Sikh Professor Attacked in Manhattan’s Upper West Side

[Recursion]

Source: Huffpo via the Aerogram

The Huffington Post, reports that a Sikh professor at Columbia University was attacked when walking along 110 Street and Lenox Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood Saturday night around 8:15. Dr. Prabhjot Singh is a professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University — and he was attacked by several suspects who screamed “Get Osama!” and “terrorist” at him, before knocking him down and punching him in the face. Singh is recovering from non-life-threatening injuries.

In the wake of this attack on Dr. Singh, Simran Jeet Singh has also written about visiting his colleague and friend in the hospital last night:

Last night, I received the kind of phone call that everyone dreads: a close friend was hurt, and on his way to the hospital. But the news got worse, as I learned that my friend, Dr. Prabhjot Singh, a young Sikh American professor at Columbia University, had been brutally attacked on a public street, the victim of a violent hate crime. My brother and I immediately jumped in a taxi and rushed to the hospital, where we finally saw Prabhjot being wheeled in, bloody and bruised, his face swollen from a fractured jaw. He couldn’t speak because many of his teeth had been displaced, but he waved limply to let us know that he was okay.

Last year, both co-wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about the necessity of gathering information about hate crimes against Sikhs in America.

Read more: http://theaerogram.com/breaking-sikh-professor-attacked-in-manhattan-upper-west-side-hate-crime/

---

At one point in my life I had a long rant prepared about the difference between Sikhs and Muslims, between turbans and kefiyahs. Money quote: "if you see someone with an actual turban, he's probably not a muslim and definitely not an Arab."

As I aged, I realized that's the wrong tack. You don't need that information to know not to attack people. Sigh.

[BainsBane]

1. Horrifying

Yes, they are idiots for not knowing a Sikh from a Muslim, but then anyone would would beat someone up because he is Muslim is criminally idiotic anyway.

[Recursion]

3. Well said (nt)

[DFW]

2. This man might be one of my nephew's professors

My nephew is at Columbia graduate school studying International affairs.

Ironically, this exact scenario was depicted in Spike Lee's film "Inside Man," where ignorant NY cops slammed a Sikh, thinking he was an Arab.

[Recursion]

4. I was just thinking of that

Lee really does make some amazing films. 25th Hour comes to mind here, too.

[awoke_in_2003]

10. That was a great flick..

especially the last 5 minutes or so.

[tclambert]

5. It is not OK to beat up a Muslim either.

Yeah, it adds another layer of stupidity to the hate crime that the criminals misidentified the victim. But it's still a hate crime if they had targeted a Muslim.

[Recursion]

6. Right, I realized my fallacy there

It's not as if "accurately-directed" hate crimes are somehow better

[tclambert]

7. In one "dumb criminal" story a guy thought he should get off because he shot the wrong guy.

In the tape of the interview he repeatedly says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I shot the wrong guy!" as if that should somehow erase the crime. I guess in his mind that made it just an unfortunate accident. Like he's thinking, "I meant to shoot Joey Six-fingers, not Joey Four-fingers. It was just a screw-up. So can I go now? 'Cause, ya know, Joey Six-fingers is still out there."

Right guy, wrong guy, intended target group, or unintended target group, or in this case criminals who probably have no idea what a Sikh is--still a crime. I think most criminals must have something wrong with the Predicting Consequences part of their brains.

[Bluenorthwest]

8. People are frequently victims of hate crimes the are incorrectly targeted for...

Few who beat up others for being gay, for example, ask if their perception is correct prior to attacking. NYC had one a year or so ago, two brothers attacked as gay, one killed because they had arms around each other's shoulders. Still an anti gay hate crime.
I used to live in a Sikh neighborhood.

[JustAnotherGen]

9. Racist based violence

This is why we have to have Hate Crime laws on the books. Bad enough to attack another human being - but to attack them for WHAT they are . . . makes you a monster of the highest order.

[KamaAina]

11. Um, that's Harlem.

walking along 110 Street and Lenox Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood

That stretch of 110th is actually Central Park North, which, not surprisingly, is gentrifying. That's just a few blocks down from Columbia, which is in Morningside Heights.

[elleng]

15. where my father grew up.

[bananas]

12. UPDATE: Sikh Professor Attacked in NYC Speaks Out (video interview with Huffington Post)

http://theaerogram.com/update-sikh-professor-attacked-in-nyc-speaks-out/

UPDATE: Sikh Professor Attacked in NYC Speaks Out

by Pavani Yalamanchili
September 23, 2013

This morning Columbia University professor Dr. Prabhjot Singh shared with HuffPost Live his account of being assaulted on Saturday evening by a group of young men shouting anti-Muslim statements. Singh is a practicing doctor in East Harlem and co-chair of the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign, a United Nations program.

He told HuffPost Live that he had been walking with a companion at the park, after dropping off his one-year-old son and wife. He provided details about the attack, including that people in the group said “Get him” and “Osama” and “terrorist” and punched him when he tried to run away, before surrounding him and hitting him to the ground where they continued beating him. When asked to describe who the people were and what they looked like, Singh said he had been working with the NYPD Hate Crimes Unit but unfortunately did not have “sketch-level accuracy.”

(embedded video interview)

Amardeep Singh, program director of the Sikh Coalition, told CNN

What happened did not happen in a vacuum. Here in New York City, we regularly receive reports that Sikh school children are called ‘Bin Laden’ or ‘terrorist’ by classmates and sometimes endure physical violence.

Lehigh University professor Amardeep Singh (no relation) writes on his personal blog, Electrostani,

Most Sikhs in the U.S. know that they are potentially subject to verbal abuse and hostility at virtually any time, though especially in large crowds. We also know that supposedly cosmopolitan cities like New York and San Francisco are actually not any better or worse than small towns when it comes to encountering mean-spirited people and thug-like behavior. What is admittedly a surprise is when that kind of name-calling turns into something else, as seems to be what happened here.

[lupulin]

13. This is awful

It's especially disturbing that it was a 'group' which attacked him rather than some lone nut.

[bananas]

16. He gave a TEDx talk in 2010

TEDxBrooklyn - Dr. Prabhjot Singh

TEDxTalks
Uploaded on Dec 28, 2010

Dr. Prabhjot Singh works with national governments and local communities to improve the financing, implementation and delivery of community-based health systems. He is Director of the Program for Health Systems Development and Research and Community Health Worker Advisor to the Millennium Villages Project at Columbia University's Earth Institute. In 2009 he co-founded Community Lab to support the accessibility of large-scale development efforts to citizens, civil organizations and skilled professionals in other fields. Prabhjot Singh has a Ph.D. in Neural and Genetic Systems from Rockefeller University as part of the Tri-Institutional M.D./Ph.D. Program with Weill Cornell Medical College and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Columbia's Earth Institute with Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Prabhjot grew up in Nairobi, Kenya and currently lives in Manhattan, where he enjoys learning about the amazing work that people do to make cities vibrant cultural centers.

[elleng]

14. Damn right

You don't need that information to know not to attack people.

[Pterodactyl]

17. These types of crimes are all too common in New York.