Impacts of Policy for Indian Americans

Following up on the launch of a successful podcast series Desi Roots & Routes, the Roundglass India Center is rolling out a new webinar series addressing key issues that may impact the lives of Indian Americans under the new administration.  

The series, “Indian Americans & the Trump Administration,” will cover topics including H-1B visas, green card backlogs, undocumented immigration, health care disparities, affirmative action and U.S.–India foreign relations. Moderated by Roundglass India Center Director and law professor Sital Kalantry, the webinars will feature high-profile experts all offering critical insights on the evolving policies and their impact on the Indian American community.  

Here's a closer look at the upcoming series:  

• The first webinar is February 13 on “Visas, Green Card Backlogs, and Undocumented Immigration” with speakers Muzaffar Chishti, Migration Policy Institute Senior Fellow and Director of the MPI office at New York University School of Law and Jeff Lande, president of advisory firm The Lande Group and an expert on the potential impact public policy and politics can have on global industrial sectors.
• On March 26 the webinar is “South Asian Health Research and Rights” featuring Dr. Vin Gupta, Chief Medical Officer of Amazon Pharmacy and affiliate professor with the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Samira Khan, President, South Asian Public Health Association (SAPHA), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of South Asian communities in the United States and Seema Mohapatra, MD, Anderson Foundation Endowed Professor in Health Law and Professor of Law, Southern Methodist University.
• The third webinar on April 9 is “Affirmative Action at Universities,” with SU President Eduardo Peñalver and Michael C. Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell University and an expert on U.S. constitutional law.
• And the webinar series wraps on May 16 with the focus “U.S. Foreign Policy with India” featuring Tanvi Madan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, Milan Vaishnav, director and senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Prakash Gupta, consul general of the Consulate General of India, Seattle.

"In a time when trust in mainstream news is increasingly questioned, our webinar series offers a space for thoughtful and expert-driven discussion to educate and empower our community with actionable insights,” says Sital Kalantry, founding director of the Roundglass India Center and Associate Dean at Seattle University Law School. “Recently the Indian American community became a focal point of national debate, caught between ideological divides within the Trump coalition. We aim to shed light on these challenges and explore how policy shifts may shape the future of U.S.-India relations and the role of Indian Americans in this complex landscape.”

The launch of the webinar series follows the successful debut of the Desi Roots & Routes podcast series. The second half of season one, which focuses on trailblazing Indian Americans from the Emerald City, will launch later this winter with four new episodes featuring guests from Sonora Jha, SU professor and novelist and winner of the 2024 WA State Fiction Award and alumna Shasti Conrad, ’07, the youngest woman and first Indian American to chair the WA State Democrats, among others.  

Nalini Iyer, a professor of English at SU and a faculty affiliate to the Roundglass India Center, says Desi Roots & Routes provides more context for those interested in South Asian communities in the greater Puget Sound area.

“Indian Americans are the second largest Asian American community in King County,” says Iyer. “The Pacific Northwest has seen continuous migration of South Asians from the early 1900s, but their history has been largely invisible even as they are hyper visible in some fields like tech and education.” 

Desi Roots & Routes is available wherever you get your podcasts. 

The webinar series is free but participants need to sign up to secure their spot.