Thant Myint-U

Thant Myint-U (Burmese: သန့်မြင့်ဦး [θa̰ɰ̃ mjɪ̰ɰ̃ ʔú]; born 31 January 1966) is a Burmese historian, writer, grandson of former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, former UN official, and former special adviser to the president for the peace process. He has authored five books, including The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma and Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia.[1][2][3] In 2012, he founded Yangon Heritage Trust to preserve colonial buildings in the Burmese capital Yangon.[4]

Thant Myint-U
သန့်မြင့်ဦး
Born (1966-01-31) 31 January 1966
New York City, New York, U.S.
Alma materHarvard University
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
Johns Hopkins University
University of Cambridge
OccupationHistorian
Spouse(s)Sofia Busch
ChildrenThurayn-Harri
Parent(s)Tyn Myint-U
Aye Aye Thant
RelativesU Thant (grandfather)
Khin Lay Myint-U (sister)
A-thi Myint-U (sister)
Aye Myint Myint-U (sister)
AwardsFukuoka Grand Prize
Padma Shri

Life and education

Thant Myint-U was born in New York City to Burmese parents. He grew up in Riverdale, Bronx at the home of his maternal grandfather, the then-Secretary-General of the United Nations U Thant. From 1971 to 1980, he studied at Riverdale Country School, a private college-preparatory day school in Bronx.[5] He graduated from International School Bangkok in 1983.[6] He has three sisters.[7] A former US citizen,[8] he gained Burmese citizenship in 2011 and is now a Myanmar national.[9]

Thant earned a BSc in government and economics from Harvard University, an MA in international relations and international economics from Johns Hopkins University, and his PhD in history from Cambridge University in 1996. From 1994 to 1999, he was a junior research fellow (similar to postdoctoral researcher in the United States) of Trinity College, Cambridge,[10] where he was a Burmese language teacher.

Thant is married to Sofia Busch.[11] He has a son, Thurayn-Harri, born in 1999 to Hanna Guðrún, a native of Iceland.[12][13]

Career

He has served on three UN peacekeeping operations. He first served as a human rights officer from 1992 to 1993 at the UN Transitional Authority for Cambodia in Phnom Penh. In 1994, he was the chief spokesman for the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia, based in Sarajevo. In 1996, he was a political adviser in the Office of the UN's Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.[14]

In 2000, he joined the UN Secretariat in New York. He worked first at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, then at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs, and at the Policy Planning Unit as a chief in 2004.[15] During this time, he was a member of the secretariat of the Secretary-General's Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (High Level Threat Panel).[16] From the late 2005 to early 2006, he was briefly a senior officer at the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.[17]

Aside from being chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust, he was, from 2011 to 2015, a member of the National Economic and Social Advisory Council,[18] special adviser to the Myanmar government for the peace process at the Myanmar Peace Centre, senior research fellow of the Myanmar Development Resources Institute, and member of the Fund Board of the (Myanmar) Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund.[19][20][21]

During a December 2019 book tour in the US, Thant expressed his forebodings about Myanmar's future. In an interview with Singapore's The Straits Times, Thant remarked that the threat of climate change made him pessimistic about the country's future. "I think whatever we think of the [Myanmar's] ledger in general, perhaps it comes to 50/50," he said. "When you add on what is almost certainly going to be the impact of global climate change on Burma, I think it's hard to be too optimistic right now."[22]

Works

Thant has written opt-in pieces for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times[23] the International Herald Tribune, the London Review of Books,[24] the New Statesman, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Time[25] and The Times Literary Supplement. His book, The River of Lost Footsteps was on India's Monster and Critics' non-fiction bestsellers list for the fourth week of October 2007.[26] He was awarded the "Asia Pacific Awards" (Asian Affairs Research Council and Mainichi Newspapers) "Special Prize" in November 2014 for Where China Meets India.[27] His latest book, The Hidden History of Burma was released in November 2019.

  • Thant Myint-U (12 November 2019). The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century (1st ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-1324003298.[28]
  • Thant Myint-U (18 September 2018). Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374533526.
  • Thant Myint-U (8 January 2008). The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374531164.
  • Thant Myint-U (26 March 2001). The Making of Modern Burma (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521799140.

