Deepa Iyer is the Executive Director of South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT) , a national non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the full and equal participation by South Asians in the civic and political life of the United States. Deepa has had over seven years of experience in civil rights and immigrant rights advocacy. She began her public interest career at the Asian American Justice Center (formerly the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium), where she managed the Census 2000, Language Rights, and Voting Rights programs. She then served as Trial Attorney at the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, where she represented individuals suffering from workplace discrimination due to their immigration status or national origin, and assisted with the Division’s efforts to address backlash discrimination in the wake of September 11th. Deepa most recently served as the Legal Director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, where she institutionalized a multilingual legal referral hotline and organized a pan-ethnic coalition that successfully advocated for linguistic access to government services and benefits in the District of Columbia. Throughout her career, Deepa has addressed issues affecting the South Asian community. She is the Executive Producer of a 26-minute documentary featuring hate crimes survivors and community organizers. She has taught classes on legal issues affecting Asian Americans at Columbia University and Hunter College in New York City and has written on language access and post 9/11 backlash. Deepa was recently featured in a Stanford University Law School publication entitled Beyond the Big Law Firm. Deepa moved to Kentucky when she was twelve from India.

Read Deepa's work on 9/11 and anti-immigrant sentiment here: http://www.thesubcontinental.org/public/journal/dIyer1.3.pdf

Valarie Kaur is a third-generation Sikh American born and raised in Clovis, California, and a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Divinity School. She began the five-year journey to make this film in 2001 when she was an undergraduate at Stanford. The world premiere of Divided We Fall in September 2006 sent Valarie on a packed international speaking and screening tour which continues today. She has been invited as an authority on the subject at more than one hundred universities, colleges, and religious centers across the country. She has been featured in print, radio and television media including CNN, NPR, the BBC, and Frances Moore Lappe's book You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear. The State of California recently presented Valarie with an official commendation recognizing her work as a scholar, activist, and storyteller. Valarie presently serves as founding director of the Discrimination and National Security Initiative at the Harvard Pluralism Project

A professor in Asian American Studies at UC-Davis, Sunaina Maira's teaching and research interests focus on youth, popular culture, transnationalism, South Asian immigrant communities, and U.S. empire. Her most recent work is on citizenship post-9/11, particularly the experiences of immigrant and second-generation Pakistani youth. She wrote Desis in the House : Indian American Youth Culture in New York City , a book that focuses on the "Basement Bhangra" scene, as well as ethnographies on how South Asian culture is consumed in the mainstream. Additionally, she co-edited Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America, one of the best anthologiesof South Asian American writing. She will be staying at Michigan the week after SAAN, speaking on her post-9/11 work at an American Culture workshop series.

For More Info: an interview ,  henna and hip hop -- politics of culture // an article ,  an article on empire, 9/11, zionism, and citizenship

Vijay Prashad is a professor, author and activist. As a professor at Trinity College, he raises awareness about international issues for his students and colleagues. He has also written several well-known books, including The Karma of Brown Folk, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, and The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. Prof. Prashad is known for his innovative perspectives on "polyculturism" and the effect of historical cultural interactions on current social and political issues