Simran Jeet Singh is, among many other things, the current Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs post-doctoral fellow at the NYU Center for Religion and Media (which publishes The Revealer).  Here, he discusses everything from Sikhism and civil rights to children’s literature and sports with The Revealer’s editor, Kali Handelman.

Revealer: Can you tell me a bit about the work you’re doing now?

Of course. I’m trying to balance a few different things right now, all of which I view as falling at the intersection of education, religious literacy, and justice. I do this work in two broad ways, both of which are constantly informing and overlapping with one another: as a scholar and as an activist.

On the academic side, I resigned this year from being a professor at my beloved alma mater, Trinity University. I am currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at NYU’s Center for Religion and Media, which you know because, well, you’re my boss. I secured another post-doctoral fellowship for next year through the American Council of Learned Societies, which means I will remain affiliated with NYU for the next year.

Both of these fellowships are primarily focused on my writing, so I have a few book writing projects in the works. Without revealing too much, there are three in particular that I’m excited about. One is an academic book on the life of Sikhism’s founder, Guru Nanak. Another is a book that looks at the various forms of racism that Sikhs experience in America. And the third is a children’s book project about one of my personal heroes. I’m excited about all three of these projects and about reaching different audiences with each of them.

I also recently took an expanded role with the Sikh Coalition, the largest Sikh civil rights organization in the country. I have two primary roles there: 1) to help represent Sikhism in the public sphere, and 2) to help build partnerships with various other communities, including multi-faith, multi-racial, and multi-cultural groups. Much of this work occurs through engagement with the media, and that is a world with which I have become familiar as well.

Revealer: How did you come to occupy this space between academic work and public advocacy and writing?

I grew up very aware that our community was deeply underrepresented in America. I rarely came across any mention of Sikhs in books or on television, and all my Sikh friends and I would talk about how much we wanted that to change. I think it was after 9/11 when I felt this most deeply. There was hardly any coverage of the hate violence targeting people who looked like us, and when there was coverage, it was usually someone else talking about us and doing so inaccurately and unauthentically.

I think that’s when I really got interested in changing how these narratives were presented. But I always imagined doing so behind-the-scenes, through writing history. I have always been a social person, but I used to HATE speaking publicly in any capacity. I mean, I had trouble talking in my classes, that’s how uncomfortable I was.

I think the watershed moment for me in that regard came after the 2012 anti-Sikh massacre in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. I was still in graduate school at that time, and I really didn’t feel like I had enough authority or knowledge to step forward. But I started getting calls from media outlets for interviews, and when I tried to direct them to more established scholars of Sikhism, they were not able to find anyone willing to speak.

I was raised to believe that with privilege comes responsibility, and I recognize that I have had immense privilege in my life, including my personal background, my access to education, and the resources around me. I have tried to keep myself honest to this commitment by viewing everything I do through the lens of seva , the Sikh tradition of selfless service inspired by a drive towards justice.

In our current political context, I think certain communities don’t have the luxury of choosing whether or not to be publicly engaged — and for communities like ours, it’s very much a matter of life and death.

Revealer: What issues are you most focused on writing and speaking about right now?

You mean, besides the NBA playoffs and my beloved San Antonio Spurs? Well, there’s the general stuff about introducing Sikhs and Sikhi to people. That’s been a staple for years. I built on some of this work recently with the support of the Sikh Coalition and the Religion New Foundation to help produce a guide for journalists looking to cover Sikhs in some capacity. That has been hugely successful, and therefore, very rewarding.

Of course, there’s the academic work, which I know many people find boring but I absolutely love. The project there centers on the earliest accounts of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh tradition. I look specifically at manuscripts of the Puratan Janamsakhi, a text that hardly any scholars have studied seriously. That represents the challenges and opportunities of scholarship in Sikh Studies. On the one hand, there has been remarkably little work done in the field, which means that we do not know nearly as much as we should. On the other hand, it creates an opportunity to study significant aspects of the faith and make a substantial contribution. I’m grateful for the latter, though it does come with a lot of pressure!

My other interest is born out of personal experience and political urgency. With the rampant racism and discrimination we endure, I have become deeply committed to dealing with hate as it manifests itself at the intersection of ignorance, racism, and Islamophobia. There are two angles in particular that have caught my interest recently: 1) the ways in which our racialized understanding of “the Muslim other” are constructed and manifest themselves, and 2) how we can mitigate or address these issues at both a personal and systemic level.

And, finally, I also have a secret love for children’s literature (which was a lot harder to explain before my first daughter was born). I’ve been working on some children’s stories that I’m excited to get out there.

Revealer: How did you decide to write a children’s book? What will it be about?

