Claremont, Calif. (December 4, 2013) — The founder, editor and publisher of the Nepali Times, Kunda Dixit, will speak on “The Prospects for Peace, Reconciliation, and Democracy in Nepal” on December 10 at Pitzer College. Dixit’s talk will address the outcome of Nepal’s Constituent Assembly elections in November and is part of the ongoing Pitzer Educators in Nepal project.
Kunda Dixit
Dixit’s talk is being held in conjunction with Nepal’s Civil War: a post-conflict photographic retrospective, on display in Pitzer’s McConnell Center. Nepal’s Civil War is drawn from a larger photo-journalism exhibit that Dixit created for the Kathmandu Peace Museum. Before it ended in 2006, the 10-year war resulted in 15,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons. Dixit’s exhibition on the civil war and its aftermath has been seen by nearly half a million Nepalis.
Nepal’s Civil War and Dixit’s talk are part of Pitzer Educators in Nepal, a year-long project funded by a Fulbright-Hays group grant. Pitzer faculty, staff, students and an alumna teamed up with nine local teachers to study in Nepal and develop curriculum about the Himalayan country for local middle and high school students. Hundreds of California school children, as well as faculty and students from The Claremont Colleges, have visited the Nepal’s Civil War exhibition.
Co-publisher of Himal magazine and a former reporter for the BBC in New York, Dixit is a prominent public intellectual who has been a leading commentator on Nepal’s recent tumultuous history, including the 1996-2006 civil war, the collapse of the Nepali monarchy, and the 2008 and 2013 Constituent Assembly elections. He has also served as the Asia-Pacific director of Inter Press Service.
“The Prospects for Peace, Reconciliation, and Democracy in Nepal” will be held at 11 a.m. in Pitzer College’s McConnell Center Founders Room.
