Prabhjot Singh, Sikh Columbia Professor, Attacked In Possible Hate Crime

A Columbia professor was assaulted Saturday night while walking in East Harlem in an incident police are investigating as a possible hate crime.

School of International and Public Affairs professor Prabhjot Singh, an observant Sikh who wears a turban and has a beard, was walking along 110th Street near Lenox Avenue when he was knocked down and beaten, the Huffington Post first reported Saturday, citing a police source.

A police spokesperson told Spectator that the attackers "made anti-Muslim statements and then they began punching the victim in the face," but declined to identify the name of the victim.

Singh’s friend and colleague, Simran Jeet Singh—of no relation to the professor—visited him in the hospital and confirmed that he was the victim.

A group of at least 20 “young males rode up on bikes, surrounded him and started punching him,” Simran Singh said in an email, adding that the assailants shouted "Get Osama!" and "Terrorist!" Another Sikh American, who wanted to remain anonymous, was also assaulted, he said.

Simran Singh said that the professor's injuries range from a fractured jaw to bruising and swelling across his face, and that he was discharged from the hospital slightly after midnight on Saturday. He added that the professor had met with officials from the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force, as well as the Columbia Department of Public Safety.

Prabhjot Singh is a practicing doctor in East Harlem and the co-chair of the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign, a United Nations program, according to the SIPA website. His research focuses on community-based health care delivery.     

Courtesy of SIPA  

Dr. Singh is a is a practicing doctor in East Harlem as well as an assistant professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He and Simran Jeet Singh wrote about the importance of gathering more information on hate crimes against Sikhs in an op-ed in the New York Times last year:

The government must begin tracking and counting anti-Sikh hate crimes, just as it must continue to vigorously combat bias and discrimination against all Americans, including Muslims.

Biography Prabhjot Singh Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs [email protected] Prabhjot Singh is the Director of Systems Design at the Earth Institute and Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is the co-chair of the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign, which is an initiative of the African Union and UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Domestically, he focuses on developing community-based health care delivery systems, where he is a practicing doctor in East Harlem. Prabhjot completed an MD at Cornell and PhD in Neural and Genetic Systems at Rockefeller University, with a Post-Doctoral fellowship in Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Young Leader, Soros Fellow and a Truman National Security Fellow. His work has been featured in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Lancet, WHO Bulletin, Health Affairs, Global Health and Diplomacy.