The Other One Percent: Indians in America

Event Date: 

Monday, February 6, 2017 - 4:00pm

Event Location: 

  • The Lane Room (Ellison 3824)

Devesh Kapur will present findings on Indian-Americans’ rapid rise, the social and economic challenges particular to immigrants of Indian heritage, and the multi-generational challenges of a diverse group from the world’s largest democracy fitting into its oldest.

One of the most remarkable stories of immigration in the last half century is that of Indians to the United States. Not only do people of Indian origin now make up a little over one percent of the American population, but they have become the most-educated and highest-income group in the world’s most advanced nation. The Other One Percent: Indians in America, co-authored by Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh, delivers the first data-driven, comprehensive account of the community.

Devesh Kapur was appointed Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India in 2006. He is Professor of Political Science at Penn, and holds the Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India. Prior to arriving at Penn, Professor Kapur was Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, and before that the Frederick Danziger Associate Professor of Government at Harvard. His research focuses on human capital, national and international public institutions, and the ways in which local-global linkages, especially international migration and international institutions, affect political and economic change in developing countries, especially India. His book, Diaspora, Democracy and Development: The Impact of International Migration from India on India, published by Princeton University Press in August 2010, earned him the 2012 ENMISA (Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section of International Studies Association) Distinguished Book Award. His latest book, Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs (co-authored with D. Shyam Babu and Chandra Bhan Prasad), was published in July 2014 by Random House India. Professor Kapur is the recipient of the Joseph R. Levenson Teaching Prize awarded to the best junior faculty, Harvard College, in 2005. He is a monthly contributor to the Business Standard. Professor Kapur holds a B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University; an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota; and a Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton.

Sponsored by RFG Identity, the Department of Political Science, and Asian American Studies.

PS 595 Credit.