Deepa Iyer

Deepa Iyer is the Executive Director of SAALT. Deepa is an immigrant who moved to the United States from India when she was twelve years old. An attorney by training, she has worked as a Staff Attorney at the Asian American Justice Center and as Legal Director at the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center. Deepa has also served as Trial Attorney at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice where she worked closely on initiatives to address post 9/11 backlash discrimination. Through her work over the past ten years, Deepa has advocated for effective policies and practices around language access, civil rights, immigration reform and voting rights.

Deepa has also taught classes at Columbia University, Hunter College and the University of Maryland about Asian and South Asian American communities, and has published articles about the impact of post 9/11 policies on South Asians in the United States. Deepa is the Executive Producer of a documentary about hate crimes in the post 9/11 environment, and was recently featured in Beyond the Big Law Firm. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the University of Notre Dame Law School.

To reach Deepa, please email deepa@saalt.org.

Have you seen "Raising Our Voices"?

By Deepa Iyer
Published 10/8/2008

In January 2001, SAALT began work on a 26-minute documentary entitled "Raising Our Voices: South Asian Americans Address Hate." Produced by Omusha Communications and guided by SAALT Board members and volunteers, the documentary set out to raise awareness about the increasing hate crimes and bias incidents affecting South Asian communities, especially in the late 1990s. In fact, in 1997 and 1998, South Asians were reporting the highest incidences of bias-motivated crimes in the broader Asian American community.

The documentary features South Asian survivors of hate crimes and their families in Queens, New Jersey, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, as well as organizers, lawyers and community advocates who mobilized the South Asian community and demanded justice. When the film was completed two weeks before September 11th, 2001, little did we know how the landscape of the South Asian community in the United States would change. With the alarming increase of hate crimes, bias incidents, and profiling that South Asians, especially those who are Sikh and Muslim, endured in the days and months after 9/11, SAALT re-envisioned the documentary and shot additional footage.

The documentary has been out since 2002, but you may not have seen it in its entirety yet. It has been used in classrooms and townhalls around the country and we encourage you to engage with it, comment on it, and if possible, to share it with friends, family, coworkers and community members.

You can view it here:

Part 1
Part 2

Please email us at saalt@saalt.org with your feedback, reactions, and comments. Feel free to use this documentary in your community, university, or your personal network of colleagues and friends.

Deepa Iyer

Have you seen "Raising Our Voices"?

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