Contextualizing the Silver Bullet

The high yielding variety seeds (or HYVs) are overwhelmingly depicted in current historiography as the silver bullet that solved the problem of hunger in many parts of the Global South in the 1960s. Developed by Rockefeller breeders, these seeds of wheat and paddy were globalized by cold warriors who wished to obtain agricultural yield increase in their fight against communism that assumedly was prone to spread among the world’s poor and hungry. Deviating from such self-assured perspectives on the efficacy of HYVs, this talk turns attention to the history of past efforts at yield enhancement that were folded into the decision to invite HYVs into India, the turbulent years in which HYVs arrived in India, and the technocratic belief that stood by these seeds and ensured that they were given a chance to succeed. The fact that the HYV revolution has remained a limited regional phenomenon despite efforts to extend it elsewhere in India beckons us to treat the HYVs as historical beings that have a particular and contingent past of their own.

Prakash Kumar is an associate professor of South Asian history at Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in the history of science, agrarian lives, epidemics, development, Indo-US relations, and Cold War era modernization. He is the author of two books, one on colonial science (Cambridge, 2012) and a recent one on the history of the Green Revolution in India (Cambridge, 2025). He is currently working on a history of public health and epidemics in India. His works have been funded twice by the National Science Foundation, by US Fulbright Commission, and the German Historical Institute.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Are you interested in the intersection of mental health and culture, global health, and community engagement? Do you want to gain field research skills and learn about indigenous communities in South India’s beautiful and fragile Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve? If so, the Cornell-Keystone Nilgiris Field Learning Program might be for you!

Are you interested in the intersection of mental health and culture, global health, and community engagement? Do you want to gain field research skills and learn about indigenous communities in South India’s beautiful and fragile Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve? If so, the Cornell-Keystone Nilgiris Field Learning Program might be for you!

This talk will discuss the theory, method, and material of “cross-cultural Harlem.” How can we remain alive to the grief of the political moment while also developing interpretive approaches that offer hope? Professor Shukla will begin to answer that question by exploring Harlem as a space for encounters among those of different backgrounds, producing important dialogues between Blackness and other forms of peoplehood, and their associated territories. The particular examples she considers involve a legendary exchange between Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X and the performance of a Bangladeshi comedian and playwright Alaudin Ullah. These occasions, she shall argue, produce their own dilemmas about encounter, in terms of both reading practices and affects of projection, identification and solidarity. Ultimately, this presentation proposes values of openness for our interdisciplinary enterprise.

Cosponsored by Africana Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Literatures in English, and the South Asia Program

We strive to make all our programming accessible to everyone. For accommodation requests, please email aasp@cornell.edu as soon as possible.

Sandhya Shukla is Professor of English and Chair of American Studies at the University of Virginia, where she is also an affiliate faculty member of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies. Her most recent work is Cross-Cultural Harlem: Reimagining Race and Place (Columbia University Press, 2024). She is also the author of India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England (Princeton University Press), and a co-editor of Imagining Our Americas: Toward a Transnational Frame (Duke University Press). Her work has appeared in publications such as American Quarterly, symploke, and Annual Review of Anthropology, as well as the news-oriented The Conversation.

Lund Critical Debate

Since January 2025, the United States has slashed billions in international aid—and effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), responsible for administering U.S. development and humanitarian aid around the world. In what has become the largest restructuring of aid in the nation’s history, thousands of UN-administered programs have also lost funding, disrupting critical programs and services, breaking supply chains, and leading to widespread closures and layoffs.

These sweeping cuts affect food security, global health, democratic governance, and more—and the stakes have never been higher. As the landscape of international aid evolves, the world faces new questions about the impact of aid on communities, what makes international aid effective—and how to move forward.

This year's Lund debate from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies brings together policy and practice experts for an unfiltered look at the future of international aid. Join Einaudi Center faculty Chris Barrett (Dyson/Brooks) and Muna Ndulo (Law) as they tackle these questions: Who benefits from aid? Do some types of aid work better than others? Should we pursue new approaches to international development? What are the best ways to take strategic action in the world while investing in America’s security, economy, and global position?

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Panelists

Chris Barrett is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and a professor in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy. He is coeditor-in-chief of the journal Food Policy and a frequent commentator and policy advisor on food security and agricultural economics. Barrett won the USAID Science and Technology Pioneers Prize (2013), among many other awards for research, teaching, and public outreach. Read recent Chronicle coverage of Barrett's research.

Muna Ndulo is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of International and Comparative Law at Cornell Law School and an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of constitution making, governance and institution building, international criminal law, African legal systems, and human rights. Ndulo has served as consultant to the African Development Bank, World Bank, Economic Commission for Africa, United Nations Development Program, and other international organizations. He led the Einaudi Center's Institute for African Development from 2001 to 2020.

Moderator

Paul Kaiser is the Einaudi Center's practitioner in residence in fall 2025. Kaiser has extensive experience in international development, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands. His career spans roles at USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and World Bank. Previously, Kaiser taught political science and African studies at Mississippi State University and the University of Pennsylvania.

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About the Debate

The Lund Critical Debate is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Established in 2008, Einaudi's Lund Debate series is made possible by the generosity of Judith Lund Biggs '57.