I’ve always wanted to write children’s books. There was a time, when I was in college, where I legitimately thought I would be the next Shel Silverstein or Jack Perlutsky. I mean, not legitimately in real life, but I actually thought that in my mind.

I have always enjoyed children’s literature and have wanted to write my own. I guess I got serious about it when my daughter was born two years ago. I realized how much I wanted her to see minority communities like her own in the books that she read, and I began to feel a real urgency to begin writing stories featuring minority communities who are not historically or even presently represented in kids’ books.

I can’t exactly say what my current project is about, but I can say this. It features a Sikh protagonist who I consider a personal hero. So in addition to challenging norms by depicting a Sikh protagonist, I also see this as a chance to pay tribute to someone whom I respect and admire.

You are pretty active on Twitter and your Twitter self seems like an intentionally complete version of your real self. In other words, a combination of goofy jokes, family photos, Sikh community love and advocacy, and critical commentary about politics and culture. How did you decide that you were going to go all in on social media? Have you ever been concerned about sharing so much of your personal life? What do you find useful about being on Twitter the way that you are.

First of all, I think you meant hilarious, not goofy.

Second of all, you’re right about my approach to Twitter. I haven’t always been that way, and I’m not sure I always will be either, especially given how nasty some of the attacks have become. But I’m happy to explain why I’m taking this approach right now. In short, my sense is that this is one of the few opportunities people will have to come across a Sikh. And my vision is to try and humanize us as much as I can. I really believe that in a world where dehumanization is the problem, humanization must be at least part of the solution. So that’s why I’m out there trying to share about my life more fully, including what I love, what I experience, and even, what I know is hilarious.

A deeper part of it comes from an urge to un-flatten some of the ways in which people try to empathize with us. I find myself deeply dissatisfied with the ways we are represented in media, even when it’s well-intentioned. Most commonly, we find ourselves within the frame of victimhood, even though that concept doesn’t even exist within Sikh traditions. Part of why it bothers me so much is that it doesn’t represent how we see ourselves. But another part of it is that it often functions to produce another form of hierarchy in which we end up being seen as a poor, helpless community that requires a more powerful, agentive community to intervene on our behalf and save us.

I’m not sure if I actually achieve this, but my idea, at least, is to create a more robust representation of Sikhs that is neither limited to my physical identity or my experiences with hate. Both are important to me, of course, but I really want the conversations and representations to go beyond that.

In terms of safety, it’s a real concern that I try to take seriously, especially now that I have children to think about. It’s about physical security. I receive death threats and threats of violence, but in a way, those are the easiest to take seriously. The harder ones are those that deal with professional security. There have been multiple instances where online trolls have led campaigns to call my university’s president to demand that I be fired. I’ve ended up on the Professor Watch List, and Breitbart, and a number of other places where I don’t want to be. I try to strike the balance between fearless and reckless, but that calculus is constantly evolving, especially in a world where the technology and the stakes are changing so rapidly.

Revealer: You’ve made something of an art of responding to trolls and critics with a combination of snark and love. Why do you respond the way that you do and how has it been productive?

Well, I guess the easy answer is that reciprocating hate with hate never produces anything useful. And Dr. King’s quote seems relevant here: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” It’s become a cliche, I know, but I actually believe that. And I think there’s actually interesting work that can be done through such responses.

For one, I think it models for people what it looks like to live one’s values unconditionally, rather than when it’s just convenient or easy to do so. If you can be loving in the face of hate, then what excuse do they have?

Second, I think it’s disarming for people and opens up a space for them to connect with someone that they might otherwise overlook. Rather than offering a more typical (and natural?) response stemming from anger, replying with a bit more personality has a different kind of aesthetic for those who are observing the interaction.

And, finally, I respond, in part, to share with people the kind of hate that marginalized communities endure. I think it’s important for people who don’t typically encounter bigotry know that it really exists, so I try and share that — not every time, but when I feel it’s appropriate and helpful.

Revealer: Who else do you look to for leadership on issues of race and religion right now? Who are you following and working with?

There are so many amazing people working on these issues right now. I am so grateful to be doing this work alongside such smart and passionate colleagues. In terms of scholars working on Islamophobia, I would point to folks like Moustafa Bayoumi, Zareena Grewal, Khaled Beydoun, Todd Green, Ilyse Morgenstein-Fuerst, Omid Safi, Jordan Denari, and Deepa Kumar.

Sylvester Johnson has been a huge influence on me recently, and of course, folks like Cornel West and Amina Wadud are important to how I think intersectionally about my work as a scholar-activist who works on religion and race. My favorite books of the past few years on topics of race and justice are Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, How to Be a Muslim by Haroon Moghul, and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

Revealer: How do sports and sports culture fit into your work? 

