ROLLIE LAL

Dr. Rollie Lal is a Political Scientist at RAND. She is a South Asia and East Asia specialist, with extensive experience analyzing the foreign relations and internal dynamics of India and Pakistan, the national interests of India and China, and the strategic relations of India, China, and Japan. She also conducts regional analyses of China, Central Asia, and North Africa. Recent research includes a study of political Islam and insurgencies in India and North Africa, and an analysis of the relations of South Asia and China with the states of Central Asia. Her current research includes a study of stability in South Asia and a study of organized crime in India.

She has conducted an analysis of the underlying objectives of both China and India’s defense modernization and economic reforms programs as well. In 2001, she completed more than 80 interviews of government officials and scholars in China and India as a visiting scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Indian Council of Social Science Research, and Peking University. She has a working knowledge of both Hindi and Chinese, as well as conversational abilities in Japanese.

Dr. Lal is a co-author of the recently published America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, author of “The Hindu Muslim Divide,” published in the Atlantic Monthly, and various articles in the Financial Times, Baltimore Sun, and the Daily Yomiuri. Prior to coming to RAND, Dr. Lal was the Associate Director of the South Asia Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She remains involved with the program, and occasionally gives lectures at the university. She also served as a Washington Correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, where she published articles on U.S. domestic and foreign policy, and led a year-long foreign policy series based upon declassified documents. Rollie Lal holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Maryland at College Park, and an M.A. in Strategic Studies and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins SAIS.