Emeritus Professor James Bosson Awarded Polar Star Medal of Mongolia; Mongolian Language to Return to Berkeley Curriculum in 2015-2016

January 1, 2015

On Sunday, September 28, 2014, Professor Emeritus James Bosson, who taught Mongolian and Tibetan in the Department of Oriental Languages (now the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures) from 1963 until 1996, was awarded the Order of the Polar Star Medal of Mongolia for his contributions to Mongolian studies in the United States. The author of a standard language textbook of Mongolian and several scholarly works on Mongolian culture, Professor Bosson trained many of the Mongolianists active in the field today. This order is the highest award given by the Mongolian government to a foreigner, and was presented to Professor Bosson in San Francisco by Minister of Foreign Affairs Bold Luvusanvandan, who flew in from Ulan Bataar for the ceremony.

Our congratulations to Professor Bosson and his family!

We are also happy to announce that thanks to the recent National Resource Center grant to IEAS from the U.S. Department of Education, we expect courses on Mongolian language to return to Berkeley's curriculum in 2015-2016, after an absence of nearly 20 years, and as part of an effort by IEAS to promote interest in lesser studied regions of East Asia.