A middle way on Tibet
It is not unusual for Harvard to host a head of state. During one recent week, there were five on campus in five days. But it is unusual for Harvard to host the leader of a government in exile, as in Tuesday’s tightly guarded Tsai Auditorium lecture by Lobsang Sangay, LL.M. ’95, S.J.D. ’04. The 44-year-old Harvard Law School graduate is sikyong, or prime minister, of the Central Tibetan Administration, the government in exile’s top political official. The late afternoon talk was his first in the United States as a head of government and his first in a university setting. “It feels more like a reunion,” he said, “than giving any formal kind of speech.” Before the election in April 2011, Sangay worked at Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Program. He was the first Tibetan — there are 6 million — to earn the doctor of juridical science (S.J.D.) degree, the...