US-India Expert, Ashley Tellis Hosts a Virtual Seminar for PhD students as part of the Kissinger Center’s IPSCON Program

Ashley J. Tellis, Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, hosted a lecture for PhD students across the country on US-India relations and India as an emerging great power. 

Tellis provided a brief history of India’s rise to power identifying unity, poverty, early interruptions in economic development and regional strife as key challenges to its growth. Students had the opportunity to engage in conversation about ethnonationalism in India, Modi’s public health policy response to the COVID-19 crisis and how India balances its relationships with Russia, China and the US.
 
Tellis was previously senior advisor to the undersecretary of State for political affairs and senior advisor to the ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. He also served on the National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia. Prior to his government service, Tellis was a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School.

He is a counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Research Director of its Strategic Asia program and co-editor of the program’s fifteen most recent annual volumes, including this year’s Strategic Asia 2019: China’s Expanding Strategic Ambitions. He is the author of India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture (2001) and co-author of Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (2000). In addition to numerous Carnegie and RAND reports, his academic publications have appeared in many edited volumes and journals.
 
Tellis’ lecture was part of the ongoing Carnegie Squares Seminar Series for members of the IPSCON program, a project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of NY, that seeks to bridge the policy-academy divide.  If you are interested in learning more about the Kissinger Center’s IPSCON program, visit the IPSCON webpage here.