"Bangladesh's Gen-Z-led Monsoon Revolution: Its Origins and Impact Eight Months Later"
With Alex Counts (President and CEO, Grameen Foundation)
and Prof. Rumela Sen (SIPA)
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: Room 801, International Affairs Building, School of International and Public Affairs, 420 West 118th Street
Light Lunch will be provided
Organized by the Economic and Political Development Concentration at SIPA, and the SIPA South Asia Association.
Co-sponsored by the South Asia Institute
On August 5, 2024, the regime of Sheikh Hasina that had been in power for 15 years fell due to student protests and the government's violent but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to suppress them. Three days later, an Interim Government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus came to power to rebuild the nation and set the stage for the first truly democratic elections in the world's eighth most populous nation since 2008. Alex Counts, a long-time associate of Professor Yunus' who was there during the revolution and has visited the country twice since then, and who lived in Bangladesh for six years and speaks Bengali, will share his experiences leading up to and during the revolution, and since. He will address criticisms of the Interim Government as well as describe some of its successes, while previewing what is likely to come next, especially since a student-led political party was recently formed to contest upcoming elections.
Alex Counts is the author of Changing the World without Losing Your Mind: Leadership Lessons from Three Decades of Social Entrepreneurship (2021). He is the former President and CEO of the Grameen Foundation (1997 - 2015) and a senior advisor to nonprofit organizations.
Professor Rumela Sen joined the School of International and Public Affairs in Fall 2020 as a Lecturer in International and Public Affairs, having completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia's Department of Political Science. Originally from India, Sen earned her PhD in Comparative Politics at Cornell University. Her research focuses on conflict and post-conflict reconstruction in South Asia, particularly in India and Nepal.
