One Year After the Sit-In Asian American Students Identiti.docx

One Year After the Sit-In: Asian American Students'
Identities and Their Support for Asian American Studies
Okiyoshi Takeda
Journal of Asian American Studies, Volume 4, Number 2, June
2001, pp. 147-164
(Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI:
For additional information about this article
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https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2001.0017
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/14627
https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2001.0017
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/14627
147ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN • TAKEDA
•
ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN:
Asian American Students’ Identities and

Their Support for Asian American Studies
okiyoshi takeda*
JAAS JUNE 2001 • 147–164
© THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
ON APRIL 20, 1995, seventeen undergraduate students at
PrincetonUniversity staged a sit-in at Nassau Hall, a historic
building that
once lodged the Continental Congress in the eighteenth century
and now
houses the university president’s office. Frustrated by what they
saw as
the school administration’s delay and inaction in
institutionalizing Asian
American and Latino studies, the students stormed the
university’s central
administrative building and vowed to remain there until the
university
made a firm commitment in those fields. Outside the building,
student
supporters held a rally, a rare sight on campus where
demonstrations were
seldom seen. The sit-in ended thirty-six hours later when the
university
offered to publish in a campus newspaper its promise of faculty
hire.

The 1990s saw the second wave1 of student movement for
Asian
American studies (hereafter AAS) that took place mainly at
college cam-
puses in the “East of California” region. At these colleges,
courses in AAS
had hardly existed before but demand for AAS courses had risen
signifi-
cantly because of intellectual reasons as well as increasing
Asian Ameri-
can student enrollments.2 Some universities, such as the
University of
Pennsylvania, established an AAS program peacefully, owing to
the col-
laborative efforts of an active group of faculty and students and
the school
administration. At many universities, however, advocates for
AAS met
various obstacles, ranging from bureaucratic inaction to
ideological op-
position from faculty. It is no coincidence that similar protests
for AAS

148 • JAAS • 4:2
broke out about the same time that the Princeton students staged
a sit-in.
In April 1995, students at Northwestern University went on a
hunger strike
to demand permanent AAS courses, and in April 1996, a multi-
racial coa-
lition of students at Columbia University held a hunger strike
and took
over university buildings to demand an ethnic studies
department.
As practitioners of AAS, we know all too well why we need to
institu-
tionalize AAS programs in colleges across the nation, and why
students
who strive for this goal sometimes have to resort to drastic
action that
risk being viewed as illegitimate in light of university
procedures. Less
well known is how these direct actions are perceived and
interpreted by
students as a whole, in particular by Asian American students
for whom
AAS courses are intended to serve. We know from our daily

interactions
with activist students that AAS courses successfully raise
students’ racial/
ethnic consciousness and help build ties with communities.3
Yet we do
not always vigorously reach out to non-activist Asian American
students
and find out what they think of AAS unless they happen to
enroll in AAS
courses. If AAS is supposed to benefit all Asian American
students, in-
cluding students who are not active in student movements,
however, it is
important to understand what attitudes non-activist students
hold to-
ward AAS and how their attitudes are related to their
racial/ethnic identi-
ties. Conducting research on these topics will not only help us
make links
between academic analysis and student activism but also find
ways to
broaden the support base for AAS among students.
In this article, I examine the attitudes and opinions toward AAS
held

by Asian American students at Princeton University and map
their per-
ceptions within the overall framework of their racial/ethnic
identities. As
members of a racial minority group subjected to discrimination
and ste-
reotypes, Asian American students must negotiate their
relations with
mainstream society and search for their racial/ethnic identity.
Many stu-
dents face this task for the first time in college, when they are
thrust into
an environment with a different racial composition from the
neighbor-
hoods in which they grew up.4 Past studies have pointed out
that Asian
American students develop different patterns of racial/ethnic
identities
as a result of their immigration status, generation, racial
composition of
childhood neighborhood, and experience of racial
discrimination.5 The

