The third and final lecture in a new three part Woodrow Wilson School series titled “Indo-U.S. Relations: An Emerging Strategic Partnership” will be held May 16 and feature M.J. Akbar, author of “The Shades of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity.” Akbar will present “The Talibanisation of Pakistan” at 4:00 p.m. in Bowl 001, Robertson Hall, on the Princeton University campus. 

The three-part series examines various aspects of the evolving strategic relationship between India and the U.S. and attempts to answer to what extent the interests and policies of the two countries are likely to converge, where they differ, and how those differences might be resolved. 

Aaron Friedberg, a professor of politics and international affairs at the School, who is organizing the series with Professor Shivaji Sondhi of the Department of Physics at Princeton, said “Along with China, India is Asia’s other rising power.  It is a nation whose economic weight, military power, and diplomatic influence are all rapidly increasing.  Like the United States, India is also a multi-ethnic liberal democracy and, in the past decade, the two countries have begun to cooperate much more closely on a wide range of issues.”

Friedberg continued: “Despite these facts, India and the Indo-US relationship, have generally received far less attention in the United States than China.  This seminar is the first in what Professor Sondhi and I hope will be a series of exchanges on what could well turn out to be the most important and fruitful bilateral relationship of the twenty-first century."

Previous lectures in the series featured “India, China and Tibet” presented by Ambassador Kanwal Sibal, India’s former ambassador to Russia and France, and former foreign secretary of the government of India; and Vikram Sood, Vice President of the Observier Research Foundation in New Delhi, who presented “Myanmar–Isolation by Choice or Circumstance-China and India Make there Moves.”

For more information, please contact Cynthia Ernst @ cernst@princeton.edu or 609-258-4816.