SPECIAL PROFILE: Dr. Bob H. Suzuki

APA college president embraces his past to change the future

By Brandon F. Shamim
Special to AsianWeek

Spending time in a classroom is not foreign to a college president. Attending your first three years of schooling in a rodeo stall, however, can be a life-changing experience. Dr. Bob H. Suzuki spent his formative years in the deserts of Southern Idaho. But instead of roaming the frontier lands, he and his family of five lived alongside 120,000 other Japanese families in an internment camp during World War II.

Impassioned by his historical roots, Suzuki today makes history by serving as one of less-than-10 Asian Pacific American college presidents among the 2,300 four-year colleges and universities nationwide. In 1991, Suzuki ascended to the presidency of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he now oversees the second largest campus in land mass among the 23 California State University schools. Additionally, he manages an annual budget of over $160 million, and 2,000 faculty and staff that serve 19,000 undergraduate and graduate-level students.

“Promoting diversity in a way that doesn’t separate but brings people together is a goal of ours on campus,” explains Suzuki. “In the aftermath of Sept. 11, our students became very protective and supportive of Arab American and South Asian American students. Student vigils and unity luncheons were organized to create a sense of cohesion among the campus community.”

Acclimated to times of crisis while growing up, Suzuki vividly remembers sitting on the footsteps of a hotel room where his family lived, when he was 5 years old. A car pulled up and the passengers in the car motioned for him to come over, but Suzuki feared for his personal safety and quickly fled. The incident had taken place days after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Suzuki is quick to draw parallels to the treatment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor to the adversity that Arab Americans, Muslim Americans and South Asian Americans confront today. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta’s admonition to Americans to not engage in acts of violence and prejudice against fellow Americans was vital, points out Suzuki, who serves on a board with the secretary for the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles.

Suzuki came to grips with his cultural heritage and the atrocities of the internment camps while doing research for an assignment at UC Berkeley. He completed both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering, but it was not until he began teaching at the University of Southern California in the late 1960s that he embarked on his life’s mission.

Emboldened by his newfound identity, Suzuki became deeply involved in the civil rights struggle and assumed a leadership role for the repeal of the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 — a relic of the McCarthyism period in our nation’s history.

He recollects some of the proceedings of the congressional hearings by internment camp survivors who remained traumatized years after their experiences. While serving as chair of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) National Education Commission, Suzuki successfully initiated action that led to the inclusion of APAs in federally-mandated affirmative action programs.

These seminal experiences led him to alter his professional field from engineering and devote his time to teaching science, math, Asian American studies and urban education at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Just two months after he arrived, he was asked to change his plans yet again — becoming the assistant dean for administration in the School of Education, where he introduced one of the first multicultural curriculums in the country.

Throughout these experiences Suzuki remains committed to a progressive agenda of inclusion and social change. Leading by example, he touts his successes of leading motivated volunteers during his JACL involvement as similar to his experience of encouraging faculty to harness their creativity and innovation. Drawing upon his liberal arts background in teaching, he recognizes that his ability to talk about complex issues with diverse audiences has “been a tremendous benefit to broaden his experiences.”

“Colleges and university, while being conservative at times, are ideologically more progressive than the rest of society,” opines Suzuki.

The lack of success by APAs in higher academia is profound. According to an American Council on Education study, APAs constitute 5.7 percent of community college and university students nationwide, 5 percent of faculty and only 2 percent of administrators.

Suzuki remains optimistic that with the “crisis of confidence” pervading corporate America, APAs are well poised to continue making positive contributions and momentous strides. He notes that APAs are traditionally sensitive to discrimination and prejudice, and would add value and diversity to all sectors.

He recounts that one of the universities where he worked employed 30 student counselors to serve 30,000 students, but there was not one APA counselor in the department. Though the university noted that no APA student had complained, Suzuki convinced the university to hire one such counselor. Within two to three months, the counselor was overwhelmed.

This belies how APAs are forced to overcome the model minority stereotype that often permeates the mainstream. Suzuki points out that whether at an institution of higher learning or in the corporate boardrooms, APAs must lead the way in creating a culture that embraces change and diversity for all Americans.