Aleksandr Kuzmenchuk
| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program |
| Project Title: | Defining Indian Ethos and the Hindu Identity from the Records of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan |
| Field of Study: | Political Science |
| Home Institution: | William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA |
| Host Institution: | Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana |
| Grant Start Month: | August 2024 |
| Duration of Grant: | Eight months |
Brief Bio:
Alek Kuzmenchuk is a recent graduate of William & Mary, where he studied international relations and data science. He graduated summa cum laude and as a member of the oldest honor society in the United States, Phi Beta Kappa. His mother was born in Vadodara, India, and his father in Belarus. He is passionate about international affairs and public service and has completed internships at the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Global Research Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and geoLab. He was also the editor-in-chief of William & Mary’s journal of international studies, The Monitor. As part of the Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship program, Alek spent the summer of 2023 studying Hindi in Jaipur. His research interests include Indian politics, Eastern European civic space, nuclear diplomacy, political behavior, and the role of ideology in international relations. In college, he was also a member and captain of the Division I gymnastics team. His recognitions include the NCAA Elite 90 Award, the Omicron Delta Kappa National Leader of the Year Award, the William & Mary Cypher Award, and the William & Mary Peel Hawthorne Award.
In his Fulbright-Nehru project, Alek is analyzing the records of India’s second president, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, to gain an understanding of India’s civilizational ethos through the lenses of political philosophy and religious ethics. Dr. Radhakrishnan’s body of work combines insights about the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism and its application to state building. Using that understanding, Alek, while working with researchers in the Department of International Relations at Ashoka University, is conducting conversational interviews with New Delhi residents and those from the surrounding area, as well as with those working in government, to understand how these insights are reflected in modern India.