Awards

For his efforts to preserve Yangon's colonial buildings, he was named by the Foreign Policy magazine as one of the "100 Leading Global Thinkers" in its annual list in 2013.[29][30] He was voted 15th in Prospect magazine's annual online poll of the "World's Leading Thinkers" in 2014 in a list which feature many notable Indians including Kaushik Basu.[31]He received Fukuoka Prize in 2015 awarded by the city of Fukuoka.[32] In 2018, he received Padma Shri, the fourth-ranked civilian award in India.[33]

gollark: Yep!
gollark: ~~brainf\*\*\* with weird numbers~~
gollark: Stick it in the license.
gollark: ***evil***
gollark: We must kill all undefined.

References
  1. Siddhartha Deb, "Where China Meets India", The Guardian, 19 August 2011
  2. "Thant Myint-U, Amish Tripathi rule book charts". The Times of India.
  3. See for example John Lancaster, "Walled Off: Can Burma Escape Its History?", The New Yorker, 11 December 2006
    Nicholas Shakespeare, "Burma: A Poisoned Shangri-la", The Sunday Telegraph, 11 March 2007
    Su Lin Lewis, "Meteoric Fall", Times Literary Supplement, 13 April 2007.
  4. "Historic Yangon cityscape thrown a lifeline". Mmtimes.com. Archived from the original on 2 October 2013. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
  5. "Thant Myint-U interview". thegreglowe.com. 2008-03-11. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  6. Kayleigh. "ISB Alumni Spotlight: Thant Myint-U". blog.isb.ac.th (in Thai). Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  7. Myint-U, Thant. The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma (preface).
  8. "Thant Myint-U". Intelius. May 23, 2020.
  9. "Amazon.com: Thant Myint-U: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle". www.amazon.com. Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  10. Profile, trin-webtest.trin.cam.ac.uk; accessed 2 July 2015.
  11. Myint-U, Thant (2019-11-12). The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-1-324-00330-4.
  12. "Sigrún Finnbogadóttir". www.mbl.is (in Icelandic). Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  13. Myint-U, Thant (2007-05-15). The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-70790-3.
  14. Thant Myint-U and Elizabeth Sellwood, "Knowledge and Multilateral Interventions: The UN's Experiences and Cambodia and Bosnia-Herzegovina", Royal Institute of International Affairs (2000)
  15. United Nations Department of Political Affairs website; accessed 2 July 2015.
  16. "Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel". Un.org. Retrieved 11 August 2012.
  17. "Interview with Thant Myint-U by James S. Sutterlin". 1998-07-01. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  18. "New govt advisory body takes shape". Mmtimes.com. Archived from the original on 13 January 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2012.
  19. "Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund". Lift-fund.net. Archived from the original on 21 June 2012. Retrieved 11 August 2012.
  20. Profile Archived 2009-04-29 at the Wayback Machine, ipacademy.org; accessed 2 July 2015.
  21. "CSEAS Seminar - Thant Myint-U - The Failure of International Policy Towards Burma". www.soas.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-21.
  22. Ghosh, Nirmal (9 December 2019). "Myanmar running out of time to cope with climate change, warns historian Thant Myint-U". The Straits Times. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
  23. Myint-U, Thant (14 October 2007). "Saving Burma the right way". Los Angeles Times.
  24. Thant Myint-U (8 February 2007). "What to do about Burma". London Review of Books. 29 (3): 31–33. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
  25. Myint-U, Thant (30 August 2007). "From Bad to Worse". Time.
  26. "Reader favourites this week: Thant Myint-U and Doris Lessing". Monsters and Critics. 25 October 2007. Archived from the original on 1 May 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
  27. "Thant Myint-U｜Laureates". Fukuoka Prize (in Japanese). Retrieved 2017-10-21.
  28. Marston, Hunter; Kurlantzick, Joshua. "A Review of "The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century"". Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Asia Unbound. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
  29. Profile, Foreign Policy; accessed 2 July 2015.
  30. Profile, prospectmagazine.co.uk; accessed 2 July 2015.
  31. "World's Leading Thinkers", Prospect; accessed 2 July 2015.
  32. https://thewire.in/4399/japans-fukuoka-prize-for-ramachandra-guha/
  33. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-01-26. Retrieved 2018-01-25.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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