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Name order?

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In the library entry at UCB and for the publication with her mentor her name is listed as Gopalan Shyamala. Libraries can err too, however. --WiseWoman (talk) 22:51, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WiseWoman, Gopalan is her surname, you can refer her father name also. Its seems okay, there should not an issue. Rashid Jorvee (talk) 06:22, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Her name is most likely G. Shyamala. Several publications list it to be that. In Tamil culture, if the father's name is John Smith and the daughter's is Jane, then her full name is written as S. Jane, and she is referred to as Jane, or Ms Jane, but never Jane Smith or Ms Smith (for the latter is her mother's name). Further, if S. Jane marries M. Brown, and has a daughter who is named Mary, then this daughter, i.e. J. Smith's granddaughter, will be referred to as, "B. Mary," where B = Brown; and the naming continues in such fashion. No family name passes from generation to generation.
Who changed her name to "Shyamala Gopalan?" This is not clear to me. She died in 2009; in 1999 (in a scholarly article authored by her) and in 2002 (in a grant proposal to the US Army Medical Research Command in which she was listed as a principal investigator), i.e. seven years before her death, she is listed as "G. Shyamala." In 2002, in a journal article co-authored by her she is listed as Gopalan Shyamala. On the web page of a former student, now a physician, who worked in her lab between 2006 and 2008, i.e. until a year before her death, she is listed as G. Shyamala-Harris. On another former student's web page, she is again listed as G. Shyamala Harris. On grant proposals, especially to federal agencies, you have to write your full name in the correct order. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:32, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Surely the way she wrote her own name, and had it written in journals, should take precedence over how her students listed her name on their web pages. Is there any evidence she ever used the surname Harris? SilverCobweb (talk) 02:44, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some other articles in which she is listed as G. Shyamala:

The sum total of this evidence, makes me suspect two things:

    • In the account of the daughter (Kamala Harris), she, Shyamala, has been turned into much more of an activist, in part, perhaps, because KH might not understand the depth of her mother's scholarly contributions, and in part because it might fit into a "fighter" narrative that is useful for a politician. The evidence seems to show to me that she was a serious scholar, and a prolific one. This does not mean that the mother was not the activist, but that I'm hard-pressed to find evidence of said activism in contemporaneous accounts.
    • That her name has been changed in popular accounts to "Shymala Gopalan" very likely because it fits comfortably into the western naming system, in which the grandfather P. V. Gopalan has the same last name as her. Her name as far as I can tell is G. Shyamala, not even Gopalan Shyamala, because in the traditional Tamil naming system your father's name (Gopalan) would never be used in addressing you. I'm conflicted about broaching this topic; obviously, I'm no "birther" type, but want to give her mother the respect that accuracy grants. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:53, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • David Eppstein might want to weigh in here. He has majorly edited Donald J. Harris's WP page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:18, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • I edited Harris's page because I am interested in academic deletion discussions, not out of any political connection. I am also interested more generally in women in STEM fields, but primarily mathematics and computer science; biology is a bit far afield from where I'm comfortable. I am also not much of an expert on this style of Indian name (beyond having some idea that the first of the two names is a parent's personal name rather than a surname and is often abbreviated, and that the second of the two names is a personal name not a surname). But I checked several of her academic publications with dates ranging from 1979 to 2002 (the top five hits on Google Scholar for author:shyamala-gopalan) and they all spelled out her name as Gopalan Shyamala. Perhaps in her native culture it would more typically be written "G. Shyamala" but, given that the spelled-out version is the form she chose to use professionally, I think that's the order we should use. Trying to Westernize it as "Shyamala Gopalan" is wrong, because it's not the name she used and because Gopalan is not a surname. I have no particular knowledge or opinion about whether she was much of an activist or notable as an activist, but her scholarly citations are sufficient for notability as a researcher (I'm not so sure that "cancer researcher" is accurate, though; one of her well-cited works is on cancer but others are on steroid hormone receptors). —David Eppstein (talk) 23:36, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
          • The reason why there was a large diasporic Tamil population in British service in Delhi was the anti-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu - (see here for instance) - and part of the movement's outcome was that caste surnames like "Iyer" and "Iyengar" were replaced with patronyms (or sometimes toponyms). In normal usage they would have put their father's name as an initial but in official documents such as in passport applications they would likely have put their father's name as a substitute surname or confusingly expanded the initials - her own usage clearly varied in documents - see [1] p. 43, reversed in p. 67, p. 84 noted as "née Gopalan", p. 90 first name:Gopalan, last name:Shyamala until her marriage when she seems to have put it somewhat more consistently in as a middle name. Given the current context in which this article is of interest, I tend to think that the current page title of "Shyamala Gopalan" should be retained despite the way she filled some US forms or gave her name in scientific publications (as F&F says above because it fits the "western naming system"). Shyamal (talk) 08:42, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indo-American

