![[upper body image of older man with silvery hair, wearing wire rimmed glasses, blue and white checked shirt, and light beige vest, standing in a veranda with brown roof in the background and green tropical leaves in the background]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/robert-thurman-from-tibet-house-us-539x373-1.jpg "Robert Thurman")
Dr. Robert Tenzin Thurman, PhD, a leading Tibetan Buddhism scholar, teacher, and author, died on June 16, 2026 at his home in Woodstock, NY. He was 84. A long time friend and Advisory Council member of Buddhist Film Foundation (BFF), he participated in several International Buddhist Film Festival programs over the years. He and the late Milton Glaser, BFF’s design director, were friends and country house neighbors.
At 24, after studying Tibetan Buddhism with pioneering Tibetan lama Geshe Wangyal in the U.S., Thurman was ordained by the 14th Dalai Lama in India, the first American to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and they remained close ever since. In 1986, together with Philip Glass and Richard Gere, they founded Tibet House US (THUS), a cultural center in New York City that continues as a key resource and advocate for Tibetan art, language, music, photography, and history, and whose popular annual benefit concert is a gathering of leading musicians at Carnegie Hall.
![[black and white upper body image of older man with spikey silvery hair, wearing wire rimmed glasses, tiny checked shirt, earset microphone on left ear, and fabric lanyard, holds up a small metal object with his right hand, bent at the elbow]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/robert-thurman-holding-dorje-bw-224x263-1.jpg)
A Harvard PhD, he was professor of religion at Amherst for fifteen years before becoming the first Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University in 1988; this was the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West. He and his wife Nena, a psychotherapist, founded Menla (Medicine Buddha) Retreat Center in Phoenicia, NY, in 2001. They raised four children, and he had a daughter from his fist marriage.
He was a translator and author of numerous books, including several seminal works. His connection to cinema was multilayered: a daughter, Uma, became an American movie star (and her daughter Maya Hawke is also an actress), and he himself appeared in a number of films in character roles. He also was cultural advisor to several feature films and television series, and participated in several documentaries. He was friends with filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who received the Tibet House Humanitarian Award, presented by Philip Glass, in recognition of his film Kundun, about the 14th Dalai Lama.
![[an older gray haired man at left in dark suit jacket with deep turquoise shirt and light red tie, and an older man in wire rimmed glasses, shaved head, and deep red robe, lean towards each other, smiling, and holding hands supporting a gold and white goblet encased in glass]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/robert-thurman-hhdl-from-international-campaign-for-tibet-539x299-1.jpg)
A lifelong advocate for Tibet, Robert Thurman received International Campaign for Tibet’s Light of Truth Award from His Holiness in 2003 in Washington, DC.
bobthurman.com
The New York Times obituary
Tibet House US
Menla
Photograph sources (top to bottom): Tibet House US, Facebook, International Campaign for Tibet
Home page photograph source: bobthurman.com
