This is pretty interesting. Friend of Sikh Swim Narinder Singh is featured in the Sept 29, 2009 issue of Newsweek. You can seen the article here.

My Turn: Standing Up for the Truth

I enjoy Narinder’s stand-up comedy and I deeply respect him for being excellent at the world’s most difficult art form (comedy, that is). In fact, Narinder, if you are reading, I have a video of you from that recent coalition event if you want to see it!

Articles like this are the best kind of publicity we can get as Sikhs. I especially like Narinder’s commentary that:

Yet religious symbols don’t always serve as a catalyst for truthful living. Wearing one for the sake of wearing it reduces religion to superstition.

Very true. May we all live with purpose and direction in our lives — and may we take daily steps toward a state of higher consciousness through our actions.

I’m watching this now — it looks like they’re going back and forth about “why” this movie was titled the way it was. Sure sure — I know that this title was chosen to generate “dialog” — but we forget about the untold masses of Americans who will never see the movie, will never think about ‘dialog’, but will just hear of the movie and then have a new word to call the Sikh boy in 4th grade. As Rajdeep clearly says, “it will normalize and legitimize the slur.” Sure, it will spur dialog, but only among the people who want to watch this movie. It’s sort of like the academic elite is like, “look, we’re creating dialog,” but what they’re actually doing is equipping people with a new slur. The author even admits that a lot of people didn’t know what ‘towelhead’ meant.

Update:
It is to be noted, however, that the director and author pair, Alan Ball and Alicia Erian, had a dialog with SALDEF and posted it on the official website. That’s something positive.

So the idea behind Sikh Social News is simple. If you see a news story you like, just submit it at news.sikhswim.com. If you like a story on the site, you can ‘upvote’ it and then it stays on the front page. This is how sites like Digg and Reddit work. The site automatically grabs posts from a few popular blogs. But try it out — if we get a bunch of people using it, it will take on a life of it’s own.

Many of you have commented that I often just post a link or a one-line message with a link. Well I’m slowly changing that (see some recent posts) and I’m going to start posting the one-liners on Sikh Social News because it’s so easy to do. Give it a shot too!

We just launched news.sikhswim.com. It’s a blog aggregator / voting site similar to digg or reddit — with the caveat that it auto-loads the RSS feeds of popular Sikh-related blogs. Check it.

Good stuff, perhaps I will check it out. These courses are taught by Bhai Baldeep Singh and Dr. Gurnaam Singh, so it’s serious stuff and they are for-credit courses as well.

The first course will be taught by Bhai Baldeep Singh (Delhi, India), a 13th generation Sikh Kirtan exponent (vocalist, percussionist, string player), Instrument Maker, Lecturer, Archivist, and founder of ANAD Conservatory: An Institute of Sikh Aesthetics and Culture. The second course will be taught by Dr. Gurnam Singh, a Performer of Gurmat Sangeet, and Chair of Sikh Music at Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab, India, and author of a series of influential books and articles, with two decades of experience in research and teaching). The courses are being sponsored by an Endowment gifted by Dr. Hakam Singh to establish a Chair in Sikh Music at Hofstra University in conjunction with the HCLAS. A key attraction for each course will be a public concert that each Instructor will perform (see the concerts).

These two chairs, the Bindra Chair in Sikh Studies, and the future Sardarni Harbans Kaur Chair in Sikh Musicology, alongside subsequent workshops, lectures series, and a developing curriculum, will make Hofstra University’s Religion Department unique in the world, promoting a locus dedicated to the exploration and advancement of the study of the Sikh tradition from religious, philosophical as well as aesthetic and performative perspectives.

Full Details at Credit Courses - Sikh Studies

Congrats to Anisha Kaur, who won the staff recognition award at the University of Connecticut for her outstanding work over the last five years as an academic advisor.

Full story: UConn Kicks off School Year With Celebration

Academic advisor Anisha Chanana is receiving the staff recognition award this year. Chanana advises hundreds of students a year and administers the Links program, which is intended to get struggling students off academic probation.

But for Chanana, 28, the recognition is bittersweet. After five years as an academic advisor at UConn Stamford, and after being nominated every year for the University of Connecticut’s advisor of the year award, Chanana is leaving UConn next Friday to get married and move to Canada.

Congrats on the wedding as well, Anisha! And thanks, Sachdeep, for the tip.

Speaking of the Sikh Research Institute, they recently reported on Arpinder Kaur, a pilot for American Airlines. The SikhRI Press Release is titled “First Turbaned Sikh Pilot In America.” Congrats Arpinder Kaur! You’re well on your way to being the first Captain!

The Sikh Research Institute is proud to share the news that Kaur is now the first turbaned Sikh pilot to fly for a commercial airline in the United States. “Two of the reasons I did this were: first, my love of flying and, second, to set a precedent for the community so they know you can be in your Sikh appearance and do anything out there; so that my younger brothers and sisters [the rising generation] will pursue their passions while practicing their Sikh faith,” Kaur said.

I remember meeting Arpinder Kaur a few years ago at a retreat in Portland, where she shared her vision of being a Sikh pilot. True to her word, she’s achieved it! Here’s a YouTube video by friend of sikhswim Raj Singh:

And here’s the full press release.

So something totally random and cool happened recently. The Sikhs on the Canadian Olympic team all donned “Canadian Red” turbans for the opening ceremony. Unfortunately I haven’t found many great pictures of the occurrence — just this one featured on sikhchic. Way to show your pride for your country and your roots.

This is the first in a series of quick updates. Quite a bit has happened since I last posted!

So Sarika Singh, a British Sikh girl who was not allowed to wear her Kara because it fell outside the bounds of her school uniform, took her case to the High Court in England and won.

Pretty cool. The following article includes a detailed timeline. Thanks Wales Online!
Sarika Allowed Back to School After Bangle Victory

Rajdeep Singh talks about the Disney Case on the Interfaith Alliance’s weekly program, “State of Belief.”

He touches on some of the ignorance shown among regular Americans regarding the case:

“One person said something to the effect that he’d be happy to shave off Sukhbir’s head himself, for someone to suggest [this, it's] an attack on deeply held religious beliefs.”

And he makes a great point about “the Disney look”:

When Disney tells somebody they don’t have the disney look, that’s akin to saying they don’t have the American look — and that raises a very fundamental question, which is, what an American is supposed to look like?

You can listen below — forward to 2:50 You can find the same clip on the State of Belief website. Nice work Rajdeep!