n Dec. 21, just four days before its rescheduled session was to begin, the Tibetan Parliament-in Exile announced that it was being postponed again to March, this time due to lack of a quorum. The initial postponement was made on Sept. 28, 2023, when the Tibetan parliamentary secretariat issued a terse notice saying, “The remaining business of the 6th session of the 17th Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile has been postponed due to the absence of the requisite quorum needed for the session to constitute.” This brought an uncertain close to the latest development in Tibetan diaspora politics that left...

For almost every summer since 1999, I’ve watched the venerable Wimbledon tennis tournament on TV. Its all-white dress code and prim green lawns have been as constant and reassuring in my life as an antique clock. So I was surprised when, several Wimbledons ago, the tradition-bound event bore a surprising name change.

The main goal of plain language is clarity: You want your reader to get what you’re saying without having to work at it. When it comes to Tibet, that’s important because so few people understand the issue at all.

It wasn't that long ago that the People’s Republic of China was calling the Dalai Lama a wolf in monk’s robes and his supporters members of the “Dalai Clique.” A phrasing so comical that ICT had t-shirts made that said, "proud member of the Dalai Clique," and when an ICT staff person had a baby, they were given a onesie with "Newest Member of the Dalai Clique" printed on it.

The spread of an edited video clip depicting an interaction between the Dalai Lama and a young Indian boy on stage at a recent teaching has provoked intense discussions of cultural differences, children’s rights, and the line between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. The tenor of the coverage of this clip and the discourse surrounding it has, in turn, been deeply distressing to many Tibetans and Tibet supporters, and activists such as Lhadon Tethong, Jigme Ugen, Dhardon Sharling, Tenzin Pema and Tenzin Tsundue have shared their eloquent thoughts on the issue.

ears ago, at a different job, a coworker asked if I had always been a contrarian. The question struck me like an apple falling from a tree. I had never seen myself as a contrarian, but perhaps that one word could explain why as a young man I so often felt at odds with the world. Invigorated by the potential for self-understanding, I went to Barnes & Noble and began reading Christopher Hitchens’ “Letters to a Young Contrarian.” The book, Hitchens writes in the first chapter, is addressed to those who feel “a disposition to resistance, however slight, against arbitrary authority or witless...