Bringing sports and sports culture into my work is natural to me. I grew up with four brothers in South Texas, so sports have always been a central part of our identities. And I still probably enjoy sports more than a scholar of religion is supposed to admit. But since it’s out there now, I may as well own it and answer your question.

There are many ways in which sports and sports culture fit into my work. For one, the intersections of sports, politics, and justice are far too many to identify. Perhaps the most prominent example is Colin Kaepernick, who has taken a moral stand on police brutality against people of color — and has been targeted by the league and even the President as a result. I care about sports stories like these because they capture the attention and imagination of the American public. So when I ran the New York City Marathon this year, my friend and I wore Kaepernick shirts to show our solidarity with the movement.

I always grew up thinking of sports as the ultimate equalizer. People may not have seen me as normal, but it didn’t really matter if I was competitive on the soccer field or the basketball court. My brothers and I loved the experience of showing up for a pickup game, people avoiding us because they assumed we couldn’t play, and then us showing them up as soon as we got the chance. I feel the same way running marathons now. Just looking the way I do and being in public is a political statement in today’s context. To do so while running challenges all sorts of stereotypes people have about me, and I love that.

Revealer: Okay, last question, and this is the only real hardball (see, I can make hilarious sports jokes, too!) question I want to ask you: We’ve been having a conversation on-and-off for years about the legal battle Sikhs are fighting for the right to wear religious attire while serving in law enforcement and the military. The politics of that fight are obviously very complicated. On the one hand, it is about the civil rights of Sikhs and religious freedom more generally. On the other hand, there is the ongoing issue of state violence against people of color — police violence and military violence — violence you have, of course, opposed in very strong terms. So there’s a tension here, right? Sikh religious freedom and civil rights are important, but protecting the civil rights and lives of others is also important. How do you think about that tension?

Yes, absolutely, there’s a tension here, and I’m grateful to you for bringing it up. I could write an entire book on the complexities entailed here, so I’ll try to keep it relatively simple and straightforward.

On the one hand, I see this as an issue of religious freedom and workplace discrimination. I believe all people should have the right to serve or receive employment no matter what religious tradition they follow. When our military — the world’s largest employer and an arm of the US Government, by the way — discriminates against people based on their religious identity, it sends the message to every other employer in the world, in the public and private sector alike, that they can do the same without consequence. This is unacceptable.

At the same time, I am highly skeptical and deeply critical of these same institutions. And to be completely transparent, I would not choose to serve in our military or law enforcement, even if I had the opportunity to do so freely. I understand their idealized role within a properly functioning government — but I think we are far removed from that ideal right now and that these institutions actually produce and perpetuate injustice, especially for vulnerable populations.

So how do I reconcile the two? I try to maintain enough humility to recognize that there are a diversity of political and opinions and even religious interpretations within the Sikh community. Not everyone feels the same way I do about these institutions or even has the same type of understanding of what it means to be American. Some Sikhs believe that serving in the military is a natural outcome of their identity and an important part of being a devout Sikh. Others see the imperialistic nature of our military and foreign policy as antithetical to what Sikhi teaches about ethics and justice. In my work on this effort, I see the authenticity and earnestness in both perspectives and sincerely try to honor these differences.

What does that look like in efforts for inclusion of Sikhs in law enforcement and the military? It means being humble enough to secure and preserve equal rights for Sikhs to serve if they choose to, even if this doesn’t necessarily reflect what I would want to do personally. It also means that while doing so, remaining committed to addressing other core issues with militarized and police violence against vulnerable populations, whether that manifests itself as police murders of young, black men or drone strikes against innocent civilians in Muslim-majority countries.

I don’t see it as a proposition of choosing one or the other. My theory of change is that we need to address racism and oppression from a diversity of angles, including from within the institutions that exist today. At the end of the day, the injustices and inequities we have to overcome in this country are deeply embedded and systemic. We need a multi-pronged and multi-level approach to deal with these issues effectively. From my vantage point, this is our only hope for ensuring more equity and justice for marginalized communities in the long-term.

Revealer: And I think that’s exactly the kind of answer that shows why so many people bother following you on Twitter in spite of the jokes. I mean, besides that they like your jokes. Seriously, though. I know you’re in a pretty unusual position where, when you make public statements, you are speaking to a number of different publics, and that’s challenging. I appreciate your taking the time to think this stuff through with us and put it out there for everyone. Thanks so much for having this conversation with me! Now get back to work.

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Dr. Simran Jeet Singh is an educator, writer, activist, and scholar who currently serves as the Senior Religion Fellow for the Sikh Coalition and Henry R. Luce Post-Doctoral Fellow for Religion in International Affairs at New York University’s Center for Religion and Media.  He is the author of “Covering Sikhs,” a guidebook produced with Religion News Foundation and the Sikh Coalition to help journalists accurately report on the Sikh community.