Kashish Bastola

Kashish Bastola is an undergraduate historian at Harvard University interested in the role of American universities in Cold War statecraft in the Himalaya. His thesis reconstructs a covert Cold War program through which the CIA trained Tibetan refugees at Cornell University and Berea College in the 1960s. In the “Asia and Asians at Harvard” course, he researched Crown Prince Birendra’s 1967–68 study at Harvard using the LBJ Library, National Archives, and Harvard Archives. He is interested in public history, oral history, and digital archives, has volunteered at Minute Man National Historical Park, and mentors local high schoolers through Radcliffe’s archives. He also serves on the City of Cambridge’s American Freedmen Commission.