DMK president M. Karunanidhi has asked the State government to help the efforts of Tamil community in the United States to set up a Harvard Tamil Chair.
In a statement, he said that two NRI Tamil doctors, Janakiraman and Thirugnanasambandam, had received approval from the Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, to set up a Tamil Chair.
While the total amount needed is $6 million, the duo had promised to fund $1 million. The Tamil community needs to collect the remaining $5 million. An effort has been made to reach out to the Tamil community.
Harvard has two Chairs for Ukranian spoken by 30 million people and even when there was a Chair for Celtic spoken by 1.5 million and the university has Chairs for Hebrew, Sanskrit among other languages. Therefore, it is necessary to have a Tamil Chair at Harvard as it is the language of over 80 million people across the world, Mr. Karunanidhi said.
