In 1990–1991, while Professor Jay Garfield was on leave from Hampshire College and doing research at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, he was invited to a private audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the latter’s residence in Dharamsala. Jay traveled to Dharamsala, where he thanked the Dalai Lama for the hospitality and teaching he had received from the Tibetan academic community, and asked what he could do in return.
The Dalai Lama told Jay that he should establish an exchange program connecting Western colleges with Tibetan universities in India. Western students would come to study at Tibetan universities, and Tibetan students would come to study at Western colleges. Furthermore, Western professors would teach Western subjects at Tibetan universities, Tibetan professors would teach Buddhist and Tibetan studies at Western colleges, and these faculty would initiate joint research programs.
When Jay returned to Sarnath, he relayed the Dalai Lama’s request to His Eminence Samdhong Rinpoche, who at the time was the director of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies and a decade later would be elected as the Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa) of the Tibetan Government in Exile. Samdhong Rinpoche’s reply was simple: if His Holiness the Dalai Lama wants an exchange program, we set one up. On his return to the United States, Jay met with Greg Prince, president of Hampshire at the time, who readily agreed with the proposal. In January 1992, the first group of American students went to India on what was then the Hampshire In India Program—the participants, of course, were called “HIPpies.”
In 1996, Jay left Hampshire to take a position at the University of Tasmania. Professor Sue Darlington took over directing the program at Hampshire, and Jay started a parallel program at the University of Tasmania, which later collaborated with Deakin College, and ran until 2020, closing with the onset of COVID-19. The two programs operated in tandem at first, and then jointly, beginning in 2001, after the construction of the Anathapindada Guest House—a dedicated residence for exchange students on the Tibetan Institute’s campus. In 1999, Jay left the University of Tasmania to take a position at Smith College. Sue relinquished the Hampshire program, and Jay brought it to Smith, where it was rebranded the Five College Tibetan Studies in India Program.
The Tibetan Studies in India Program, now in its fourth decade, has been remarkably successful in fulfilling its original mandate. Many Tibetan scholars have come to teach at the Five Colleges. Samdhong Rinpoche was the first, and he was followed by the venerable Lobsang Gyatso, Professor Jampa Samten, Geshe Ngawang Samten, the venerable Wangchuk Dorje (now vice chancellor of the Tibetan Institute), Geshe Yeshe Thabkhas, Geshe Lobsang Tsetan, the late Lobsang Norbu Shastri, and Karma Sonam Palmo. Likewise, numerous Western scholars have taught at the Tibetan Institute, beginning with Professors Claude Fennema and Deborah Srahman, who taught computer science and helped the Tibetan Institute develop its first local area network.
Joint research projects have also flourished, like Jay Garfield and Geshe Damdul’s Western Idealism and Its Critics, which is now a core textbook in several Tibetan monastic universities, Jay Garfield’s and Geshe Ngawang Samten’s translation of Ocean of Reasoning, psychological studies of the impact of Buddhist philosophy on attitudes towards death and personal identity, and linguistic studies of the Tibetan language. Each of the latter involved Smith students as research assistants, and Tibetan colleagues were co-authors on numerous papers published in major research journals.
Tibetan and Western students have also flourished. Yeshi Tashi was the first student from the Tibetan Institute to come to study at Hampshire. He later went to work at Radio Free Asia’s Tibet service. Since then, more than thirty students from the Tibetan Institute have come to study at the Five Colleges. In 2025, two more students began their studies at Smith, continuing the tradition. Hundreds of Five College students have studied at the Tibetan Institute, often having audiences with the Dalai Lama, as the latter has continued to support the program. Many of these students have gone on to have distinguished careers, especially in academia. Alums of the program now teach at colleges and universities worldwide, including American University, Australian National University, Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Lawrence University, Mangalam Research Center, New York University, Oberlin College, Princeton University, Rangjung Yeshe Institute, Smith College, Temple University, Tulane University, University of Oregon, University of Southern California, University of Tasmania, Villanova University, and Wesleyan University.
Andy Rotman has helped run the Tibetan Studies in India Program since 2000, when he joined Smith, and since 2023 he has been program director. Like Jay, Andy had been a research scholar at the Tibetan Institute in the 1990s, and it was there and then that Jay and Andy first met, before either of them had worked at Smith. Many of Andy’s publications have likewise been produced in collaboration with the faculty at the Tibetan Institute, including Divine Stories, parts 1 and 2. Elizabeth Angowski, who had been a student on the Tibetan Studies in India Program in 2005 and then faculty at Earlham College, has now joined Smith College as the Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies. The program continues to thrive.
