September 26, 2025 | Jamyang Norbu A month or so ago, Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was “exposed” by the New York Times for identifying as both “Black” and “Asian” on his Columbia University application form, much to the indignation of his opponents, Mayor Eric Adams et al. Most US official forms require racial and ethnic identification. This is …

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THE QUEST FOR CULTURAL AUTHENTICITY

November 3, 2023

TIPA’s project in the 1980s to seek out, research and document authentic folk songs, dances, and other performing traditions of Tibet. By Jamyang Norbu In the summer of 1959, a small group of Tibetan musicians in Kalimpong were summoned to Mussoorie by the just established exile government. This group was instructed to organize a performing …

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TIBET GENOCIDE FILE

March 6, 2023

A Preliminary Overview of China’s Genocide Campaign in Tibet: 1950 to 2023 HIGH ASIA RESEARCH CENTER INTRODUCTION The International Commission of Jurists in Geneva (ICJ), in their report on Tibet of June 24, 1959, stated that there was prima facie ev­idence that Communist China had “…committed acts of genocide in Tibet, with the intention of …

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Samdhong Rinpoche and the Subversion of the Tibetan Freedom Struggle

December 22, 2022

An old friend sent the above photograph of me and Samdhong Rinpoche having a spirited side discussion at the first Tibetan Youth Conference in October 1970. Perhaps he sent the photograph to remind me I had not written the second part of the essay I posted in 2019, where I recounted Samdhong Rinpoche’s bid for …

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Echoes From Forgotten Mountains (synopsis)

August 29, 2021

Jamyang Norbu has taken the stories of “forgotten” Tibetans: resistance fighters, secret agents, soldiers, peasants, lamas, aristocrats, merchants, women, officials, chieftains,  even street-beggars, and skillfully worked their myriad accounts into a single glorious “memory history” of the Tibetan struggle. He uses recollections from his own childhood to ease the reader into an immersive understanding of …

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A MOST SELF-INDULGENT COUP

January 17, 2021

Illustration: Craig Stephens, SCMP. When Trump held his infamous rally on the 6th of January and urged his supporters to “march to” (read “storm”) the US Capitol Building, and further called on them to “cheer on” (read “threaten”) US lawmakers to reverse the “stolen” election, I had a strange moment that I can only describe …

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