On 24 February, The New India Foundation announced that renowned journalist Edward Luce will be delivering the Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture for 2021. In a virtual event to be hosted on 12 March, 2021, Luce will speak on the subject US Politics: Why Here, and Where from Here?
The lecture will explore the dynamics of US politics and the implications of the newly elected American government on the world, and especially India.
Luce is currently the US national editor and a columnist at the Financial Times. He is the author of books such as The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent and In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India. He previously served as the speechwriter for Lawrence H Summers, the US Treasury Secretary, in the Clinton administration.
This will be the 14th edition of the New India Foundation Annual Lecture, which was renamed to the Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture in 2019, to honour the late playwright and actor. The lecture is delivered by a scholar or writer. Previous speakers have included Dr Sowmya Swaminanthan, Jean Dreze, historian and political theorist Sunil Khilnani, and Raghuram Rajan.
The New India Foundation, known for its fellowships, is based in Bengaluru and also instituted the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize in 2018, to honour non-fiction writing on modern/contemporary India.