Click here to watch a short video on the Emory-Tibet Partnership.

In February 2007, Emory University was honored to make the historic announcement that His Holiness the Dalai Lama would be joining Emory as a Presidential Distinguished Professor. Now that this partnership has been strengthened with His Holiness playing an active role on campus and in the community through visits and lectures, this bridge between the two traditions offers an even more exciting range of conversations, discoveries and knowledge that may benefit individuals and society.

Located at the crossroads of India, China and the Middle East, Tibet was the repository for important traditions of learning—in the science of mind, in the nature of the person and the cosmos, and in medicine—and kept these traditions alive. Advances in the Western world in the natural and health sciences are now probing many of the same questions the Tibetan tradition has spent millennia investigating.

Both sides recognize the tremendous potential of a genuine two-way exchange of people and ideas that encompasses the areas of culture, philosophy, religion, science and health. With its exemplary faculty members—drawn from across the university's departments—and its unique ties to Tibetan institutions of higher learning, including the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Emory-Tibet Partnership provides a solid basis for this joint quest to explore the frontiers of knowledge.

"I believe that this is a very historic moment, to see the forging of a relationship between two eminent institutions which represent the best of both the Tibetan tradition and the Western academic tradition."
-H.H. the Dalai Lama

History of the Emory-Tibet Partnership

The Emory-Tibet Partnership is the result of two visionary individuals: His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Dr. Robert Paul, Dean of Emory College.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has long recognized the importance of a close dialogue between modern western thought, including science, and the Tibetan contemplative and philosophical traditions.

Dean Robert Paul, himself a scholar of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, while engaging in fieldwork in the Himalayan region early in his career, also recognized the tremendous potential of bringing together modern scientific knowledge of the outer world and the contemplative knowledge of the inner world.

In 1991 Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi came to Atlanta with the blessings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to oversee the development of Drepung Loseling Monasteries, Inc. in Atlanta and pursue his graduate studies at Emory University’s Institute of Liberal Arts. With Geshe Lobsang as a liaison between Emory and the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Dean Robert Paul, as his advisor, took the opportunity to lay the foundations for a partnership between Emory and Drepung Loseling Monastery that would realize this vision of bridging two worlds for the benefit of humanity.

During His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s second visit to Emory in 1995, a delegation led by Dean Paul and Dr. Gary Hauk, Vice President of Emory, proposed the idea of this affiliation to His Holiness, who responded favorably. This led to the inauguration of the affiliation and the establishment of the Emory-Tibet Partnership upon His Holiness’s third visit to Emory in 1998 as Emory’s commencement speaker.

Since its founding in 1998 the Emory-Tibet Partnership has expanded to include affiliations with the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, the home of Emory’s study abroad program in Dharamsala, and the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, who are collaborating with Emory on the groundbreaking Emory-Tibet Science Initiative to develop and implement a comprehensive science education curriculum for Tibetan monastic institutions.