The Dalai Lama looked cursorily at the images that were on the wall as he was led through the exhibits of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on September 23, 2009. It was my sense that to him the images were secondary to the verbal explanations that were being given to him by two staffers on their relevance. Even the large recognizable image of President Lincoln, the emancipator of the slaves, only...

There is much focus on the United Nations today, as President Obama gives his first speech to the General Assembly. China’s President Hu will also speak, and both met yesterday after they addressed a conference on climate change. While President Obama’s speech did not touch on Tibet/China (and was not expected to), there are elements that bear watching for how his Administration will tackle this issue now...

In the days since Monday’s announcement from Dharamsala that His Holiness had received a high level delegation from the Obama White House, there has been much speculation about the reasoning and the meaning of the visit. I and my colleagues at ICT have been talking and listening to many people with connections to the Tibet issue – in and out of government, inside and outside Washington. We have found a diversity...

Some years back the two well known Tibetan stand-up comedy artists, Thupten la and Migmar la, had an item in which they talked about the Guinness World Records and joked about how Tibetans could set many records in things peculiar to the Tibetan people. I was reminded of this as news came out of Dharamsala in India of the visit there by President Obama’s emissary, Ms. Valerie Jarrett. The Office of H.H. the...

I have been following the developments relating to the Dalai Lama’s ongoing groundbreaking visit to Taiwan with great interest. Although this is his third trip to the island, the visit is groundbreaking on account of the different factors that have gone into play in its happening. While political rhetoric has dominated the “controversy” part of the visit, I feel the human aspect of the visit has to be...