University President Jehuda Reinharz will visit India from Feb. 1 to Feb. 13 as an invited speaker at the 2010 Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, the first major convention on climate change since Copenhagen, according to a University press release sent by Daniel Terris, the vice president for Global Affairs and the director for the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life. Reinharz will be accompanied by Terris and Prof. Harleen Singh (GRALL), according to the press release. In addition to speaking at the summit, Reinharz will speak in Mumbai about promoting social justice in an era of globalization and visit nongovernmental organizations that are focused on sustainable development and education.

Singh, who is the co-chair of the South Asian Studies program, said that the trip was part of the Brandeis-India initiative, which began two years ago through the Office of Global Affairs as a method of strengthening the partnership between Brandeis and India through businesses, nongovernmental organizations and governmental institutions.

Reinharz wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that the summit's sponsor, The Energy and Resources Institute in Delhi, and the Asia Society's Mumbai Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the world about Asia, extended a speaking invitation last September.

Reinharz wrote that Brandeis has always had strong students from India but that no concrete effort has been made to maintain connections between these students and the University.

"This effort to change that reflects the demands being made on higher education in a global environment for the University not just to serve students while they are on campus, but to build connections to continue to reach them and their communities over the course of their lives," Reinharz wrote.

Singh explained that her familiarity with India will enable her to assist Reinharz as a liaison throughout his trip.

"Hopefully, the result of this trip will be that [Reinharz] will see the network we have in India and be able to tell the Brandeis community the opportunities we have for them and show our alumni that this is a relationship we hope to further in the long term," she said.

Terris, who said in an interview with the Justice that this will be his third trip to India for the purpose of strengthening the country's ties with Brandeis, explained that he was assisting Reinharz to help him build on the connections he had established on prior trips.

"We want to solidify contact with global connections, which will provide more opportunity for our students to study and work in India, and for our faculty to be engaged in research partnership," he said.

Reinharz wrote that his talk will focus on sustainability and social justice in today's globalized world.

"I will discuss the critical importance of institutions of higher education in addressing the pressing problems of globalized society, from the need to conserve the environment of the planet to the need to more effectively combat poverty and promote social justice," Reinharz wrote in his e-mail.

Singh explained that this trip will also display a commitment to building on the University's South Asian Studies program, which began three years ago.

"This trip will show that the South Asian Studies program here is doing more and creating a network," she said.