BUILDING ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAMS

One of the dimensions of Asian American Studies [or AASI that has received very little formal examination has to do with: (1) putting together a workable program; or (2) what "political" issues arise that can impact the long-term viability of Asian American Studies on a given campus.

Fortunately, Professors Sucheng Chan and Ling-chi Wang, both of whom helped found the field, as well as the AAS department at the University of California, Berkeley, have presented an insightful analysis of pertinent issues based on an examination of two cases: Berkeley, and UCLA.

Although we need to acknowledge that historical, demographic, institutional, and other conditions are distinctive, especially on campuses "east of California," Chan and Wang's key point is that the viability of an Asian American Studies initiative has to do with "power and self-determination." Specifically, Chan and Wang posit that the implementation and fate of Asian American Studies on contemporary American campuses revolves around the power to decide four issues. First, who gets to decide which AAS courses are offered, as well as what kinds of requirements these fulfill? Second, who is allowed to teach these courses? Third, what kinds of research and publishing efforts are legitimized'? Fourth, who gets to evaluate performance in the first three areas, and what are the criteria 2 used for evaluation?

In this sections that follow.. I will briefly discuss some of the possible responses to the challenges of building Asian American Studies, and expand upon the dynamics of institutional politics vis-a-vis program building. It seems more important than ever.. though, to begin by asking, "What is Asian American Studies?"

WHAT IS ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES?

Both historically- and intellectually-speaking, Asian American Studies is, inherently, a part of the larger field of Ethnic Studies. As such, Asian American studies was, and 3 remains, a transformative enterprise.

In terms of its "day-to-day" operations in the university setting, Asian American Studies involves research, curriculum development, and teaching, all of which pertain to the histories and experiences, identities, social and community formations, and concerns of peoples of Asian descent in the United States.

In terms of its institutional politics within the academy, Asian American Studies aims to make education more democratic-more "equitable, diverse, and inclusive"--via the examination of racialized ethnic minorities in the United States, populations whose trials and contributions alike have often been ignored or marginalized. Democratization of institutions and instruction, in turn, promotes a more meaningful and complete educational experience within our educational system.

Beyond this, however, I submit that Asian American Studies is inherently political because it promotes a critical examination of: (1) the university's role in the production and utilization of knowledge; and, (2) the inherent limitations of that knowledge, especially in regard to the lived experiences of people of color.

Thus, the construction of ethnic-specific as well as panethnic subjects in Asian American and Ethnic Studies is part of a larger methodology designed for both rhetorical and political projects. On this basis, Asian American Studies entails a coalition of like-minded students, professors, and activists who:

promote the analysis and critique of the "powerknowledge" matrix, formulated and imposed by the academy;

critique, reject, and seek to dismantle assimilationist and Euro-/Euro-American centered premises and biases;

promote the exploration of alternative, phenomenologically-grounded ways to construct ethnicspecific as well as pan-ethnic subjects;

promote self-determination over cultural resources, representations, and decision-making;

reject the disarticulation of domestic and global linkages, as these shape the perceptions and the destinies of people of color in America; seek ways to link people of Asian descent, as people of color, to other domestic and international struggles for equality and justice;

seek to utilize the study of "race" and racialization as a way to explore other forms of oppression, including those based on class, gender, and sexuality.

In sum, the field of Asian American Studies offers students and practitioners a set of alternative, oppositional, perspectives and resources--simultaneously intellectual, cultural, social, political, and symbolic--that can be used for reviewing, re-visioning, and re-constructing their individual and collective destinies. The subject category "Asian American" is thus a convenient designation that can be utilized in order to identify those persons who are interested in this project, and who are willing to struggle to shape its boundaries and directions.

Asian American Studies, then, like Ethnic Studies, involves creating a space for autonomous knowledge-production within the academy, and this is a matter of both self-determination over '?content" and "process."

BUILDING THE BASIS FOR AAS

I'd like, next, to outline some steps that can be considered in terms of building, step-by-step, an Asian American studies curriculum and program. Because I've been involved in doing this during the 1990s, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, I'll use some examples based on this first-hand experience.

