Richard Kurin, under secretary for history, art, and culture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, sat down with the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs for a discussion on protecting cultural heritage. Kurin oversees numerous museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Museum of African Art, the National Museum of American History, …

Washington — A Mumbai slum was an exotic place to 18-year-old Shaheen Mistri when she walked into it in 1989 as part of a college project. Born into an upper-middle-class Indian family, she spent most of her early youth overseas studying at private schools and colleges. She was not naive: she knew about inequalities in India's education system. But what she saw — bright kids full of potential living …