India-China Fulbright Scholar Wraps Up Visit to the Schar School

George Mason University is known for helping students and scholars achieve Fulbright fellowships at prestigious postings around the world. The university is also known for being a destination for those chosen to participate in international academic exchange, which is how Gundumella Venkat Raman came to teach—and learn—at Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government for six months beginning in August 2023.

“In India we have the United States-India Education Foundation which, along with the U.S. State Department, works for the exchange of Fulbright fellows every year,” said Raman, who is on the faculty of humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Management Indore in central India. “I came here as part of the exchange of mid-career professionals. The idea is to encourage mid-career professionals who have a certain kind of leadership and credentials to conduct research and teach.”

Raman, a sinologist with a focus on China’s interface with global governance, taught a course called The China Challenge for master’s and PhD students; he also studied “the current American political discourse related to China across various constituencies,” with a focus on climate change and technology, he said.

Raman chose the Schar School specifically, he said, because of its proximity to decision makers in nearby Washington, D.C.

“The area has lots of think tanks which make it easier for me to reach out and have interactions with them,” he said.

Once his teaching was done, he became familiar at the Wilson Center, the American Enterprise Institute, the Peterson Institute of International Economics, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the RAND Corporation.

Raman’s visit, which included excursions six U.S. states and stops at San Jose State University in California, Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and the University of Texas-El Paso, provided opportunities for interaction with colleagues and students and deliver talks about India’s China policies.

“The idea of a Fulbright scholarship is not merely academic,” he said. “The idea is to encourage scholars and scholarship exchanges, and also perhaps develop in visiting scholars a certain sense of cultural understanding of the America society.”

To that end, Fulbright organized a four-day enrichment seminar for many current Fulbright fellows in Cleveland, Ohio, on the topic of public health in America.

“We were introduced to some of the public health concerns and the various debates and discussions, critical issues that envelop this whole issue of public health in the United States,” Raman said.

“Given all this,” he concluded, “it’s been a frenetic pace of activity for the last six months. You can never say you have achieved everything but I’m going back with good memories. And it has been very enriching. I am more well informed about some of the things that are happening over here [in the U.S.].”

As he prepared to depart, he learned that Washington, D.C.'s new cricket team, the Washington Freedom, is interested in building a temporary cricket stadium on Mason's West Campus.

“Oh my gosh,” he said. “I think I came a year early.”