•
studies, however, do not fully consider the political dimension
of stu-
dents’ identities, which is key to understanding their level of
support for
AAS. The purpose of my research was to uncover this
dimension by ask-
ing students specific questions about AAS approximately one
year after
the sit-in when memory of the takeover were still fresh in their
minds.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Drastic actions in demand for ethnic studies such as sit-ins and
hunger
strikes are often portrayed by opponents as ill conceived and
shortsighted.
In many cases, however, students resorted to these actions only
after they
had tried to negotiate through a peaceful process and found the
school
administration either unwilling to listen or too slow to act.6
This was also
the case with the Princeton sit-in protesters. In November 1988,

six and
half years before the sit-in, Asian American students at
Princeton expressed
their request for permanent AAS courses to the newly appointed
univer-
sity president. In the 1992–93 academic year, students
organized the “Asian
American Student Task Force” and submitted to the university a
four-
teen-page, single-spaced proposal for AAS courses and other
recommen-
dations.
The student leaders became more active in the 1994–95
academic
year, when they succeeded in inviting a visiting AAS professor
who was
temporally teaching at a nearby university. Throughout the
academic year,
students had numerous formal and informal meetings with the
univer-
sity faculty and administration. According to these students, in
that aca-
demic year alone they had one meeting with the university
president, three

meetings with the vice provost, five meetings with the dean of
the college,
and “two meetings with an Associate Dean of the College, one
meeting
with an Associate Dean of the Faculty, two meetings with the
outgoing
and incoming directors of the American Studies Program, and
countless
meetings with numerous department heads and faculty
members.”7 As
the end of the academic year approached, students were
concerned that
the university did not make a clear commitment to what they
thought
were modest requests, such as inviting visiting professors to
teach AAS
courses in the following academic year and expanding library
holdings in
150 • JAAS • 4:2
the area of AAS. What led them to resort to a sit-in was their
desperate
feeling that they had exhausted all legitimate channels to

petition the
university. The students were also worried that their movement
would
lose its momentum and possibly collapse once a number of core
students
graduated in June. This would mean that the remaining students
would
have to start over the entire petitioning process in the following
academic
year.8
The sit-in protesters consisted of seventeen students, nine of
whom
were Asian Americans and Canadians (six Chinese and three
Koreans),
four Latinos, two African Americans, one White, and one
student of mixed
race. They continued the occupation of the president’s office
until the
provost assured in his letter to the campus newspaper “an effort
to raise
$6 million in endowment to support between two and four
positions in
existing departments for faculty with special interests in Asian-
American

[sic] and Latino studies.”9 The students were later ordered to
appear at a
university disciplinary committee meeting and placed under
probation
for either a year or until they graduated, whichever came first.
With a number of student leaders graduated and demands
partially
met, the movement of students became somewhat low-key in the
fall of
1995. The remaining students, however, continued to meet
regularly to
oversee the implementation process of the commitment that the
provost
had made in writing. The students also organized educational
events such
as the one-year commemoration of the sit-in and a debate on the
merits
of ethnic studies with a group of conservative non-Asian
students on cam-
pus. In the following academic year of 1996–97, the university
conducted
an interdepartmental search for an AAS faculty. Because the
candidate

who received an offer postponed teaching for a year and then
decided not
to take the permanent position at Princeton, however, a second
search
was conducted in the 1998–99 academic year. During this
interim period,
the American Studies Program offered one AAS course per
semester by a
visiting professor. In the spring of 2000, when all undergraduate
students
who witnessed the sit-in had graduated, the first AAS course by
a tenure-
track faculty was taught at Princeton.
•
RESEARCH METHOD
In April and May 1996, I conducted interviews with thirty-four
Asian
American undergraduate students at Princeton.10 Although
selection of
the interviewees at this single university narrows the
generalizability of

my research, it has the benefit of allowing me to ask specific
questions
about the school and the takeover in particular.
I identified my informants through a non-random, “purposive”
sam-
pling process that involved the “snowballing” technique.11
Because this
was a qualitative research designed to draw an overall picture of
the iden-
tities of Asian American students, and was not intended to
measure the
distribution and frequency of different types of identities, I did
not choose
my interviewees by random sampling. Rather, I intentionally
looked for
and interviewed particular individuals such as presidents and
former presi-
dents of ethnic-based student organizations,12 student
government of-
ficers who were Asian Americans, and Southeast Asians who
were
underrepresented at the university compared to other Asian
Americans. I
also employed the “search for exception” (“search for deviant

