Chicago, IL: Dr. C. Raja Mohan, the founding director of Carnegie India, has been appointed as the inaugural Marshall M. Bouton Asia Fellow of The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “Given Asia’s increasing global influence and reach, including in Chicago, the Council established the fellowship to explore the region’s economic and political development, a statement issued by the Council stated.
A highly regarded foreign policy strategist from India, Dr. Mohan will visit Chicago from May 9-13 and deliver the Council’s first Marshall M. Bouton Lecture: “American Retrenchment: Implications for India and Asia.” Dr. Mohan also will meet with civic leaders, corporate executives and local scholars to build relationships and share knowledge about critical issues facing Asia and the United States.
“America’s future is increasingly linked to Asia’s, and Dr. Mohan has a unique vantage point from which to assess the importance of this relationship,” said Ambassador Ivo H. Daalder, president of the Council on Global Affairs. “It is critical that we understand what drives Asia and how we can learn from each other in an increasingly interconnected world.”
Dr. Mohan’s visit marks the beginning of the prestigious fellowship, which the Council’s board of directors established in recognition of Marshall M. Bouton, president of the Council from 2001 to 2013. It is awarded to a prominent scholar, former senior policymaker or public intellectual known for contributions to Asia’s economic and political development or international relations who is invited to spend one week as a visiting fellow at the Council.
In addition to his position at Carnegie India, which opened in April 2016 as the sixth international center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Dr. Mohan is a visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and a columnist on foreign affairs for the Indian Express. He was previously a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board and was a nonresident senior associate with Carnegie before he became director of Carnegie India.
From 2009 to 2010, Dr. Mohan was the Henry Alfred Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress. He has been a professor of South Asian studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, and he also served as the diplomatic editor and Washington correspondent of The Hindu. Dr. Mohan has authored several books on India’s foreign policy, including “Modi’s World: Expanding India’s Sphere of Influence” (Harper Collins India, 2015) and “India’s Naval Strategy and Asian Security” (Routledge, 2016), co-edited with Anit Mukherjee.
The Bouton Asia Fellowship adds to the Council’s growing efforts to engage promising leaders from around the world to visit Chicago and exchange ideas with city officials, scholars and corporate leaders. The Gus Hart Fellowship brings emerging leaders from the Latin American and Caribbean region to Chicago, and the Dr. Scholl Visiting Fellow on U.S.-China Relations is awarded to a Chinese scholar, former policymaker or other expert. These visiting fellowships reaffirm the Council’s commitment to convening leading global voices and raising awareness of issues that transform how people, business and governments engage the world.