Muslims in United States of America are law abiding and disciplined citizens and in the context of Islamo-Phobia and hate crimes, Muslims are making concerted efforts to influence the American Domestic and Foreign Policy.

Dr. Omer Khalidi, Historian associated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, expressed these views while delivering a lecture on “Muslims in America: The Obama Election and After” at Maulana Azad National Urdu University. Directorate of Distance Education and American Consulate Hyderabad, jointly organised the lecture.

Dr. Khalidi, who is of Hyderabadi origin, made it clear that Barak Obama's election as President of United States has not changed its foreign policy. United States is a country which is run by institutions. It is not possible for any individual to change the domestic and foreign policy at once. Referring to the efforts made by American Muslims post 9/11, Dr. Khalidi said Muslims in United States are proactive in presenting their image in a better way. They are quite diligent in responding the media criticism and bias. Due to their interactive approach they are now being heard in think tanks and policy forums.

According to Dr. Khalidi, there is an ample scope to present your views with the support of facts, figures and logic. However, reflection of mere emotions and sensitivities is not enough. The contemporary world is not willing to accept when you just say that Muslims are oppressed. We have to speak in Universal Language and Terminology. Muslims can use the terms of human rights and economic rights to argue their case. He said US Administration has a lot of good elements. Majority of American people are not biased against the Muslims and on the contrary they have great interest in Islam. Dr. Khalidi pointed out that the inter-faith dialogues started by the American Muslims are eliciting keen interest from every section of the society. At the end of the lecture Dr. Khalidi opined that India, like US is a great Democracy and the Muslims should avail maximum liberty within the limits of law.

Prof. K.R. Iqbal Ahmed Vice-Chancellor I/c presided over the function while Salma Farooqui introduced the guest. Ms. Juliet Wurr from the US Consulate in Hyderabad, teachers and students attended the lecture.

UoH

The Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies (CALTS) at University of Hyderabad, in association with CIIL, Mysore, Linguistic Society of India and IIIT, Hyderabad organised the 31st All-India Conference of Linguists 2009 (AICL 2009) and the 7th International Conference on Natural Language Processing (ICON 2009) meet at the University. The conference brought together linguists and natural language processing researchers on a common platform.

The inaugural lecture was on ‘Discourse, Genre and Language technology' by Bonnie L Webber, University of Edinburgh while a lecture in honour of Prof. Bh. Krishnamurti titled, ‘Gap Relatives in South Asian Languages with special reference to the comitative PP as head' was given by K. V. Subba Rao, Professor of Linguistics (retd.) from University of Delhi.

Peri Bhaskara Rao of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and the AICL 2009 General Chair and President of the Linguistic Society of India gave the introductory remarks. Rajeev Sangal, director, IIIT-Hyderabad, the ICON 2009 General Chair and President of the NLP Association, India, gave the introduction to ICON 2009 which had 120 submissions.

Bh. Krishnamurti, Renowned Linguist and former Vice-Chancellor, University of Hyderabad was felicitated on the occasion for his lifetime achievements. A journal on Indian Linguistics was also released. The three days' conference had paper and poster presentations by distinguished personalities on Language studies and Natural Language Processing.

NIT-Warangal

India's premier engineering Institute NIT Warangal has signed an MoU with Malardalen University (MDH) Sweden to promote collaboration in areas of innovation, design and engineering in embedded systems, real-time systems and software engineering.

The agreement was signed by Y. V. Rao, director, NITW and Christer Norstrom, vice-president, MDH, Sweden. Speaking at the signing ceremony Prof. Rao expressed delight and said the collaboration will facilitate the conduct of programmes and activities in basic and applied research, education and training, as well as technology and information transfer that are mutually beneficial to both institutions. It will also foster the development of mutually agreed collaborative projects and activities, student exchange in general at undergraduate and graduate levels including staff exchange with combined research, development and teaching which will enhance the programmes of each university.

Mälardalen University (www.mdh.se/university) is one of Sweden's largest universities and has more than 13,000 students and offers 60 programs and about 750 courses. V Rajanna, General Manager, and Regional Head, TCS, Hyderabad, P.Sasikumar, Mälardalen University and Deans, Heads of departments in NITW were among present.