Latest news with #SchwarzmanScholars
Business Insider
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
I'm an American who moved to China. After 7 years, I run a profitable startup and make friends through badminton.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Joshua Charles Woodard, 29, cofounder of The Sparrows, a manufacturing consultancy based in Shenzhen. I've always liked building real, physical products. When I was 8, I took pottery classes and made small sculptures of superheroes. When I was 14, I learned that a Hong Kong company had bought a significant stake in Legendary Entertainment, the studio behind "Inception" — a favorite movie at the time. It sparked my curiosity about China. Both influenced my studies at MIT, where I majored in mechanical engineering and minored in Mandarin. I thought being fluent in Chinese and able to build products could be a killer combination. Rethinking China, firsthand In the middle of my third year at MIT, one of my professors invited me to Shanghai for a two-week Peking opera program. There, I learned the physical movements and enough Mandarin to perform. I expected a poor, communist country, but instead, I found one of the most capitalist and consumerist places on earth. I kept thinking: What policies built this infrastructure? In 2018, during my final year at MIT, I was accepted into the Schwarzman Scholars program — a fully funded, one-year master's in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing. A few months after graduation, I moved to China and have continued living here for the past seven years. From MIT to Tsinghua My time at Tsinghua was different from my experience at MIT. I had fewer hours of class and more opportunities to hear from special speakers — including John Kerry. One day, I visited Xiongan, an experimental city near Beijing, where I surveyed development projects and met with government officials. That year, I gained a foundation in how China works, from governance to history, and a master's degree. After graduation, I moved to Shenzhen — about 1,200 miles south of Beijing — to join a small product design firm as a project manager and mechanical engineer. Ninety percent of the engineering team only spoke Chinese, so I had to learn Mandarin in an engineering capacity. I met up with a Mandarin teacher once or twice a week. I carried a notebook for industry-specific words, like "screw," "injection," and "molding." Then in 2021, after nine interviews, I joined Apple's camera R&D team as an engineering program manager. I worked there for close to four years. But I knew that there, reaching leadership would take another 10 to 15 years. That would have been fine if I wanted to live in Shenzhen forever, but if I were risk-averse, I'd have gone to Silicon Valley. Instead, I developed a unique skill set by staying here. Adjusting to life in China I grew up in a working-class Chicago neighborhood — my mom's a nurse, my dad's a laborer. Back home, long stares could mean danger. In China, they usually mean curiosity. I had to adjust. Once, on the Communist Party's birthday in 2019, a drunk man demanded my passport and accused me of stealing jobs. Police escorted him away. Now, Shenzhen feels like a second home. Life is more comfortable, my money goes further, and I've built a solid network. I have my network. I play badminton. It's what all young people here do and a great way to make friends. Doing my own thing This year, Susan Su — a Chinese American MIT grad — and I started The Sparrows, a manufacturing consultancy. We realized that some companies need help managing production and factories but can't afford a full China-based team. Our goal was to fill that gap. We don't do engineering but handle everything else. We're a team of four: the two of us plus a supply chain expert and a lawyer. In the US, you sign a contract, and it's done. In China, it's about trust and relationships — with the factory and its managers — driving production and efficiency. There's a local phrase, shuangying, meaning "double win." It's about building genuine relationships with vendors, growing together as partners. We were in the black from day one. I pay myself $2,500 a month from profits. I split a 969-square-foot apartment with a friend, and we each pay $600 a month. Trade policy, meet real life Tariffs do affect my work at Sparrows. It feels like America is trying to be God now. But iPhones, medical consumables, and products for Google, Amazon, and Sam's Club are still made in China. Unless someone figures out how to move 40 years of supply chain development — the human resources, skilled workforce — and address the fact that most immigrants to Shenzhen are willing to work 60- or 70-hour weeks to send money back home, this is all noise. There are legal tariff workarounds. We're talking to a partner in Colombia to split production. Once the company can run more independently, I'd like to be closer to family and drive US business development. At first, my parents thought leaving Chicago for MIT was far. Moving to China was even harder for them. But as long as I call often, we've found our rhythm and stay connected.