cases”)
method to include athletes on varsity sport teams and members
of cer-
tain “eating clubs” (social organizations unique to Princeton, of
which
seventy to eighty percent of juniors and seniors were said to
belong) where
there were few minorities.
The thirty-four interviewees included eighteen ethnic Chinese
(in-
cluding those whose parents were from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
the Car-
ibbean), seven Koreans, one Japanese, one Filipino, two Thai,
two Viet-
namese, one Cambodian, two South Asians, and two Pacific
Islanders (two
students with mixed Asian background were counted twice).13
This eth-
nic distribution roughly reflected the actual percentage
distribution of
undergraduate Asian American students at the university. The
interviewee
sample was a diverse group of students representing fifteen
states and

fourteen department majors (freshmen were excluded because
they had
not witnessed the sit-in that occurred in the previous year).
Eight had
taken at least one of the three courses in AAS that were offered
at Princeton
between spring 1995 and the time when they were interviewed;
twenty-
six had not.14
152 • JAAS • 4:2
I conducted the interviews in a semi-structured, open-ended,
for-
mat. I asked questions about the informant’s: (1) ethnicity,
parents’ occu-
pations, and language(s) spoken at home; (2) extra-curricular
activities
on campus, including “eating clubs”; (3) opinions about AAS in
general,
and AAS classes if the student had taken one; (4) opinions
about the April
1995 sit-in; (5) racial/ethnic composition of friends; and (6)
experience

of racial discrimination. The average length of the interview
was forty-
four minutes. Partly because I wanted to let my interviewees
feel free to
speak about sensitive issues, I did not tape-record, but instead
took notes
of their responses. I completed my write-ups immediately after
each in-
terview, taking seventy minutes on average to complete.
STUDENTS WITH MODEST SUPPORT FOR ASIAN
AMERICAN STUDIES
In their well-known article, Stanley and Derald Sue classified
Asian Ameri-
can students’ personalities into three groups: the “traditional,”
who inter-
nalize Asian values passed on to them by their parents; the
“marginal,”
who deny traditional ethnic values and strive to incorporate
Western val-
ues instead; and “Asian Americans,” who find positive values in
joining
anti-racist social movements with African Americans and
Latinos.15 Al-

though the Sue brothers’ framework was severely criticized,
subsequent
analyses of racial/ethnic identities of Asian American youth
found simi-
lar patterns. For example, Nazli Kibria’s research on Korean
and Chinese
college graduates in the Boston area identified three groups:
those who
drew their friends in college primarily from within their own
ethnic group;
those who looked for friends in diverse racial groups other than
Asians;
and those who found social comfort with a pan-Asian network
of friends.16
Similarly, Stacey Lee’s study of a public high school on the
East Coast
found groups of Korean- and Asian-identified students and a
group of
students who had pride in their Asian American identity.17
These studies
indicate that the political consciousness of students is not very
high ex-
cept among those in the last, Asian American category. I also
found a

similar pattern in my study; support for AAS were generally
moderate
both among students who associated primarily with Asian
American
friends and among students who associated mainly with white
friends.
•
It is not surprising that students’ identification with Asian or
Asian
American values in social and cultural aspects of life does not
necessarily
translate into their identification as Asian Americans in
political terms.
Indeed, some of Kibria’s informants who found comfort among
a net-
work of friends of their own ethnic group had been turned off
by what
they perceived as too strong political orientations of campus
pan-Asian
organizations.18 Although my informants did not exhibit
negative atti-
tudes toward political issues in general and AAS in particular,

their sup-
port for AAS was limited to favoring the offering of a few
courses without
a program or a department.
For example, Student A (Chinese, second generation) said that
she
had “definitely more Asian” than white friends, because they
shared the
same background and experience of being on the “border of two
cul-
tures.” She had not taken an AAS course, although that was
mainly be-
cause she had to take a number of required courses to complete
her sci-
ence major. She also said she did not find a need to take an
AAS course
because she discussed Asian American issues with her Asian
American
friends in her daily life. Although she respected the sit-in
protesters, she
also thought that they had gone too far, making a big deal out of
a small
issue. She thought it was a good thing for Princeton to have one
perma-

nent AAS course. She also argued, however, that AAS should
not precede
other priorities, such as Korean-language courses whose future
funding
was uncertain at the time of the interview.
Religion plays an important role in providing social ties among
some
Asian American students. Many universities across the nation
saw the
establishment of Asian American Christian groups in the past
decade,
which were either pan-Asian or ethnic-based, depending on the
Asian
American population on campus.19 To many of the evangelical
students
who join these prayer groups, belonging to an Asian social
community
overlaps with their sense of belonging to a much larger
religious commu-
nity under God. I found that evangelical students in these
groups were
usually not ardent supporters for AAS.20
Student B (Korean, second generation) took part in the creation