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Indo-American, really??? Nobody uses that term. Indo-american redirects to Indian American but is nowhere mentioned at that article. Indian American would be possible, but South Asian American is more commonly used - and is how her daughter Kamala Harris describes herself. If no one objects I am going to change this to South Asian American of Tamil descent. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:23, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good, MelanieN Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:29, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In part to stop the constant edit warring by IPs, I'm happy to fully support—and will now (re-)enforce—this consensus for "South Asian American" since its both the least ambiguous term and most oft-used in the U.S. (this article being written in Am-E), despite my being the editor who changed it from "Indian American" to "Indo-American" (a term that, despite what you claim has long been mentioned in the lede of Indian American). Being British, I wasn't familiar with "South Asian American" as an option, and as I said in my edit summary, it 'distinguishes from "Native Indian" Americans'.
Llew Mawr (talk) 11:59, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Please there is no reason to use South Asian American unless it is in the context of a "first." On KH, we don't say, "... is a South Asian American politician and lawyer ..." Indo-American or Indian American, of course, are imprecise. See Indian Americans#Terminology. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:40, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A South Asia American could be someone whose ancestors were from Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Afghanistan, even the Maldives. The term covers a wider area, apt for firsts, but not precise. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:43, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine. I agree (and made much the same point in my comment on my first edit on this page, which you reverted the opposite way). In hindsight, my recent and your prior edits also go against WP:ETHNICITY by mentioning it in the lead section. But IPs (who don't look at this page or the edit history) keep reverting to "Indian American" or similar (even though the lead sentence already mentions she is Indian-born), so I went here to see the consensus. Llew Mawr (talk) 15:53, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
:) I forget what other people have written, what I have written, and lord knows what else. I agree with WP:Ethnicity generally, but a simple mention of the land of birth is not POV, in my view. I make a similar point at Talk:DJH. It is acknowledging the spawning ground, not much more. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:39, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
When did Shyamala become an American? ThomasFAnderson (talk) 21:07, 21 November 2020 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by ThomasFAnderson (talk • contribs) 19:43, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't found any evidence she did. Page 9 of https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/foia/Shyamala_Gopalan_Harris.pdf shows she applied for permanent residency (green card) in January 1968, and was granted it April 1968 (page 3) meaning she couldn't qualify earlier than April 1973. If someone thinks she was later granted citizenship that would be where you'd begin to look for evidence. She divorced Donald J. Harris in 1970 so they would not be married by the time she might have applied. Donald apparently did become an American citizen but it's unclear when. The May 2015 archive of his Stanford profile lists him as a dual citizen: https://web.archive.org/web/20150405060406/https://web.stanford.edu/~dharris/professional_career.htm though I haven't seen papers like in the PDF of the FOIA for Shyamala. WakandaQT (talk) 20:40, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
She would have lost her Green Card by working in Canada for 16 years if she was not a citizen. 140.141.193.158 (talk) 07:24, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Career timeline

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I believe the sentence For her last decade of research, Shyamala worked in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. is based on a misreading from the subject's obituary. In her San Francisco Chronicle obituary, it says, "Shyamala spent her early career conducting research at Berkeley's Dept of Zoology and Cancer Research Lab. She returned to the U.C. campus for the last decade of her work at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab." which I believe is referring to where she worked for her last decade with Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and not her last decade of research in her career. She subsequently moved to Montreal and had a 16-year tenure in a research and teaching position at the Jewish General Hospital. With her daughter Kamala graduating in 1981 after five years [2], she would have arrived in approximately 1976, and so was in Montreal at least until 1992. Can anyone find any citations regarding the timeline of the subject's career subsequent to her move to Montreal? isaacl (talk) 16:39, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

She returned to Livermore after Montreal. I'm strapped for time, but I think that SF Chronicle obit is a paid obit, not really citable on WP. That whole section needs to be fixed. Thanks for posting. If you can fix it (use this source, which I believe has some info), please do. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:47, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the cite; it does indicate a subsequent return to Lawrence Berkeley which means the obituary from the Chronicle really did mean the last decade of research in her career. isaacl (talk) 17:00, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

can we make references more concise

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the 25 October 2019 piece from LA Times by Mason and Bengali is cited TEN distinct times by my counting...

