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Controversial Essay Inflames Ivy League

By Neela Banerjee

“ . . . [M]ost … Asians can be pretty frickin’ lame. Yes, the Asian people at this college make me sick.”

Justin “Juice” Fong’s article in The Harvard Crimson perpetuated racial stereotypes, but he says it was all in good fun.

Many might mistake the words as off-the-cuff comments, spilling from the mouth of a racist. But they weren’t. To some students’ astonishment, the statements were just a small part of a 1200-word essay published in the magazine of one of America’s most elite colleges, Harvard University. And the writer? Justin “Juice” Fong, himself an Asian American.

Since the article, “The Invasion,” was published on March 15 in the Harvard Crimson’s weekend supplement known as Fifteen Minutes, Fong estimates he has received over 1,000 e-mails. He claims that an overwhelming majority of them have been positive, constructive criticism.

Seng Yang led campus protests against Fong’s essay. She demanded — and got — an apology from the Crimson president.

“I didn’t think people would take it so seriously. I thought people would be offended, but I didn’t think it would get to this level,” Fong said. “Had I known it was going to reach such a wide audience, I would have worked on the message or the articulation of it more. I really learned that anything you publish can spread really far in this day and age.”

“The Invasion” echoed throughout hallowed halls of Harvard University, prompting protests and a nationwide debate. Within days of publication, the Harvard Crimson was bombarded with e-mails demanding an apology, and e-mail copies of the piece were sent to Asian American student organizations at nearly every major university.

The incident comes at a time when university journalistic integrity has become one of the most searing hot-button issues. Over the last few months, an ad written by conservative David Horowitz, which lists 10 reasons why reparations for slavery is a bad idea, was sent to 50 college newspapers. When it ran in the Brown Daily Herald, a coalition of mostly minority organizations protested and removed the paper from campus racks. Protests also ensued at U.C. Berkeley, spurring Daniel Hernandez, editor of the Daily Californian, to run a formal apology.

Editors at the Harvard Crimson rejected the ad. However, their decision to publish Fong’s essay has done just as much to re-focus attention on the age-old debate of freedom of speech versus censorship.

Fong and the editors at the Crimsonýinsist that “The Invasian” was a satirical piece that included what he calls “blatant stereotypes” — namely, the model minority myth, the emasculated Asian male, and the super-sexualized Asian American woman — to emphasize the larger argument of self-segregation. Fong concluded his piece by writing: “But the real problem with all of this is that it perpetuates the stereotypes and the racial divisions that we already have. The more Asians stick to themselves, the more alienated we feel from their community, and the more alienated they feel from our community. We’re distancing ourselves here.”

Others saw it differently, though.

“Ninety percent of the article was bashing Asian Americans and 10 percent of it might have been trying to raise a point about self-segregation,” said senior Jay Chen, former Asian American Association president and Crimson executive. “[Fong] justifies his abusive language by saying he had to take extreme measures to raise awareness about an issue that is not discussed. But it is discussed on this campus. The Asian American Association has hosted several panels about self-segregation and ethnic organizations in the last few years.”

Five days after the piece was published, a group of 50 students marched from the Science Center to the Crimson’s building, calling for “Responsible Journalism and Respect.” Protestors claimed that the piece went too far with the racial stereotypes and reflected the Crimson’s insensitivity toward Asian American students on campus. Harvard is 12 percent API, nearly twice that of other minority groups.

March organizer Seng Yang said she was especially offended by Fong’s reinforcement of the model minority myth — and by lines of the piece that imply Asian American activists have nothing to complain about. Another passage sarcastically refers to the Asian American community as a “troubled demographic.”

“I feel like there are such social implications with these lines because he is saying that Asian American people don’t have issues … that they are doing well financially, socially, economically and educationally,” Yang said. “I am extremely offended by this, especially because I am Hmong American and I know this is not true for our entire community.”

There were other reasons for the protest. Some of the students felt the piece was irresponsible, Yang pointed out, while others thought the essay “was poorly written, poorly edited and that it misrepresented the Asian Americans on campus. Even if it was supposed to be funny, some students did not agree,” Yang said.

Chen charged that the Crimson has a history of being at times journalistically irresponsible. He said when he was on the staff, he participated in a diversity training during which he was told a few years earlier the Crimson staff had doctored photographs of two African American students to make it look like they were in prison.

“I think things like this happen because the Crimson staff is predominantly white and that makes them less sensitive to issues that are affecting the whole campus,” he said.

After Fong’s piece was published, Chen met with the Crimson’s president, C. Matthew MacInnis, who revealed the “The Invasion” got published because it did not go through the correct editorial process.

“Apparently, it was a late night at the Crimson and there were two editors debating whether or not to run the piece,” Chen explained. “One wanted to and the other didn’t. Eventually the one who did not want to run it backed down.”

§e added: “It was never submitted to the managing editor or the president for review, even though it should have been because it was obviously a controversial piece.”

A few days after the essay came out, amid protest, MacInnis wrote an editorial apologizing for the lack of editorial judgement.

“Newspapers censor themselves all the time, except when they do it themselves they call it editing,” Chen said. “They have a responsibility to the public to publish things that are fit to print. The piece they published was not constructive in any way.”

Columbia University Journalism Professor Sreenath Sreenivasan said the recent events surrounding scholastic journalism have inflamed age-old issues.

“You are allowed to say whatever you like,” Sreenivasan said in response to the Harvard incident. “You ought to be balanced and you’ve got to try to be fair. You can look at that story and see all kinds of other problems with it. I personally think it would have been wiser for them to have a broader range of opinions. If they are going to do this, they need to run, at the same time, a rebuttal of sorts because it is so explosive.”

Meanwhile, Fong stands by his words. Since the piece was a personal essay, he said, the issues of responsibility on the part of the Crimson are moot.

“I don’t think that newspapers have the responsibility to censor that kind of material,” he said. “People don’t have to read it; you are not a captive audience. If you don’t agree with my article, write back and say what you think. When people are offended, they will come out and say that can’t be said. But I don’t think you can ever avoid offending people. What is the point of not having any criticism anyway?”

In defense of the piece, Fong sent out a mass e-mail. He wasn’t sorry that he had written “The Invasion,” but he admitted that self-segregation is not limited to Asian Americans, a point he neglected to discuss in the essay.

Wrote Fong: “My problem is not Asian-specific. The problem rings true for so many demographics in our Asian community: those who are black, Jewish, rich, athletes, history and lit concentrators, students, smokers, et alia. Self-segregation is a problem everywhere.”