At an initial level, it is important to get a course, or better yet, a series of courses going. These may either be ethnic-specific in nature, depending on the faculty and student composition at a given campus, or comparative (pan-Asian). A mix is nice because Asian American studies typically works off of a dialectic--even a tension--between these two levels of inquiry.

At Boulder, for example, although two faculty of Asian descent had previously taught courses focusing on Asians in America, they did so independently out of the departments of sociology and history, respectively. I was hired as the first full-time Asian Americanist in 1991. Immediately, we expanded AAS course offerings. Moreover, between 1991 and 1993, CSERA faculty worked to develop a rationale for a systematic sequence of AAS courses from the 1000 (freshman) to the 4000 (senior) level that, if taken in totality, would provide the semblance of a holistic, multi-disciplinary perspective on the Asian American experience.

Because resources are limited, we have drawn from the talents of the "Counciling and Career Services" staff, university administrators, and local community activists and members, in order to put up classes taught by guest lecturers that we couldn't ordinarily cover. Students have had access to courses, for example, about Korean, South Asian, and Hmong Americans, as well as Native Hawaiians, over the years, which has really helped to round out our curriculum.

Second, because AAS is inherently a part of the larger field of ethnic studies, it is worthwhile considering how an AAS endeavor might be linked to other, similar, oppositional programs. At Boulder, an overall Ethnic Studies initiative began in 1988 as "the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race In America," or CSERA, in 1987 under the dynamic leadership of Evelyn Hu-DeHart. Note, too, that Black and Chicano Studies have deep roots on the Boulder campus. Both were dynamic and viable programs: Black Studies, which once had ten FTE, established its own independent major; Chicano Studies had long awarded a "certificate" that was for all intents and purposes a minor.

In addition, we worked on a plethora of projects, on campus, to encourage students, staff, and faculty to include topics relevant to contemporary Asian Americans in their activities, programs, and courses. A complete list would be very long, but it basically included: (1) offering advice and support to colleagues across campus, which often entailed going to classes to guest lecture; (2) helping various student organizations and university "program councils" to identify and bring major Asian American artists, performers, and intellectuals to campus; (3) making sure that our "Academic Media Services" purchased appropriate audio-visual materials about Asian Americans for curriculum use and development; (4) getting our colleagues in the university library to purchase old books, and make new acquisitions, to build our collection; (S) getting grants, and working with colleagues in the library and the archives, to purchase primary materials and collections on microfilm, especially ones with data pertinent to our region and state; (6) promoting and giving independent study units to Asian American students for a range of academic and applied, community-based, projects; (7) sponsoring a host of formal and informal activities featuring academics brought to CU by CSERA including our three-year "Rockefeller Fellows" program.

Although with mixed success, we tried to broaden our linkages to student/community bases on a campus-specific and on a regional basis. In 1986, interested faculty, staff, and students formed the "Asian American Committee for Education" on the Boulder campus, which disperses approximately $10,000 every year to support student programming and networking activities, and meets at least once a month to discuss advocacy issues. In past years AACE has also tried to meet a couple of times a year on a regional basis, drawing representative from the CU system, the state universities, as well as private colleges along Colorado's Front Range. In a similar fashion, a few years ago, Asian American students organized a regional consortium amongst themselves, presently called the "Rocky Mountain Asian American Student Coalition." In my mind, all of these consortiums represent an important avenue for future cooperation, both in terms of sharing the costs of bringing major artists and intellectuals into the state, but also in terms of the future planning and organizing of larger coalitions around a range of educational, community, and political issues. The sharing of resources and information becomes especially critical in areas "east of California," and cooperation can help prevent duplication, in terms of spending time and money.