of
an Asian American Christian fellowship at Princeton in the mid-
1990s.
Although she acknowledged that ethnicity should not matter in
Chris-
154 • JAAS • 4:2
tianity, she also thought that her group provided a family
atmosphere
and support to Asian American students, especially to those who
believed
their Christian background was not strong enough to join larger
Chris-
tian fellowships on campus. Many of her campus friends were
members
of this fellowship. She felt more comfortable with her Asian
American
friends, in particular Korean American ones, than with her
white friends.
She supported the idea that the school should have one or two
perma-
nent AAS courses, but thought that AAS did not have a base
large enough

to have its own program or department. She did not think that
the sit-in
students waited as long as they could, nor did she think that
they had
done a good job in publicizing what they were fighting for.
Several of my interviewees were on the other end of the
spectrum on
the socio-cultural dimension of identity and similarly expressed
only
modest support for AAS. Some of them avoided “sticking with”
other
Asian Americans on campus; others did not make a conscious
choice in
selecting their friends but “happened to have” mainly white
friends. It is
easy to see that the level of support for AAS among these
students was
not high, but it is important to note that few of them expressed
strong
opposition to AAS.
Student C (Southeast Asian, first generation) was referred to me
as a
person who was (somewhat jokingly) “against” the pan-Asian
student

organization on campus. He felt that members of the
organization ex-
cluded non-Asians and did not want to be a part of it. He
socialized with
his Asian American friends on an individual basis outside the
organiza-
tion, but he did not like the idea that students formed
associations along
racial lines. Regarding AAS, he did not see the need for
Princeton to have
a program. He thought that the sit-in was unnecessary and that
the pro-
testers were not representative of the Asian American students
on cam-
pus. He also thought that the protesters jumped on the sit-in
idea with-
out giving it much serious thought.
Despite his critical sentiments toward AAS, he was not entirely
against
AAS. He said that it was not a bad idea for Princeton to offer
one perma-
nent AAS course, and that he would consider taking one in the
future,

even though he would not give it a high priority. He also said he
did not
take any specific action to oppose the sit-in. The university is
generally
•
considered one of the most conservative among Ivy League
schools, but
opposition to ethnic studies was not voiced by Asian American
students
for at least a year or two after the sit-in.
The limited, qualified nature of the support for AAS among
students
who mainly associate with non-Asian friends can also be seen in
follow-
ing testimony. Student D (Chinese, second to third generation)
said that
she had more non-Asian friends than Asian American ones, and
did not
have an identity as an Asian American in her daily life. For her,
being an
Asian American was not a matter of value judgment but was
merely a

fact. She therefore was not bothered by the small number of
Asian Ameri-
cans in the neighborhood in which she grew up. At Princeton,
she took
one AAS course partly to fulfill the requirements of the
American studies
certificate program. During class discussion, she did not feel
comfortable
hearing some Asian American students in class repeatedly state
that Asian
Americans should be proud of their heritage and identity. She
wondered
whether the few Whites in the class felt comfortable with such a
state-
ment, given that even she, an Asian American, did not. From
this experi-
ence, she would support AAS only if courses were taught in a
way that
Whites in class would not feel uncomfortable.
Again, her comments may appear as though she was
unsupportive of
AAS, but her testimony suggests some unexplored potential of
AAS. In

addition to regular AAS courses, perhaps AAS courses can be
offered for
non-Asian American students so that such students interested in
learn-
ing about a different racial experience “do not feel
uncomfortable.”21 The
offering of such a course might dilute the original purpose of
AAS, but
could also help broaden the enrollment base for AAS at colleges
with small
numbers of Asian American students.
STUDENTS WITH STRONG SUPPORT FOR ASIAN
AMERICAN STUDIES
What kinds of students expressed strong support for AAS, then?
The Sue
brothers and Lee both found a group of students who took pride
in their
identity as Asian Americans. These students often had high
political con-
sciousness and joined anti-racist social movements.22
Consistent with
these studies, I found that students who positively identified
themselves
as Asian Americans tended to support AAS strongly.

