6:30PM, Friday, September 10

The Great Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, a reformer and skillful politician, assumed political and spiritual authority of Tibet from 1895 until 1933. Professor Ngawang Thondup Narkyid, an independent scholar and former official of the Tibetan Government of Lhasa, will discuss the life and works of the Great Thirteenth Dalai Lama and his efforts to define Tibet as a nation state in the modern era in the early part of the 20th century. The talk will cover the 13th Dalai Lama's exile to India from 1910 to 1913, the then relationship with the Manchus and British India, the declaration of Tibet's independence and in particular, the complexities of the 1914 Simla Convention between Tibet, British India, and China.

Speaker Bio:

Professor Ngawang Thondup Narkyid, born in 1928 in Tsethang, Tibet, studied at the reputed Tze-Lopdra in the Potala Palace, then joined the National Minority Institute in Peking, China and later, at Michigan University in the United States. He has served in the Tibetan Government in Lhasa as well as in the Tibetan Government in exile in various capacities and he is also one of the official biographers of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Professor Narkyid has taught Tibetan culture and language at univesities and institutes in Japan, China, India and the United States. He holds a Master of Arts degree with emphasis on linguistics studies and is an honorary doctor at the University of Western Michigan. Professor Narkyid's latest book, "A Brief Biography of HH the Thirteenth Dalai Lama" was released in January 2009.