While I realize this is probably done because each reference is citing different portions of the piece, I'm wondering if perhaps there is some way we could consolidate this where we only list the piece once, but still have different reference tags for different quoted portions? WP:ILCLUTTER and all that.

I guess the problem with WP:CITESHORT is it's intended for page numbers which online articles tend to lack. But I think perhaps we could still list it by paragraph. I'll give that a shot. 64.228.90.251 (talk) 01:59, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The way I see it, all of these individual references to the same Los Angeles Times article, each including a substantial quotation from the LAT, together amount to a copyright violation of that article. My quick count is that the reference section now includes 27 sentences from the LAT article, and I think that is excessive. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 02:26, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The quotes did their work and are no longer needed, and I see that Dianaa has already removed them. They were put there at a time of much traffic and some edit-warring in the article. It is an old practice of mine employed in controversial articles until they quieten down. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:22, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The quotes are still visible in the page history, and the source article is still available online. So the quotes are not needed any more. I have consolidated the duplicate citations to streamline the cites.— Diannaa (talk) 15:27, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I understand. You are right they were a little over the top—in length. You are right too that they are in the record; however, pointing to a record is usually ineffective in the heat of POV battles. And, you have to keep intervening. When the sources are there, in plain sight of both belligerents, they are a good deterrent. Anyway, I think we are past that stage. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:25, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Harris surname use

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shyamala_harris@lbl.gov was listed as her e-mail from 2004 to 2019

Melanie Maykin wrote in 2015

2006 - 2008 Research on sex steroids and receptors in the induction of mammary cancers. Research assistant, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, Dr. G. Shyamala-Harris Lab.

Elizabeth Vargis wrote in 2019

I received a BS in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley, while working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab with Dr. G. Shyamala Harris. I then moved south

This collectively seems to indicate she used the Harris surname long past divorcing Donald in 1971, possibly for the benefit of identifying with her daughters? This makes me wonder if she ever actually changed her name after the divorce at all. If she didn't then Shyamala Harris might always have been her legal name (no change after divorce) with G. Shyamala being a pen name she used for her scientific papers?

The February 2004 archive is a month after Kamala became 27th District Attorney of San Fran (~7yrs before Attorney General of Cali, 13 yrs before Senator) does anyone know if there are any pre-2004 archives showing continued use of the Harris surname? WakandaQT (talk) 16:04, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As you will see in the history of the page, I had originally added: professionally, Gopalan Shyamala, G. Shyamala, or G. Shyamala Harris. Someone removed it. Please read the history; if the reasons seem insubstantial, please reinstate my initial edit. (The email, I wouldn't put too much stock in it. People get an email and sometimes keep it come hell or high water. Laziness. Intertia. Ease of continuity. All of the above?) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:18, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring about Afro-American Association

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An editor Jqat (talk · contribs) with less than 10 edits on Wikipedia (though the first two in 2018) has been edit warring about two issues: a) the mention of "brahmin" in Shymala's early history and b) the mention of "Afro-American Association" (AAA) as the name of the study group in which Shyamala and Donald J. Harris first met. The "brahmin" descriptor for the family is widely used now, so I won't address it here, but here is the evidence for AAA: The New York Times article by Ellen Barry, which I had cited says,

"At an off-campus space at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1962, a tall, thin Jamaican Ph.D. student addressed a small crowd, drawing parallels between his native country and the United States. .. Members of the study group that drew them together in 1962, known as the Afro American Association, would help build the discipline of Black studies, introduce the holiday of Kwanzaa and establish the Black Panther Party."

Later, when talking about Shyamala's arrival in Berkeley in the fall of 1959, the article also says,

Shyamala Gopalan fell into important friendships at Berkeley right away. As she stood in line to register for classes, in the fall of 1959, the person standing behind her was Cedric Robinson, a Black teenager from Oakland. ... They would both become part of a Black intellectual study group that met in the off-campus house of Mary Agnes Lewis, an anthropology student. The group, later known as the Afro American Association, was “the most foundational institution in the Black Power movement,” said Ms. Murch, who devotes two chapters to it in her book."

