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Eiichiro Azuma
In March of 2013, the University of Pennsylvania’s Asian American Studies (ASAM) celebrated its fifteenth-year anniversary. We are a small but vibrant ethnic studies program that not only mirrors the traditional ethnic studies vision of uniting scholarship, student activism and community service, but also endeavors to constantly adapt to the shifting intellectual needs of UPenn’s undergraduate student body. Our inception was inseparable from student activism and community support back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Currently, ASAM consists of four standing faculty members with a full-time Associate Director. All faculty are tenured — Grace Kao in Sociology, David Eng and Josephine Park in English, and myself in History. We belong to our respective home departments, as ASAM does not have its own faculty line. Dr. Fariha Khan, a specialist in South Asian American folklore, has a dedicated role as Associate Director, and also teaches core courses for the program. ASAM offers a minor in Asian American Studies, and we have contributed to the diversification of undergraduate curriculum in UPenn’s School of Arts and Sciences. Comprised of those who pursue the minor, our Undergraduate Advisory Board takes the initiative in organizing student-led conferences, lectures, and other events while advising faculty from the student perspective. ASAM has a close partnership with the Pan-Asian American Community House, a student service division that is a part of the Vice Provost for University Life.

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When I read Timothy Yu’s article, “Has Asian American Studies Failed?” in the October 2012 issue of the Journal of Asian American Studies, I was taken aback. After all, I was the one who initiated Asian American Studies at City College of New York in 1970. That was the first time Asian American Studies had ever been offered at an institution of higher learning east of California, and it was only preceded by one year in California.

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Historically, the City University of New York has provided access to higher education to new immigrants and their children. That mission continues today as CUNY is home to students from over one hundred countries. This paper looks at the unique immigration and educational experiences of one of these contemporary groups, specifically, the children of recent immigrants from the Fuzhou region of southeast China who have emerged over the past five years as a significant portion of the student body at CUNY’s Baruch College in Manhattan.

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“Asian American” and “Asia” Today 2012 was a year when the term “Asian American” regularly appeared in the media. The fatal shootings at a Sikh Gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The specious invocations of Asian American students in the Supreme Court case of Abigail Fisher against the University of Texas at Austin, the outcome of which could potentially end affirmative action as we know it. The misleadingly cheery Pew Report, “The Rise of Asian Americans.” The spineless and retrograde rulings in the cases against the eight soldiers who fatally bullied 19-year-old Private Danny Chen, who declined a full scholarship to CUNY’s own Baruch College in order to join the military. The passing of Hawai‘i Senator Daniel Inouye, a veteran of the racially segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, recipient of the Medal of Honor, and the highest-ranking APA politician in the U.S. history. The 70th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII. Edward Rothstein’s historically ignorant and ideologically offensive review of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center, on the front page of the New York Times Arts Section.1 Even the phenomenon of “Linsanity,” Jeremy Lin’s sudden rise to basketball stardom, despite — or perhaps because of — its spectacular reification of everything from Asian American masculinity to the Model Minority Myth, revealed how sedimented anti-Asian and Orientalist views remain in this country.

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