Manjit Singh

Manjit Singh is the co-founder and Chair of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF). SALDEF is the oldest national Sikh American civil rights advocacy organization. Its mission is to protect the rights of Sikhs through legislative advocacy, public education, legal assistance and accurate portrayal of the Sikh religion.

Under Manjit’s leadership, SALDEF has made pioneering strides in building a relationship with the United States federal government in the post-9/11 period. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Sikh Americans became the target of hate crimes, bias incidents, discrimination, verbal abuse and bullying by misinformed Americans who wrongly perceived Sikh Americans to be either Muslims, Arabs or from the Middle East. To counter the surge of such incidents being reported to SALDEF from across the country, Community Relations Service (CRS) of the Department of Justice (DOJ) approached SALDEF to develop and deliver a training program to inform and educate law enforcement about Sikh Americans.

SALDEF launched the Law Enforcement Partnership Program (LEPP) and a Train the Trainers program under which over 30 one-day trainings were conducted across the nation in a period of two years. In 2006, SALDEF partnered with the DOJ CRS to produce a training video. This video, On Common Ground, is targeted for law enforcement and focuses on Sikh Americans and Sikh culture. Since its release in January 2007, the training video has been used to train over 100,000 law enforcement personnel across the nation as part of SALDEF’s LEPP trainings. Additionally, the training video was utilized by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to train 42,000 airport security screeners nationwide. Currently, On Common Ground is being used as a training resource at the FBI Academy in Quantico, at the DOJ’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), and TSA for training in-service and new airport security screeners.

Manjit has represented SALDEF in the media, giving numerous interviews to print, radio, and broadcast TV. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News, Voice of America, BBC, Al Jazeera, NPR, Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Times, among others.