Harsh Bhasin

Ambassador Bhasin teaches courses on the politics and diplomacy of (i) contemporary India and (ii) contemporary China. His current interests are focused on the evolving inter-relationship between the US, India and China in the 21st Century.

The current Chair of the Department of Asian & Asian-American Studies, Ambassador Harsh Bhasin has been a Visiting Professor of International Relations at Stony Brook University since 2001. Before joining Stony Brook, he served as a career diplomat for nearly four decades with overseas assignments that included China, Malaysia, the US, Hong Kong, Nepal, Botswana, South Africa and Denmark. Of these, he served as India’s Ambassador to the last three named countries.

During his Foreign Service career, Ambassador Bhasin served twice in the United States – first in Washington DC in the late 70s and early 80s, and later as Consul General of India in New York in the mid 90s. During the 1990-91 academic year he was a senior fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University where he researched the political dynamics of the reform process then underway in South Africa, that culminated in the dismantling of apartheid and the emergence of a multiracial South Africa. He was an official observer at South Africa’s first ever non-racial elections that were held in 1994 and which returned Nelson Mandela to power.

Ambassador Bhasin is also a graduate of the National Defence College of India, New Delhi (1986) where his interests centered around the evolving relations between India and China.

At the State University of New York at Stony Brook, (now) Professor Bhasin has taught highly-popular courses on the Politics and Diplomacy of Contemporary India and of Contemporary China, as well as on India’s Foreign Policy and on the Practice of Diplomacy. His current research interests are focused on the emerging relationship between the United States, India and China in the twenty-first century. A book on the subject, titled The Big Three: The Emerging Relationship Between the United States, India and China in the Changing World Order was released in September 2009.