Nirmal Trivedi

Puerto Rico’s Status

A large part of my research takes me to the Insular Cases, a little known (or talked about) set of Supreme Court decisions that over the course of the twentieth century established several insular territories as “unincorporated,” subject to U.S. sovereignty but nonetheless “foreign countries”. It is stunning to read the list of nations that have at one point or remain on this list: Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands. The consequences of such ambivalent legal status is not an “academic question” as Puerto Rican blogger Gil the Jenius points out:

Agent Orange was tested in Our western mountain ranges, without notification or Our consent. (Exactly like property.) A sterilization campaign as a means of population control was federal government policy in Puerto Rico until the late 1970s. A medical researcher used Puerto Rican patients for cancer testing in the 1930s–pre-Tuskegee Institute–killing all 13 subjects. The doctor was later the namesake for the “exemplary scientist” award of the American Association for Cancer Research. Aside from that–and more–the question implies that unless a surprise armed invasion happens, We have nothing to complain about. We do. What happened in Vieques outright killed two people in 60+ years; unethical military, medical and scientific “research” have killed/maimed hundreds of Us, most likely thousands and U.S. political policy has essentially marginalized Us for decades. At least with an armed invasion, you can shoot back at a clear target.

U.S. as Empire

How interesting is the question about whether the U.S. is an empire? This question has preoccupied so much popular and not-so-popular writing these past years (I’d say from at least since the Cold War in the current formulation of U.S. superpowerism), but I’m not always sure how useful it is for intellectuals to ask such “yes and no” questions, if only because we lose sight of other, more useful, ways of analyzing power.

University for NRIs or ABCDs

This I find a very stange endeavor: an Indian university for all those Indians living abroad.

The Indian government estimates there are 20 million people of Indian origin across the world whose combined wealth of $1-trillion is almost 20 percent higher than India’s gross domestic product.

What exactly would be the incentive for a someone not living in India to return to Delhi? And why wouldn’t they be able to go to already existing universities? Perhaps I’m unaware of the financial issues involved, but it seems to be this is a way for India to reclaim some of that “brain drain” that began in earnest during the Cold War and has been slowing to a trickle since the technological revolution in India.