I should emphasize here, parenthetically, that since CU is a "research institution," there is no special priority given by the administration to anything dealing with ethnic communities per se in terms of the Boulder campus's mission. Located about thirty minutes from downtown Denver, there actually isn't much in Boulder that could be called "community" apart from a small but dynamic group of Hmong in the area, and older, fairly selfcontained Japanese American farming communities (like the one in Fort Lupton) in the hinterlands.

Based an a programmatic adherence to the principle of "Studies-communities" linkages, however, we made a three-fold effort. I began to offer a continually evolving "Asian/Pacific American communities" course. In order to get a fix on the most appropriate configuration for this course I have developed versions that have emphasized (1) theoretical, (2) descriptive, and (3) non-foundational, collaborative learning, approaches to this topic. For students who are already involved in community organizations, and who have sought a "hands-on" approach, I've offered from one-to-three unit independent study courses-- (some of which have been productive, and some which have not).

Because I am not a "local," however, and am basically overworked, being--by title, anyway--the only full-time tenured Asian American Studies professor in the CU system (and probably, by the way, throughout the Rockies, the mid-West (west of Wisconsin), the Southwest, and much of the South), the efforts of university staff are absolutely critical to our collective endeavor. Some of my colleagues from Boulder's "Counseling and Career Services" set up a "Third World Student Unity Center" which, among other things, has been placing student interns down at major social service agencies such as the "Asian/Pacific Development Center" in Denver, and has been offering a leadership clinic. Moreover, staff from "Counseling and Career Services" are able to advise and monitor student interns, which I feel is absolutely critical to the overall and long-term success of this kind of "town and gown" linkage.

SEEKING AUTONOMY: FROM AAS TO ETHNIC STUDIES

In order to win greater autonomy over curriculum and program development, as well as "FIRPT" (hiring, review/retention, promotion, and tenure) matters, the then CSERA faculty put forward two major plans to the CU administration.

The first plan, (which evolved between the 1991 through 1993 academic years), followed an extensive internal and external program review. In line with many of the recommendations, CSERA faculty called for the immediate creation of an M.A./Ph.D. degree in Ethnic Studies, with an emphasis upon the possibility of a specialization in one of the constituent fields of study we offer: e.g., Chicano Studies; Asian American Studies; etc. The plan also outlined in detail an overall curriculum, and the interim steps, timeline, and resources that would be needed in order to achieve these programmatic goals.

Because graduate programs are very expensive, however, and since this plan would have necessitated an expansion of each of the four constituent programs, it was rejected by CU Boulder administrators as not being economically or operationally feasible. In short, the administration made it very clear that CSERA faculty could expect no institutional support if we decided to push a "four-field" graduate approach to the expansion of Ethnic Studies at CU. Further, the (then) dean speculated that we wouldn't receive the necessary support at the system-level from governing bodies such as the CU Board of Regents (whom are popularly elected) and the state legislature's "Colorado Commission on Higher Education," both of which must approve all new initiatives and bugetary expenditures.

Over the summer and fall of 1994, CSERA faculty regrouped and developed a second detailed proposal that called for the immediate creation of a comparative B.A. degree program in Ethnic Studies, again with specific and detailed plans concerning timeline, curriculum, and necessary resources. Although we received some indication, informally, that this second proposal was much more favorably received by the administration, we received no formal communications regarding our new plan. At this point, the administration had its hands full with a crisis that would eventually erupt and have a direct bearing on the creation of an Ethnic Studies department.

In 1994, three Chicano colleagues in the Sociology Department decided to protest unfair treatment in their HRTP cases. These three professors were very active in the Chicano/Latino community, on and off campus, and many of their research projects and publications had to do with vital issues (such as education, gerontology, and cancer) as well as with "participatory action" research methodologies.

The background to this case is too complicated to do justice to here, but basically a Chicano professor who was tenured and who was seeking promotion had been repeatedly turned down, a Chicana professor (who had already received critical feedback) was coming up for tenure review, and a Chicano faculty member was being evaluated for tenure. When the latter professor was denied, the other two protested, and all three demanded to be rostered in some other department, where their scholarship and other contributions would be more fairly evaluated. Their protests were widely covered in the campus and community press and, in order to create an image of impartiality, the administration commissioned a panel of "outside experts" to assess the situation and issue a report. Many of us in CSERA observed these developments, and related them back to initial Ethnic Studies critiques of the academy, and the need for self-determination.

