The Buddhist Digital Resource Center Transfers Tibetan Buddhist Heritage to Harvard & Dismisses Tibetan Staff
The Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC), an organization founded by Gene Smith, run and governed by non-Tibetans but built on decades of Tibetan labor, scholarship, and interpretation, is quietly transferring its Tibetan-owned Buddhist archive to Harvard-Yenching Institute—while dismissing its long-term Tibetan staff, according to former employee Gangkar Lhamo in her Tibet Times article published on January 28, 2026.
These texts, hidden and preserved at great personal risk by Tibetan Lamas (Buddhist masters) from the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet were smuggled out and entrusted to BDRC to safeguard Tibetan heritage, are now slipping out of Tibetan control. The NGO received funding in part from the U.S. government specifically to preserve Tibetan culture. Yet BDRC’s current actions raise urgent questions about ownership, consent, and cultural authority. Preservation without Tibetan leadership is not preservation—it is dispossession.
The implications are profound. Tibetan-created, Tibetan-powered archives—produced through decades of labor, translation, and scholarly interpretation—are being absorbed into institutions accountable to non-Tibetans, while Tibetans are excluded from ownership, governance, stewardship, and decision-making. Technical or logistical explanations cannot obscure the political reality: when the community that creates heritage is excluded, preservation becomes erasure.
The stakes extend far beyond digital access. They concern who has the authority to interpret, care for, and carry forward a living intellectual tradition. When Tibetan heritage is removed from Tibetan hands and placed under institutions accountable to outsiders, neutrality is an illusion; the sidelining of the very community that created the archive is real.
The lesson is clear: Tibetan cultural and intellectual heritage cannot be protected without Tibetan-led institutions that answer directly to the community. Entrusting our most precious resources to hierarchies controlled by non-Tibetans risks removing them from Tibetan stewardship entirely.
If these allegations are accurate, legal scrutiny is warranted. Transferring Tibetan intellectual and cultural heritage without the community’s consent raises the possibility of misappropriation or theft, especially since Gene Smith wrote in his will that it was imperative for the archive to remain in Tibetan hands. With U.S. public funds having been used to preserve Tibetan culture, BDRC should be subject to legal review so that an independent process can determine whether Tibetan heritage has been wrongfully transferred.
Silence enables erasure. Tibetan reporters, scholars, and allies must bring this story into English-language media so it cannot be quietly buried. Accountability is the only way to ensure that Tibetan heritage remains in Tibetan hands.