9 March 2006

Sikhism to be examined in Longwood program

Rajbir Singh Datta, associate director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), will speak at Longwood University for the seventh annual Diversity Days program.

Datta will speak Thursday, March 23, at 7 p.m. in Wygal Auditorium on Sikhism 101: The Religion at a Glance. This year's theme for Diversity Days, a week-long celebration of multiculturalism, is The New Pluralism in America: Building Community.

SALDEF, founded in 1996 as the Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART), is the nation's oldest national Sikh American civil rights organization. Datta, who lives in Arlington, manages the organization's legal cases, educational campaigns and media relations activities. In January he was appointed to the Arlington County Human Rights Commission.

The Harvard University Pluralism Project has noted that "in the past thirty years the religious landscape of the United States has changed radically," with "Islamic centers and mosques, Hindu and Buddhist temples and meditation centers in virtually every major American city." Lonnie Calhoun, director of Longwood's Office of Multicultural Affairs, the main coordinator of Diversity Days, said the program will examine whether "Old America is ready, willing and able to adjust and adapt to the New Americans without imposing new conditions for citizenship and community."