The Hindu
15-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
More ‘mind space' for India in the American imagination
Why is there no 'Schwarzman Scholars' programme for India? Why does a country of 1.4 billion people — an ancient civilisation, a dynamic economy, a nuclear power, and a key player in the Indo-Pacific — still appear marginal in the priorities of elite American institutions? The answer lies not merely in policy lag but in perception, psychology, and deeply embedded narratives that continue to shape the West's engagement with Asia. The Schwarzman Scholars programme The 'Schwarzman Scholars' programme, launched in 2016 and based at Beijing's Tsinghua University, was explicitly modelled after the Rhodes Scholarship (founded in 1902). Its mission is ambitious: to cultivate a future generation of global leaders, deeply familiar with China's systems, strategic worldview, and societal aspirations. That no such equivalent programme exists for India is not an accident. It is the culmination of decades of lopsided intellectual investment — one that privileges China as essential, and views India, at best, as peripheral. This imbalance was presciently explored by Harold R. Isaacs in his seminal work, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (1958). Isaacs uncovered the psychological residue — 'scratches', as he termed them — left on American consciousness by media, education, missionary engagement, and diplomatic narratives. China loomed large in this imagination: revolutionary, mystical, dangerous, promising. India, by contrast, was filtered through colonial British lenses: remote, spiritual, chaotic, and, ultimately, less urgent. Even today, those scratches endure. India is often misunderstood, misrepresented, or, more often, simply missing in the frameworks that shape western elite understanding. The Cold War's bipolar logic left India unmoored in American strategic thinking. China was a site of ideological competition, and later, a partner in global capitalism. India, non-aligned and self-reliant, never fit the template. Its democracy attracted rhetorical admiration, but its strategic ambivalence dampened deeper interest. This selective seduction continued into the 21st century. China masterfully framed its rise as an opportunity — and the West was psychologically prepared to believe it. Scholars such as Australian sinologist Stephen FitzGerald described in the 1980s how the West 'wanted China to succeed' — economically, politically, even ideologically. China offered a compelling, seductive narrative of transformation: poverty to prosperity, isolation to globalisation, authoritarian control with capitalist efficiency. Western business leaders, academics and policymakers were drawn in. Programmes such as Schwarzman were not just reflections of China's pull —they were symptoms of the West's emotional and intellectual readiness to be seduced. India never orchestrated such seduction. It emerged from colonialism with a focus on sovereignty and self-reliance. It rebuffed bloc politics, avoided entanglements, and developed slowly and unevenly. Its strengths — pluralistic democracy, entrepreneurial diaspora, and cultural richness — did not easily translate into strategic urgency or narrative coherence for the West. While the Chinese state invested heavily in soft power — through Confucius Institutes, think tanks, cultural exchanges, and university partnerships — India's outreach was modest, sporadic, and often bureaucratically constrained. The problem with India-focused research Even within American academia, the difference is stark. China Studies enjoys robust institutional support across top universities. With a few exceptions, India-focused research, by contrast, is fragmented, often subsumed under South Asian or Postcolonial Studies, with an emphasis on religion, anthropology, or classical languages. These are critical fields, but do not capture the lure of a civilisational state and a modern India that is shaping global technology, space innovation, climate policy, and strategic affairs. India appears in headlines, but rarely in syllabi. The consequences are serious. Future American leaders, whether in diplomacy, business, or policy, are not being trained to understand India in its full complexity. The persistence of reductive frameworks, such as the old hyphenation of 'India-Pakistan', continues to distort strategic thinking. U.S. President Donald Trump's repetitive remarks about mediating between India and Pakistan are not just personal gaffes. They reflect institutional inertia, a failure to update mental maps to match geopolitical reality. And here lies a paradox: just as India's importance is rising, its visibility in American intellectual and philanthropic circuits remains limited. The absence of a flagship fellowship akin to Schwarzman is both a symbol and