My interpretation of this was that Shymala began to attend the study group's meetings before it had the formal name, but by the time of DJH's talk in the fall of 1962, it did have a name, i.e. AAA. There is some independent evidence for this in:

  • Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. (2005). Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 126–. ISBN 978-0-8018-8275-3. which states:

    the Afro-American Association (AAA) ... emerged out of a reading group founded by several graduate and professional schoo] students at the University of California at Berkeley in 1961. ... By the beginning of 1962 the reading group had begun to meet at Downs Memorial Methodist Church and sponsored Monday night lectures that brought up to 200 people each week. The meetings attracted many from the Oakland area who were growing disenchanted with the largely slapdash local black organizations. Local young people like Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Ernest Allen, Willie Brown, and Ron Dellums attended lectures and readings hosted by the Afro-American Association, as it was called by March 1962."

    So, when Donald J. Harris gave his talk in the fall of 1962, immediately after which he met Gopalan Shyamala, the reading group already had a name, @Jqat:. It was: the Afro-American Association. Pinging @MelanieN: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:22, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Height

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I included a reference to an interview Wanda Kagan provided to the CBC, on 2020-11-07. She described living in Shyamala's home, for the remainder of her senior year, when Kamala told Shyamala that Kagan's step-father was molesting her. Shyamala insisted. Shyamala helped her "navigate the system", which I think meant connecting her with social services. Kagan was still very grateful, 40 years later...

Anyhow, she mentioned that Shyamala was less than five feet tall. I don't know under what circumstances that might merit mention in the article, but it is documentable. Geo Swan (talk) 05:00, 8 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the Wanda Kagan story. As for the height, if it turns out Shyamala played basketball with a special skill, a dunk unconnected to donuts, an enviable hang time, it might matter. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:43, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This page is about Harris's mother, not her grandfather

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This page is about Shyamala Gopalan, KH's mother. It should not be used to open all the trapdoors to her bottomless past, and thereby exaggerate the notability of those encountered.

KH's grandfather PV Gopalan did not go to college. He started life as a stenographer, became an assistant in the Central Secretariat Service (formerly the Imperial Secretariat Service), consisting of support staff in India's bureaucracy. He rose through the ranks to become a middle-level Indian bureaucrat. (He was most certainly not in the Indian Civil Service, the steel frame of the Empire, nor its post-colonial successor, the Indian Administrative Service. As the LA Times article clearly says, he never participated in India's independent movement; he couldn't, as it quotes his relatives, he would have lost his job in a heartbeat.)

In the last few years of his service, he was given an appointment in newly post-colonial Zambia, after which he lived out his golden years in Madras, in a middle-class Brahmin neighborhood, going for morning strolls with other retirees and every few years giving expansive talks on the Madras beach about India's independent movement and post-colonial prospects to his impressionable American granddaughter who was visiting.

