Jalal Alamgir
Jalal Alamgir was a Bangladeshi-American academic and an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and the son of Awami League Member of Parliament Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir. He specialised in the inter-relationships between globalisation and representational politics. He died in a drowning accident in Thailand on 3 December 2011.
Career
Alamgir earned a Ph.D. from Brown University. He was a tenured faculty at University of Massachusetts-Boston, holding the position of associate professor of political science. He was also a fellow at the South Asia Initiative at Harvard University. Prior to joining UMass, Alamgir held research appointments at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University, and the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Aside from his research, he consulted for the United Nations Population Fund and strategy consulting organizations.At the time of his death, Alamgir was working on several research projects: political violence and justice in Bangladesh and Pakistan, foreign policy of Bangladesh, the representation of values in Indian foreign policy, and the relationship between authoritarianism and globalization in Myanmar.
In addition to his academic career, Alamgir was a principal at Red Bridge Strategy, Inc., which he described as a consultancy he co-founded "to help organizations globalize their operations with locally and informed strategies." Describing the relationship between his academic and consulting work, he said, "The university involves me with cutting-edge research and blue-sky thinking, and I get to meet many scholars and students– wonderful, eccentric, motivated– all helping us to understand the world better. At Red Bridge Strategy, I get to try out some of the ideas I develop in academia, applying them to real world problems and puzzles that need to be 'solved' within a limited time, limited resources, and with a pragmatic approach."
Publications
Books
Alamgir's first book, India's Open-Economy Policy: Globalism, Rivalry, Continuity was selected by Asia Policy as a recommended book for its 2008 "Policymaker's Library" and was nominated for the Association for Asian Studies' Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize.Articles and essays
Alamgir's scholarly essays include "The 1971 Genocide: War Crimes and Political Crimes" and "Bangladesh's Fresh Start." Other papers appeared in International Studies Review, Asian Survey, Asian Studies Review, Issues and Studies, Pacific Affairs, Brown Economic Review, The Journal of Contemporary Asia, The Journal of Bangladesh Studies, The Journal of Social Studies, Encyclopedia of Globalization, States in the Global Economy, and Globalization and Politics in India.He also wrote for different newspapers and magazines, including Foreign Policy, Current History, The Nation, China Daily, openDemocracy, GlobalPost, The Daily Star Forum, Catamaran: Journal of South Asian American Writing, and the Huffington Post. Dr. Alamgir's commentary and opinion were featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and aired on WBAI Radio, NEEN, Deutsche Welle Radio, and Voice of America.