a cause of this gap. Such a programme would not just serve India's interests; it would meet a growing demand among global youth for deeper engagement with the world's largest democracy — its challenges, innovations, contradictions, and aspirations. But for such a fellowship to succeed, India must first invest in the institutional foundation. Tsinghua University, where Schwarzman is housed, is not just a campus. It is a a brand, a node of state-backed ambition with global recognition. India has institutions of excellence — the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, and emerging liberal arts universities such as Ashoka and Krea — but none as yet combine academic prestige, international pull, policy connectivity, and philanthropic momentum at the scale required. This must change. India needs a globally oriented, strategically empowered academic platform that can host and nurture the next generation of world leaders — Indian and foreign — who understand India not just as a subject of study but as a site of leadership. Creating such an institution will require government will, private capital, academic autonomy, and long-term vision. Narrative matters India also needs to project its narrative with much more feeling and conviction. The Chinese have always felt they are a 'chosen' people. The world, from Napoleon, has felt the same. India is the Cinderella in this story. Strategic restraint and ambiguity has served Indian diplomacy in many arenas, but silence can be mistaken for absence and risk-aversion for reticence and a lack of confidence. Narrative matters. Global leadership today is as much about shaping perceptions as it is about GDP or military muscle. That means calling out outdated framing, investing in storytelling, and claiming intellectual space with confidence. The refrain of a rising GDP lifting all boats, of International Yoga Days, will not just do. Every few blocks in an American city you will find a yoga studio and an Indian restaurant. But does that change the power scene for India? Ultimately, the battle for influence is not only fought in the corridors of power or in street corners, but is also shaped in classrooms, fellowships, research centres, and campus conversations. If India wants to be understood on its own terms, and not just as a counterweight to China or a bystander in someone else's story, it must be present in the places where ideas are formed and futures imagined. The scratches on our minds can be healed, but not with silence. They require vision, voice, and a story compelling enough to inspire the next generation of global leaders. A Schwarzman-style fellowship in India would not just be a corrective. It would be a declaration that India is no longer content to be studied at a distance. It wants to be known, on its own terms. Nirupama Rao is a former Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to the United States
Gulf Today
24-05-2025
- Science
- Gulf Today
NYUAD celebrates Class of 2025 graduates
New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) hosted its 12th commencement ceremony to honour the Class of 2025. Some 530 students representing over 85 countries participated in the largest graduating class that NYUAD has held since its inception in 2011. The ceremony was attended by a number of officials, as well as members of the university's administrative and academic bodies, including Evan R. Chesler, Chair of the NYU Board of Trustees; Rima Al Mokarrab, NYU Trustee; and Linda Mills, NYU President. The keynote speech was delivered by former NASA astronaut and geophysicist Andrew Feustel. 'It's been said that luck is where preparation meets opportunity, and with opportunity comes obligation. You now have an opportunity to launch from this place and continue your life mission. You also have an obligation to strive to work to the best of your ability to reach your mission objectives along this path,' said Feustel. From its inception, NYUAD has been one of the most selective higher education institutions in the world. Times Higher Education ranks NYU among the top 35 universities in the world, making NYU Abu Dhabi the highest globally ranked university in the UAE and MENA region. NYUAD's current student body consists of some 2,200 undergraduate and graduate students from diverse backgrounds. To date, it has produced 24 Rhodes Scholars, 20 Schwarzman Scholars, and 16 Fulbright Scholars. Approximately four percent of those who applied to be a part of the Class of 2025 were accepted for admission, and the standardised test profile of the Class of 2025 matched those of the most elite higher education institutions in the US. During their four years, the Class of 2025 has excelled in both academic and extracurricular pursuits. It has participated in student clubs, athletic groups, and built ties with the Abu Dhabi community. WAM