There are hundreds (more likely thousands) of bureaucrats like that in India, living or having lived unremarkable lives, whose grandchildren later appeared on the American shores also living unremarkable lives, non-notable for Wikipedia's purposes. Kamala Harris's is a uniquely American story. She has created a glowing backdrop to that story. We cannot employ that backdrop to give independent notability to her relatives. I won't edit war with the IP, but please note, PV Gopalan was for the most part a low- to middle-level Indian bureaucrat, quite unremarkable for WP without KH. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:15, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Fowler&fowler is wrong. When you have a PhD, your expertise is in one field/subject not everything that comes about and you have no knowledge about federal civil services or state civil services.
  • Do you have any proof or information or transcript of PV Gopalan that shows he does not have a college degree. As per Report of Government of India Secretariat Procedure Committee 1919, no member was recruited to Imperial Secretariat Service without a college degree. All members were very well educated. PN Kirpal who went to become Education Secretary of India was educated at Oxford and was a member of both Imperial Secretariat and Central Secretariat Service.
  • Central Secretariat Service is a Group A (Class 1) and Group B (Class 2) under Central Civil Services. All Central Civil Services have both Group A and B. In the All India Services, there are both direct recruits and promotees from class 2 State Civil Services and also Non State Civil Services.
  • Central Secretariat Service is the permanent bureaucracy and backbone of the Central/federal Government of India. It has 12,500 (as of now) personnel and has the largest cadre strength among all civil services in India. The second would be Indian Revenue Service which as 9500 or 10k personnel among its cadre strength. IAS only has 4500.
  • Central Secretariat Service is not just lower or middle manegement. Members of this service are known to be outstanding and have been empanelled/promoted and posted as Secretary to the Government of India. People such as AJ Kidwai (Information Secretary), PN Kirpal (Education Secretary), Hari Sharma, D.B. Singh, MP Singh all went on to get this rank. There are many more since 1946 from the creation of this service. N. R. Madhava Menon is father of law education in India and Gautam Sanyal is Principal Secretary of a state in India.
  • Indian Administrative Service has direct recruits but also it has promotees from Class 2 State Civil Service as well as Non State Civil Services who get promoted at the fag end of their career. All Central Services have both Group A and Group B and All India Services also have promotees in their services.
  • In regards to British Indian Civil Service (ICS), Indians were only eligible for uncovenented part which was the lower posts like District Collector. The higher position which were convenented were exclusive for white British born citizen to rule and plunder India. ICS started to open up higher post for Indians only when India was near to 1945 and country was becoming a sovereign free independent country.
  • Last of all, the rank and post of Joint Secretary to Government of India (PV Gopalan's last posting in India) is equivalent to rank and post of Major General in Indian Armed Forces and this is recognised by Government of India. A joint secretary (GOI) in charge of Administration also exercises all administrative powers as head of the department wing of the ministry/department. A rank like this can't be middle management in any country.
    • One more thing, if it were not for PV Gopalan, his advice, his liberal attitude and his savings money and what not, there is no way without him, his daughter Shyamala would have ended up in US. Kamala Harris is also pretty clear on the fact that she was raised by a single mother (father divorced early) and her fatherly figure in her life was her grandfather without whom she wouldn't have entered public service in USA. She envies the fact that her grandfather served as Joint Secretary and was a career civil servant.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.202.28.118 (talk) 17:15, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, F&F, I'm no expert, but I think you are probably overstating the middle-management bit. He had a pretty respectable career. Especially in those days, the Indian civil service (broadly construed) was extremely large ansd extremely powerful, in ways Americans probably find hard to understand as their system is so different. So I don't think a little on him is undue. Johnbod (talk) 17:45, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
IP All the pages you mention above say in the very first sentence ---- is the --- of Adolf Hitler/Barack Obama/Donald Trump. In the instance of P. V. Gopalan, we have an article begun by a banned puppeteer in April 2020—after the buzz around KH's potential VP nomination had begun to grow—and Gopalan's major claim to notability, his relation to KH, goes unmentioned in the lead. Johnbod I have to do some rummaging in the sources. Will get back. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:57, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How does it matter if it has been from a banned puppeteer. Wikipedia is a free encyclopaedia. Anyone is free to edit, with or without account. I personally hate when administrators play politics, territory domination, petty blocks and.bansnon many connections and banning accounts. People who are aggressive about blocking should have conditions put on them for not making Wikipedia free go edit. We anyways have Briticanna and others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.225.56.7 (talk) 21:14, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Sorry I meant sock puppeteer above.) IP, Why do you need to cite to me educational prerequisites for a bureaucratic appointment? If PVG completed a BA at a college, please tell me which year, which college, and which university. You are not suggesting that with all the attention being paid to KH in India these days, no college has claimed PVG for their own? Hard to believe.

Johnbod: I know you said, "broadly construed," but here is what I found out for my own edification. PV Gopalan was in the Central Secretariat Service; see page 257, right-hand column, which is not the Indian Civil Service (ICS).

The bureaucratic hierarchy in an Indian ministry (cabinet department) seems to be: 1. Secretary, or Special Secretary, 2. Additional Secretary, 3. Joint Secretary (JS) 4. Deputy Secretary, 5. Under Secretary, ... Those in the ICS (drafted before 1947) in the early post-colonial cadres of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) are in a different kettle of notability. (See below)

PVG became a Joint Secretary sometime after 1963, for in that year, as a Deputy Secretary, he had written this notice (p 291, right-hand column) in the Gazette of India for Dharam Vira, an ICS man and the Secretary in his department. By 1966, after having become a Joint Secretary, he left India's government service to take up an appointment by deputation in newly independent Zambia (see here in the Gazette of India, 1966, left-hand column, p 154.)

