Students say it’s not just about identity politics
At the end of last year, students at Harvard University once again found themselves campaigning for an Asian American studies program. And now, at the beginning of 2008, there has still not been much progress made.
While many would be surprised that such a prestigious and seemingly diverse institution — where Asian students make up roughly 18 percent of the student body — does not have such a program already, many consider this a continuation of struggles that began more than two decades ago.
In the 1980s, protests were organized on campus and hundreds of signatures were obtained for a petition pushing the administration to hire an Asian American professor. But no permanent professors were ever hired.
Today, there are only four Asian American courses at Harvard, and all of them are taught by the same visiting professor, Eric Tang, from the University of Illinois — who will be leaving next year. “It is not something that universities value. They don’t see it as essential to the core curriculum,” Tang told Diverse magazine.
Harvard’s faculty argues that, at the moment, there is neither enough funds nor student interest to justify a full concentration, or even a full-time professor, in Asian American studies.
The Harvard Asian American Association’s co-chair, senior Phoebe Zen, disagrees. “That’s one of the leading complaints that I hear about a program like Asian American studies, that it’s not popular enough among students,” Zen said. “I think that the problem with that is that there has to be a clear distinction made between a curriculum’s popularity and its inclusion in academia.”
Zen added that there are certain other concentrations and majors, like physics and the classics, where few students are enrolled, “but I think that few people would say that these programs are not important.
“Asian American studies is an increasingly blooming field, and it’s one that is interdisciplinary, so students can be fully equipped to analyze and employ critical thinking skills in a very complex world,” Zen continued. “So, again, it comes back to the idea of it being important in academia.”
Michael Liu, a founding member of the Asian American Resource Workshop in Boston, believes that funding is a “bull—-” excuse. “Harvard has a record endowment of 26 billion, with more money than it knows what to do with,” Liu said.
For the moment, the Asian American Association at Harvard plans to focus on developing an independent Asian American studies track within the existing East Asian studies program.
The university already has extensive programs in both African American and Latin American studies. “It is a big concentration here,” said Zen about African American studies. “We’ve had very prestigious professors in this concentration in the past, such as Cornel West. It’s very popular.”
But is Asian American studies an important and relevant area of academia, or more about identity and politics? What of the comparable ethnic studies courses at Harvard? A recent posting on a student Web site attempted to address these questions: “It seems like ethnic studies are dictated, in part, by market forces. Only if there is sufficient demand will ethnic studies be deemed ‘of value.’ … But maybe this view is inherently prejudiced. After all, it is the historical undervaluing of ethnic studies — and the history of minority communities in general — that has underscored the need for such studies in the first place.”
Harvard makes its diversity a selling point. But like many Ivy League universities, Harvard has traditionally been conservative about recognizing the historical and cultural contributions of Asian Americans.
Regardless of these obstacles, the students at Harvard are gaining support and momentum. They have established contact with other East Coast colleges, such as Hunter College, where Asian students are currently facing a similar situation, and Columbia University, where students won their struggle for a curriculum more than a decade ago. And the Harvard students are not likely to give up soon. “We think that Asian American studies is so important,” Zen said. “That’s why we are working so hard. We believe in this so much.”