC Davis, is a scholar of the environment, ethnicities, and cultures of Afghanistan.

- Inside Afghanistan
Wali Ahmadi, assistant professor of literature at UC Berkeley and a native of Kabul, Afghanistan, is a scholar of modern Persian culture and literature.

- History Hits Back
Dilip Basu, an associate professor of history at UC Santa Cruz and a native of India, is a scholar of British colonial history and current South Asian history.

- Inside Pakistan
John Mock, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, teaches the Hindi and Urdu languages. He spent the last six years in Pakistan and specializes in the tribal languages of the Northwest.

- Afghan Refugees in Pakistan
Jonah Steinberg, an anthropology doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, is working on a dissertation about Afghan refugees. He has spent several years in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

- Globalization and Knowledge
Nirvikar Singh, a professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz and a native of India, specializes in international economics and has been monitoring the global dimensions of the current crisis.

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