From Executive Director Sital Kalantry

Happy holidays from the RoundGlass India Center at Seattle University (the “India Center”). The India Center was launched in September 2023 at Seattle-Setu, a conference that brought together hundreds of government officials, business leaders, academics, and community leaders.  The Indian American population has doubled over the last few decades in the greater Seattle region and nationally.  Despite our significant contributions to the local and national economy, there are only few university centers devoted exclusively to the study of India and none of them are located in the Pacific Northwest.

The India Center’s mission is to bring academic knowledge about India to the broader national conversation in the United States and to create a united voice among the diaspora to advocate for social and political change in the United States and globally.  Founded by the generous gift of Sunny Singh, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, the India Center is based in Seattle University.  Seattle University, a Jesuit university founded in 1891, is located on a 50-acre campus in the heart of Seattle and is the largest university in the region.  The India Center leverages the strengths of the numerous Seattle University faculty members specializing in the study of India from many disciplinary perspectives, including engineering, business, law, and social sciences.

Thanks to our manager Shannon Young and the work of our Indian student interns, the India Center has already hosted numerous events in our short 3-month existence, including a welcome reception for Consul General Gupta, who just arrived from New Delhi to start the first-ever Indian consulate in Seattle. We have also launched several initiatives, including the Raman Family Faculty Grant to promote the study of India, and the Punjab Scholarship to provide a full tuition scholarship to the Master of Law program at Seattle University Law School.

The year ahead is a bright one with increased attention to India and its diaspora.  While we celebrate the opportunities, let us also be mindful that we have a lot of work to do to in the coming year to address the many challenges that both Indian and American democracies face.

Sital Kalantry
Professor of Law, Associate Dean and Founding Executive Director of the RoundGlass India Center at Seattle University

Events September to December 2023

Seattle-Setu: India Center is Launched

• The Center officially launched at the September 6, 2023 Seattle-Setu conference which showcased Seattle’s pivotal role in shaping economic and political collaborations with India and celebrated the opening of the RoundGlass India Center. With panels focused on business, law, and philanthropy, this event highlighted the Center's mission to build bridges between Seattle and India and to build connections among the Indian diaspora community in Seattle.
• Keynotes speakers included Deputy Assistant Secretary for India Nancy Izzo Jackson, Representative Pramila Jayapal, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, Edifecs and Roundglass Foundation Founder Sunny Singh, Senator Manka Dhingra, and Washington Democrats Chair Shasti Conrad. A full list of speakers and videos can be viewed here.

Welcome Reception for Consul General Gupta

• The Center hosted a welcome reception for the new Indian consulate to Seattle in December with over 80 prominent guests from the greater Seattle community, including Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and Bellevue Mayor Lynne Robinson. (Pictured above are Bellevue Mayor Lynne Robinson, LL.M. student Bharatee Annadurai Kavitha, Ms. Neha Prakash, LL.M. student Ayushi Bharti, Consul General Prakash Gupta, Professor Sital Kalantry, and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell.)
• Highlights of this dazzling event can be viewed here.

Ambassador Singh Sandu, India’s Ambassador to U.S. visits Seattle University campus

• Indian Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu (above) and Consul General Dr. K. Srikar Reddy visited campus to discuss opportunities for India and U.S. collaboration on education, job skills training, healthcare, and technology. 

Member of Parliament and India’s Top Lawyer, Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Delivers "India at 75" Lecture

Thought leaders gathered at Seattle University Law School in October to explore how the Supreme Court of the largest democracy in the world — India — has progressed since its founding 75 years ago. Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a member of the Parliament of India and a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India who has argued many of its most consequential cases, led the conversation. Additional perspectives were offered by Professor C. Raj Kumar, founding vice chancellor of Jindal Global University, Professor Sital Kalantry, and Dean Tony Varona.  You can view the full event here.

Pictured below are Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Professor Sital Kalantry, Professor Raj Kumar, and Seattle University LL.M. students.

Announcing new RoundGlass India Center Punjab Scholarship for Law Graduates

The RoundGlass India Center’s Punjab Scholarship, generously made possible by entrepreneur and philanthropist Sunny Singh, represents a remarkable initiative, offering a transformative opportunity for students from Punjab to pursue their legal education at Seattle University’s School of Law. This prestigious scholarship fully covers the tuition expenses for the LL.M. program, thereby opening doors to a world-class legal education. To learn more, contact Assistant Dean for International and Graduate Programs, Diogo Magalhães 

The Center In the News

The Center's launch and the Seattle-Setu conference at Seattle University were featured in the following outlets:

• Seattle Times op-ed "Why the United States Should Embrace India" 
• Seattle’s bridge to India: Insights from the Seattle-Setu conference (nwasianweekly.com)
• SeattleU Newsroom
• IndiaWest Journal
• A total of 46 India news outlets in 3 different languages

The Center's welcome reception for the Indian Consulate to Seattle was featured in:

• NW Asian Daily
• The Indian Eye
• SeattleU Newsroom

The Satya & Rao Remala Foundation generously funded a full tuition scholarship for a student from India to study in Seattle University's Master of Laws (LL.M.) program. This year's recipient, Ashok Kumar, hails from Haliwav and completed his undergraduate law degree from the Institute of Law, Nirma University, where he was an IDIA Scholar. At Seattle University School of Law, he is specializing in the Technology and Innovation LL.M. track. Kumar was featured in:

• Bar and Bench
• Remala Foundation Grantees

Professor Sital Kalantry's new co-edited book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India released in August 2023 and was featured in numerous publications, including:

• Bar and Bench
• BBC News
• Virtual Roundtable Series on Asian Law with National University of Singapore's Centre for Asian Legal Studies
• 2024 Jaipur Literature Festival

Upcoming Events

An Evening with Prachi Gupta
Author of They Called Us Exceptional

Prachi Gupta is an award-winning writer based in New York. They Called Us Exceptional is her debut memoir. She was a senior reporter at Jezebel and co-host of Jezebel's former politics podcast, Big Time Dicks. She won a 2020 Writers Guild Award for her investigative essay, "Stories About My Brother," which was also named one of the best essays of 2019 by Longform and Longreads.

Date: Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Seattle University, Piggott Auditorium

This event will be free to the public and is co-sponsored with Elliott Bay Books. Formal registration links will be emailed to RoundGlass India Center followers in early 2024.

Do Indian-Americans Vote Based on Their Politics or Ethnicity? 

What factors are most likely to influence Indian Americans' voting patterns and political beliefs? In the coming 2024 election year, with South Asian candidates on the ballot and American democracy in transition, these questions matter more than ever. Join us at this timely event.

Karthik Ramakrishnan is professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside and the founder of AAPI Data, a nationally recognized publisher of demographic data and policy research on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. He has published many articles and 7 books, including most recently, Citizenship Reimagined (Cambridge, 2020) and Framing Immigrants (Russell Sage, 2016), and has written dozens of opeds and has appeared in nearly 3,000 news stories. 

For more information about the Center, visit our website. To join our list serve or share your thoughts and feedback contact roundglass@seattleu.edu.