How many JS's were there in the mid-1960s when PVG became one? Well, according to Joint_secretary_to_the_Government_of_India#History, in 1946, just before India's independence, there were 25 Joint Secretaries. According to Joint_secretary_to_the_Government_of_India#Reforms_and_challenges, in 2015, or thereabouts, there were 341 Joint Secretaries. (In the mid-1960s, there were 15 government ministries in India (according to the this report in the New York Times.) Summing all this information, it is reasonable to infer that in the mid-1960s there were between 30 and 45 Joint Secretaries, and probably more. We are talking about a big, big, bureaucracy, in which there have been hundreds of JS's since 1947.

As for the Secretaries (the topmost bureaucratic position holders in a cabinet department in India's government), I'm listing some ICS men from the mid-1960s: Dharam Vira, already mentioned above, (who is described as a politician), Y. D. Gundevia, Vishnu Sahay, Jagdish Chandra Mathur (who had a second career as a Hindi writer), or Nirmal Kumar Mukarji. There seem to be other ICS (or pre-1947 IAS) men such as P. C. Matthew or Raja Roy-Singh (see also here) for whom we don't have WP pages (not that it is PV Gopalan's fault). PVG does not have their level of professional notability

I think we should at least mention in PVG's lead—and probably in the lead sentence—that he is Kamala Harris's grandfather. Without her, what we have is a slow unremarkable rise (for India's upper-class, though not for India's population) from this position in 1950 to this position in 1966

Anyway, I've already spent more time than I wanted to. My heart is really not in this. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:39, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Nobody has a heart in this but Fowler&fowler wanted an extensive debate and talk on this on the "Talk Page". Also, you also deleted something that some other person posted so you could have your agenda ahead and show your admin status here. Anyways, I needed to go into some details in history.
  • Civil Service is a fancy word for Public Service. It is an appointment to work for Government based on professional merit rather than some elitist family or whatever you are talking about.
  • During the British rule, there were 4 Imperial Services to rule Indian subcontinent - Imperial Civil Service, Imperial Secretariat Service, Imperial Police Service and Imperial Forest Service (article for this does not exist).
  • Even though I do not have a formal degree in history, I am a voracious reader in the subject of history and have an unbiased view. The worst thing that happened to Indian subcontinent was the British rule. As the academics and scholars have now pointed out that Britain stole $45 trillion from India (https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india). This couldn't have happened if the District Collectors appointed from Imperial Civil Service were not destroying the landlords and implementing Zamindari system all across India. By the virtue of Indian history, ICS officers will be seen as traitors who worked for the welfare of the British Crown. Land revenue system destroyed India.
  • Additionally, in 1945 all serving ICS members did not join/migrate to the Indian Administrative Service. Many ended their careers in 1945 and refused to join the new IAS. They simply couldn't see how IAS was equal to British ICS.
  • In regards to Imperial Secretariat Service, as I earlier said appointment to the service required a formal exam and also formal education and college degree was required. Most Imperial Services members were either educated in India or UK. Prem Nath Kirpal (PN Kirpal) who went on to become Education Secretary of India was a member of the Central Secretariat Service. His son Bhupinder Nath Kirpal went onto become 31st Chief Justice of India. Central Secretariat Service officers and their children have done pretty well for India.
  • One last and most important thing, in the Imperial Civil Service or I could say in the Central Secretariat the second highest position was Joint secretary to the Government of India. The last position that was created in civil service was Additional secretary to the Government of India. The position in ICS was 1) Secretary to Government of India; 2) Joint Secretary to Government of India; 3) Deputy Secretary; 4) Additional Deputy Secretary; 5) Under Secretary; 6) Assistant Secretary to Government of India— Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.225.57.77 (talk) 12:53, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

divorce date

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The template lists the date of divorce to Donald as 1971 but there is no source listed.

The 'personal life' section only says "early 70s" so I'm wondering about making it more specific.

"After Shyamala divorced Donald in the early 1970s" is from https://archive.md/https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-25/how-kamala-harris-indian-family-shaped-her-political-career

https://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-ca-harris-senate-20150930-story.html says "They divorced when Harris was 5" though... Kamala was born in 1964 so that makes it sound like the divorce was in 1969.

