2025 End-of-Year Gift Appeal

Dear Friends,

We are writing to you in this season of giving with an appeal for your support at a critical moment for our program.

For 25 years, the Modern Tibetan Studies Program (MTSP) at Columbia University has worked to bring a contemporary focus to Tibetan and Himalayan studies through our teaching, programming, special projects, and community engagement. We are committed to extending scholarship beyond the university and with a range of inspiring collaborators: scholars, filmmakers, artists, writers, musicians, Tibetan community groups, museum professionals, Buddhist teachers, policy makers, climate scientists, and others. With the advent of Zoom, these conversations are now truly global.

MTSP is concerned not only with Tibet as the Tibetan regions now incorporated in the People’s Republic of China, but with all areas where Tibetan peoples traditionally reside and the diaspora. Columbia offers a three-year track for both colloquial and classical Tibetan language study, and serves as a leader in Tibetan language pedagogy. With two tenured professorships and a full-time librarian position, Tibetan Studies instruction and research have a perpetual home at Columbia. 

Unfortunately, the cancellation of three federal grants last spring (2025) severely impacted our administrative and programming budgets. We relied on these monies to bridge the study of language, history, literature, religion and culture, and to bring our field in conversation with the wider public. Your interest and our exchanges are at the heart of MTSP's mission.

We are so grateful for your engagement and want to keep doing the work we do. If you have ever attended one of our events—film screening, panel discussion, concert, workshop, online talk, training program—we ask that you keep us in mind this season. Every bit counts. Please consider a donation to help us continue providing an international open-access forum for public learning and discourse on Tibetan Studies.

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Thank you and with our best-wishes for the holiday season,

Lauran Hartley, Director, Modern Tibetan Studies Program, Weatherhead East Asian Institute

Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Dominique Townsend, Jey Tsong Khapa Associate Professor of Tibetan Buddhism, Department of Religion

Kristina Dy-Liacco, Tibetan Studies Librarian, C.V. Starr East Asian Library