PROTESTS AND STRIKES, 1994

April, 1994, was a key month in terms of the creation of an Ethnic Studies Department at CU. After a series of meetings, a coalition of Third World undergraduate student leaders, known as the "Student Coalition for the Advancement of Ethnic Plurality," or "the Alliance" for short, wrote and issued a set of demands on March 31, 1994. In this document, the Alliance asserted its autonomy, attacked the efforts of the CU system's "Diversity Committee" as hopelessly compromised, and called for, among other things, the establishment of an autonomous Ethnic Studies department which would offer major and minor degrees, to be followed by the creation of masters and doctoral programs. Other issues addressed by the Alliance centered around "fair play" for three Chicano faculty members in the Department of Sociology, as well as the full separation of the College of Arts & Sciences "Culture and Gender Diversity" requirement into two components, (i.e., one pertaining to "race and ethnicity" and the other to "gender").

Getting little response to their manifesto, the Alliance organized a public protest outside the CU's student union on April 12, 1994. Approximately ISO demonstrators marched to the administration building, where they presented their demands to key university officials.

For the next two weeks, the Alliance kept the pressure up, organizing a series of public meetings, demonstrations, and press conferences, as well as circulating a petition that was signed by some 3,000 CU students in order to further campus and community familiarity with their demands.

Finally, on Monday, April 2S, after a five-day hunger strike, involving almost forty students, then CU system President Dr. Judith Albino met with the Alliance, and signed a formal statement, "The Declaration of Diversity." In effect, then, the efforts and willingness of the Alliance and their supporters to struggle for an Ethnic Studies Department definitely pressured the administration to act on issues that the CSERA faculty had been pushing for the past four years. Thus, when it seemed timely for them to do so, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, and others could claim to the press and the larger public that they were

already taking steps to review the idea, and even to implement the creation, of a full-scale Ethnic Studies Department and a baccalaureate program at CU.

ETHNIC STUDIES AT CUB, 1997

Boulder's Department of Ethnic Studies has been in existence since 1997, and has been doing doing very well. We have nine core faculty, as well as many affiliated faculty who cross-list their courses with DES, and a number of "part-time" instructors, who include graduate students, qualified staff, and community members. We had over 1,700 undergraduates go through our classes during the 1995-1996 academic year, and we immediately garnered over 100 Ethnic Studies majors and minors.

These successes have also entailed some growing pains, to be sure. We were under pressure to get our "core" Ethnic Studies courses up and running, immediately. Each faculty has had to deal with new advising responsibilities. We have also had to recalibrate our ethnic-specific concentrations, as well as our commitment to "service" courses designed primarily to fulfill general education requirements.

As this last item indicates, the shift to a department and a major also means that, while Asian American Studies still exists, and while we hope to make it grow, it will be a slow growth. it is never likely to become a program that resembles the older, more established programs at Berkeley, UCLA, or San Francisco State. On the other hand, I am optimistic that majors and minors with an Asian American Studies emphasis will graduate with a more well-rounded understanding of the field of Ethnic Studies as a whole; similarly, those graduates who are not of Asian descent will have more of an opportunity to learn something about the "Asian American experience" as an overall part of their coursework. Thus, in general, even from an AAS perspective, I think that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

POSSIBLE LESSONS

To begin with, my experience suggests that, unless one works on a campus where key administrators themselves are willing to make a commitment to build a department from "the top down," it may be best to begin by establishing a set of "core" AAS courses that fulfill "diversity" requirements. In order to generate a broad student constituency, these courses must be carefully planned, and then staffed with "good-to-excellent" teachers. Historically-speaking, courses focusing on Asian American history, contemporary issues, community, literature, women, and psychology/personality have traditionally been offered, although this need not be so. A better way to approach this might revolve around what kind of faculty/staff expertise are available on campus, (or in the immediate vicinity), as well as what the demographic base and the needs of the students are.