So which is it... 1969, 1970, 1971? If we could get the particular month I think that would help clarify things. WakandaQT (talk) 20:22, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fowler inserting unsourced claim of American citizenship

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@Fowler&fowler: why in special:diff/1060817161 did you insert the claim that Shyamala is American when we only have an article source supporting her being granted permanent residency in April 1968?

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/foia/Shyamala_Gopalan_Harris.pdf (pg 3)

Unless you can supply a source asserting she is an American citizen, there is no precedent for describing her as being an American citizen.

Please remove your unsourced additions to this page, unless they are accompanied by reliable sources backing them up.

It is WP:OR to claim Shyamala is an American citizen without supplying a source for it. WakandaQT (talk) 21:28, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There are many ways to skin the birther cat. Per MOS:OPENPARABIO, the lead sentence should provide the "Context (location, nationality, etc.) for the activities that made the person notable." Obviously, nationality did not make her notable. Location did, especially her last at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she did her path-breaking research. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:21, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Your asserting that Shyamala's nationality is not notable doesn't explain why you keep calling her American w/o sourcing it. Please stop inserting unsourced speculation. The only things we have sourced are that she had Indian citizenship (no indication she renounced it so why do you keep removing that?) and that she got her green card in April 1968.

Yeah in all likelyhood she probably became a citizen sometime in the 70s or 80s but you still need to actually find a source to support the information. WakandaQT (talk) 22:30, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, I did not notice that American had snuck into the infobox. Removed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:22, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Indian ocean waters

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@MagicatthemovieS: "Waters," in the "Death" section refers to a small body of water, i.e. the coastal or littoral ocean, which is about as far Kamala Harris would have gone with her mother's ashes. I've qualified it further with "coastal" and added the actual quote from the NY Times. As for the plural "waters," here's the OED: The contexts in which the plural, rather than the singular, is used are difficult to characterize; a sea, river, etc., is perhaps more likely to be referred to as consisting of waters when these are conceived as constituting a collective body, or as acting as an agency, than as a simple substance or medium. e.g. "the knife-cold waters of the Gulf of Alaska" I apologize for my impatient tone in the edit summary. I thank your bringing this up. The sentence is more accurate now. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:23, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@MagicatthemovieS:
Webster's Unabridged, 2e waters, plural, is more specific to our purpose:
(1) : a band of seawater abutting on the land of a particular sovereignty and under the control of that sovereignty : the marine territorial waters of a state <an invasion of British waters>
(2) : the sea of a particular part of the earth<the fleet was in eastern waters>
Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:33, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image

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Gopalan studied the progesterone receptor in breast cancer cells.

I've added this image, and @Fowler&fowler has removed it. I think this image helps people, particularly people with limited science education, understand that Gopalan has done lab research about breast cancer instead of treating patients with breast cancer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the section needs more description of her research. Long before an image of a cytosol stain it needs a clear description of what she did. There is no danger of anyone confusing her work with that of oncologist who sees human patients, as we do say that her work was on the "progesterone receptor gene in mice." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:40, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given the level of literacy among the general population, and speed at which some people skim through the material, I think there is some danger of confusion, and I think that having an image reduces the potential.
Many people essentially stop reading when they encounter unfamiliar words. That means that the the first sentence ("Shyamala's research led to advancements in the knowledge of hormones pertaining to breast cancer") is probably okay, because even poor readers have generally heard of hormones and breast cancer. They might think that hormones means puberty or birth control pills, but they'll have some idea.
The second sentence ("Her work in the isolation and characterization of the progesterone receptor gene in mice changed research on the hormone-responsiveness of breast tissue") rapidly reaches unfamiliar territory. We can expect that to sound like "Her work in the isolation and characterization of the something something something changed research on the I give up already" for at least some of our readers.
Also, pictures draw attention to the text, and captions are more likely to get read than the paragraphs next to them. So if you want people to actually read about her research, you need an image. (I don't care which one, so long as it's passably relevant.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, give me a couple of days. I'll try to write up something a little simpler and a little longer and find a public-domain image from her own work. You can then tell me what you think. I'll add it here first, i.e. on the talk page. Thanks for the nice explanation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:09, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be happy to have you improve the article directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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