The University of California at Berkeley has approved a new faculty position in Tibetan Buddhism, formalizing Khyentse Foundation’s commitment to establish the Khyentse Foundation Distinguished Professorship in Tibetan Buddhism.
In his letter to Khyentse Foundation confirming the new faculty position, Anthony Cascardi, Interim Dean of Arts and Humanities, College of Letters and Science, UC Berkeley, wrote, “The addition of a faculty expert in Tibetan Buddhism will advance the campus’s programmatic and intellectual vision to promote teaching, research, and a greater understanding of the central significance of Tibet in the history of Asia, and of Tibetan Buddhism in the history of Buddhism, generally.”
This position, jointly held by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, is further supported by five additional units in the university: the Department of Linguistics; the Department of Art History; the Group in Buddhist Studies; the Berkeley China Initiative; and the Program in Religious Studies. In all, seven separate units are backing this position, an indication of the university’s multidisciplinary approach to the study of Buddhism.
The university has been authorized to begin the search to hire the faculty member in Tibetan Buddhism in the fall of 2007, with the new professor to start in the fall of 2008.