Beyond this, a vital step in ensuring the viability of Asian American Studies courses is that the academy allows these to become part of the university's "general education" curriculum. I see this as a basic parity issue, and also an initial "point of struggle" if there is institutional resistance. In effect, EuroAmerican students can study the contributions that their antecedents made to history and society, for full academic credit. Since their ancestors have also made significant and sustained contributions to this society, why shouldn't Asian American as well as other students be allowed to fulfill requirements they need to matriculate, while obtaining a more comprehensive perspective on the histories and cultures of Asians in America?

It is sad but true that if we don't struggle to get equal status for AAS courses, one of several things usually happen. When resources get tight, Studies faculty are typically the "last hired, first fired." Worse yet, given the time and financial pressures they are under, Asian American students may be unwilling to sign up for courses that at best fulfill only "elective" requirements. There is nothing worse than struggling to get and set up an AAS course, and then have the administration cancel it because not enough students enrolled in it. What is more, administrators can cite such precedents as "evidence" that there really isn't any student interest!

Getting some basic AAS courses in place that also fulfill diverse graduation requirements means that interested faculty, students, staff, and administrators on a given campus need to, first, study the university in order to determine who holds what kinds of power and, second, strategize about how to best accomplish their mission. This is no small task.

In terms of getting a course into "core" at Boulder, for example, a faculty person must first study the official

guidelines and develop an appropriate curriculum and syllabus. The course must typically be sponsored by a department, and so must past muster at the departmental level. If passed, the department forwards the syllabus to the appropriate review committee(s) at the level of the larger "School" or "College." Even if one is familiar with this kind of procedure, the process can take months, and the faculty person may be required to face committees to answer questions or explain things; often the syllabus must be re-written before it is finally approved. Last but not least, sometimes it is junior, untenured professors who carry out these kinds of tasks. This, however, is not the kind of academic activity that garners credit as "research." Also, assigning junior faculty to such tasks may put them in jeopardy, should they run into senior colleagues who find their work either threatening or offensive, or both.

There are a host of other issues to raise, concerning curriculum development, hiring, research, and evaluation. As Chan and Wang point out, the resolution of these issues has a great deal to do with who is seen as the potential beneficiary of Asian American Studies, and this question may have a wide variety of answers. Ultimately, one may have to decide whether an ethnic-specific approach is most desirable, as well as whether AAS is going to be viable on this basis on a particular campus. Or you may come to the conclusion, as I did at CU Boulder, that a larger coalition with other people of color is the only way that you can carve out the insititutional space that you need to accomplish your mission(s).

CONCLUSION

Beyond describing what has unfolded at Boulder, one general point I wanted to emphasize is that "institutional politics" can simultaneously constrain, and yet offer new, opportunities. These politics, along with the institutional mission and available resources, must of necessity be carefully studied, evaluated, and strategized by those who wish to build the Studies. Beyond this, one of the key lessons I learned was that only by working in alliance, and in common cause with the students (especially "the Alliance"), sympathetic faculty members from other departments, administrators, and staff, were we able to push for the creation of an independent Ethnic Studies

Department that, in CU Boulder's case, houses Asian American Studies.

I'm sure there are similar possibilities for coalition/ consortium work within many of our universities that could lead to a similarly empowering dynamic. I hope this cursory review of questions and issues tied to institutional politics may prove to be of use to students and faculty who are planning the further development of Asian American Studies on their campuses.

Aguilar-San Juan, Karin, ed. 1994. The State of Asian America:Activism and Resistance in the 1990s. Boston: South End Press.

Chan, Sucheng. 1989. "On the Ethnic Studies Requirement: Part 1: Pedagogical Implications." Amerasia Journal 15:267-80.

Chan, Sucheng, and Ling-Chi Wang. 1991. "Racism and the Model Minority: Asian-Americans in Higher Education." In Philip G. Altbach, and Kofi Lomotey, eds., The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education. New York: State University of New York Press.

