Asia Center Grant Awardee Kashish Bastola ’26 Named Marshall Scholar

As one of five Harvard College students selected as 2026 Marshall Scholars, Kashish Bastola hopes to spend the next two years studying military history at Oxford University. Kashish was the recipient of a 2025 Asia Center summer research grant and below he describes his research interests and connections to the Asia Center throughout his time at Harvard. Congratulations, Kashish!

With a student organization grant from the Asia Center awarded to the Tibetan Cultural Association at Harvard, I traveled in 2023 to Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile in the Himalayan foothills. There I visited the Tibet Museum and encountered a powerful exhibit on Tibetan resistance, where I first learned of the Cold War alliance between the Central Intelligence Agency and Tibetans. That moment of curiosity in the museum led me to a book on the subject. Through a single footnote, my senior thesis unfolded. My thesis brings to light the role that universities played in joint CIA-Tibet intelligence operations. The Asia Center’s willingness to support undergraduate travel and research made it possible for me to follow my research interests.

Under the mentorship of Professor Sugata Bose, I also presented my research on Harvard-Nepal history at the Asia and Asians at Harvard conference this past fall and also contributed to the accompanying exhibit that is currently on display. Working on this project with Professor Bose and my peers allowed me to study Asian intellectual histories as central to Harvard’s history and its development as a global institution. This course and conference came at a pivotal time in university-state relations; the role which universities have played in U.S.-Asia policy in the past two centuries is an important area for further research.

I am deeply grateful to the Asia Center and for all of the incredible individuals who have mentored me and invested in my work during my undergraduate years.

Photo: Kashish Bastola in Ladakh with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, 2023.