Fall 2002
Settling In
Daily Egyptian
His combined accents have been a little confusing for his colleagues, and his journey has been a long one.
It has taken him from India to England, from England to Japan and now to the United States in an office lined with bookshelves on the fourth floor of Faner Hall in the Economics Department.
Sajal Lahiri holds a prestigious chair at SIUC. He filled the position of the Vandeveer chair earlier this semester, the only endowed chair at SIU.
Chair of the Economics Department Rich Grabowski sent Lahiri a letter in October of last year, urging him to become a part of SIU's Economics Department and to help facilitate the University's research abilities.
Grabowski said there is a fund that was in excess of $4 million, which kept earning interest through the SIU Foundation. This fund is used to finance the hiring of an outstanding scholar.
"Just this semester we hired that person and it was Lahiri," he said.
Lahiri asked for a few weeks to think about it. He did his own research on the web and found SIU to be a place with potential. Soon he was packing his bags and boxes, leaving the University of Essex in London, England, where he had been a professor since 1978, and heading for Southern Illinois.
"The last of my books have just arrived," Lahiri said. "It took a couple of weeks."
Lahiri received all of his degrees at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta, though he is focusing all of his current energies on economics because he says he has given up on statistics. He also holds specialties in foreign trade and the economy of small, developing countries.
He said his experience in other countries has helped his research tremendously and has had an influence on his focus on foreign trade.
"I'll soon be influenced by the U.S. economy," he said.
Lahiri is writing a book about trade and industry policy with a colleague, Professor Ono from Osaka University in Japan.
Lahiri is looking forward to his research opportunities and collaboration with other colleges.
"There are a number of young and established economists here and a lot of them have a common research interest with me," he said. "It's a department in a crossroads and with some support from the university, it can be one of the top economics departments in the world."
Lahiri is bringing with him the experience of living in many different economic climates. For instance, in England the coal mining industry is completely gone but he said their economy is booming.
"Hanging on to the past is not the way to move forward," he said. "Computers were once seen as a threat to jobs and now everyone realizes that computers create jobs."
Lahiri also wants to look more deeply into foreign trade abilities.
"It is our job to communicate with the people at large, the benefits of trade," he said. "Not just the trade of economy but the mobility of farms, goods and people, too."
Though Lahiri has goals for his future here at SIU, he said he is still in a period of transition and said he is too old to relearn his English.
"I think it was Winston Churchill who said, 'We are two nations divided by a common language,'" said Lahiri of his combined English and Midwest accents. "When I speak to my colleagues, they will look at my face like, 'What is he talking about?'"
But the language change hasn't been bad for his 13-year-old daughter, Naomi, who is an active ninth grader in the marching band at Carbondale Community High School.
"She's quite happy," he said. "I think because of her English accent she's quite popular."
Lahiri said he enjoys Southern Illinois quite a bit but he expected something a little different.
"I actually expected a flat Midwest but as you move out of Carbondale, it's actually a rolling landscape," he said. "It was a pleasant surprise."
Lahiri has already established an annual lecture. He is also planning to consolidate research in each department as well as to interact with other departments like political science and the public policy institute.
"With this chair I would like to raise the profile of economics at SIU ˜ both nationally and internationally," he said. "It fits in with the chancellor's Southern at 150 plan, so that students are taught up-to-date things and to do that you need very active research facilities."
Still unpacking and settling in, Lahiri said now is a very busy time for him and his family.
"The fact that we are living from boxes doesn't help," he said. "But I've come here from a long perspective, so if it takes a year to settle in, that's a short period for me, and hopefully I'll have many years here."
Reporter Arin Thompson can be reached at athompson@dailyegyptian.com
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