Cockerham, Sean, and Alex Hill. 1994. "Hunger Strike Ends with Written Support for Diversity." Campus Press [University of Colorado, Boulder], Vol. 38, No. 14 (April 28, 1994), p. 3.

Hartsock, Nancy C.M. "Theoretical Bases for Coalition Building: An Assessment of Postmodernism." In Heidi Gottfried, ed., Feminism and Social Change: Bridging Theory and Practice. Urbana, IL: Univerity of Illinois Press.

Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo. 1989. "Research and Recent Developments in Asian American Community Studies." In Gary Y. Okihiro, ed., Ethnic Studies, Vol. 1--Cross Cultural, Asian, and AfroAmerican Studies. New York: Markus Wiener Publishing.

Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo. 1995. "Back to the Future: Re-Framing Community Based Research." Amerasia Journal- 21:103-118.

Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo, and Marilyn C. Alquizola. 1994. "Asian American Studies: Reevaluating for the 1990s." In Karin Aguilar-San Juan, ed., The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1~9_0s.. Boston: South End Press.

Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. 1995. "Ethnic Studies in U.S. Higher Education: History, Development, and Goals." In James A. Banks, and Cherry A. Banks, eds., Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education. New York: Macmillan.

Hune, Shirley. 1989. "Opening the American Mind and Body: The Role of Asian American Studies." Change, November/ December, 1989:56-63.

Kagiwada, George, et al., eds. 1973. Proceedings of the National Asian American Studies Conference 11: A Tool of Change or a Tool of Control. Davis, CA: Asian American Studies, Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Davis.

Kiang, Peter Nien-chu. 1988. "The New Wave: Developing Asian American Studies on the East Coast." In Gary Y. Okihiro, et al., eds., Reflections of Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press.

Kiang, Peter Nien-chu. 1989. "Bringing it all Back Home: New Views of Asian American Studies and the Community." In Gail M. Nomura, et al., eds., Frontiers of Asian American Studies: Writing, Research, and Commentary. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press.

LEAP Asian American Public Policy Institute and UCLA Asian American Studies Center. 1993. The State of Asian Pacific America: Policy Issues to the Year 2020. Los Angeles: LEAP; UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Lou, Raymond. 1988. "'Unknown Jerome': Asian American Studies in the California State University System." In Gary Y. Okihiro, et al., eds., Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press).

Morris, Glenn T. 1996. "Coalitions and Alliances: The Case of Indigenous Resistance to the Columbian Quincentenary.11 In Wilbur C. Rich, ed., The Politics of Minority Coalitions: Race, Ethnicity, and Shared Uncertainties. Westport, CN: Praeger.

Murase, Mike Ichiro. 1976. "Ethnic Studies and Higher Education for Asian Americans." In Emma Gee, et al., eds., Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America. Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, UCLA.

Nakanishi, Don T., and Russell Leong. 1978. "Toward the Second Decade: A National Survey of Asian American Studies Programs in 1978.11 Amerasia Journal 5:1-19.

Okihiro, Gary Y., ed. 1989. Ethnic Studies, Volumes I and II. New York: Markus Weiner.

Omatsu, Glenn. 1994. "The 'Four Prisons' and the Movements of Liberation: Asian American Activism from the 1960s to the 1990S." In Karin Aguilar-San Juan, ed., The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s. Boston: South End Press.

Reinholds, Amy. 1994. "Albino Signs 'Declaration of Diversity.'" Colorado Daily [University of Colorado, Boulder],, Vol. 102, No. 75, (April 26, 1994), p. 1.

Sinisi, J. Sebastian. 1994. "CU to Organize Ethnic Curriculum." The Denver Post, (May 2, 1994), p. 1; p. 12 A.

Umemoto, Karin. 1989. "On Strike! San Francisco State College Strike, 1968-69: The Role of Asian American Students." Amerasia Journal 15:3-241.

Return to TOC