156 • JAAS • 4:2
I found, however, two variants among students who positively
af-
firmed their “Asian American” identity. One was a group of
students who
were active in civil rights political activities and were willing to
build coa-
litions with other racial minority groups. These students had
many mi-
nority friends, in particular non-Asian ones, in their social life.
The other
group of students agreed that racist and oppressive elements of
society
should be eradicated, but also believed that Asian Americans
should make
advancements within mainstream society such as business and
politics.
I begin with the accounts of the first group of “Asian American”
stu-
dents. Student E (Chinese, second generation) appreciated the
fact that
she grew up in a predominantly Asian neighborhood surrounded

by Chi-
nese people. She thought that it allowed her to retain her
cultural heri-
tage and enjoy the “best of the two worlds.” Because she
commuted to a
predominantly white private high school, she felt comfortable
with both
her Asian American and white friends. Many of her friends at
Princeton,
however, were what she called “ethnic,” that is, people who
were not in
the mainstream social groups such as Asian Americans, Latinos,
and Af-
rican Americans. When she took an AAS course after the sit-in,
she felt
that the course heightened her political awareness. She decided
to join
the sit-in attempt several days before students took over the
president’s
office. She did so because when she went to their planning
meeting, she
was struck by the zeal of students there and by the formation of
a multi-
ethnic minority coalition at Princeton, which she felt was

conservative.
Although joining the sit-in was a difficult choice for her, she
believed that
she made the right decision.
Student F (Southeast Asian, second generation) also expressed
strong
support for AAS. Having grown up in a rural area in which she
said her
family were “the only Asians,” she experienced racial prejudice
from local
people but learned how to deal with it. Although she did not
participate
in the sit-in herself, she supported her protesting friends by
bringing their
personal belongings from their rooms to help them. After the
sit-in, she
wrote a petition to the university’s disciplinary committee
asking for le-
nient treatment of the students. She tried to take an AAS course
at
Princeton, and was disappointed that she did not get in. When
asked for
her opinions on AAS, she said, “we should have our own
program,” be-

•
cause she believed that lack of AAS courses would perpetuate
the myth
that Asian Americans were like whites. She had more racial
minority than
white friends, partly because she considered herself a racial
minority and
she would not have to explain to them what discrimination
against mi-
norities was like.
As seen from these two testimonies, students who fitted the
“Asian
American” group of the past studies provided strong support for
AAS.
Student leaders who are striving to establish new AAS programs
in col-
leges across the nation often have identities like Students E and
F.
I found, however, that quite a number of my informants who ex-
pressed strong support for AAS had identities that did not fit
this charac-

terization. Unlike students E and F, these students did not
necessarily have
a network of friends who were predominantly Asian American
or mi-
norities. Being very conscious of how society views Asian
Americans, some
students avoided socializing only with Asian Americans. This
does not
mean, however, that their identity as Asian Americans and their
belief in
the need for Asian American advancement in society were weak.
On the
contrary, they passionately talked about glass ceilings and other
tacit forms
of discrimination against Asian Americans. While agreeing to
the need
for eradicating racial inequalities in society, they also believed
that Asian
Americans should join mainstream society. They believed that
their fu-
ture personal success would contribute to the progress of Asian
Ameri-
cans as a whole. Seen from this angle, socializing with white
friends and

succeeding “within the system” did not represent a betrayal of
minority
people. Instead, doing so would pave the way for other
minorities to en-
ter into the system; it would help Whites understand Asian
Americans
better through personal contacts.
Student G (Chinese, second generation) grew up in an upper-
middle
class, suburban neighborhood. Although many Asian American
profes-
sionals lived in the area, he witnessed a series of racial
incidents in which
a number of Chinese immigrants received death threats. He
respected his
father, a government official, for taking actions and urging the
police to
find a solution. Although he confided that his closest friends
were Asian
Americans, he had a racially mixed group of friends that
included Whites
and African Americans. He admitted that he harbored a distaste
for “white-

158 • JAAS • 4:2
washed” Asian Americans who did not value their ethnic
identity. Al-
though he did not take AAS courses himself, he joked that most
of those
who did were his friends. At the time of the sit-in, he worked
with the
protesting students and spoke at the rally outside the president’s
office.
He argued, however, that AAS should remain part of the
American Stud-
ies Program and opposed the idea of an ethnic studies
department. He
believed that AAS should be available to all students, including
those who
were not Asian American. Along the same line, he said that the
core prin-
ciple of AAS should begin with “we are unique” but should not
become
“we should be separate”; instead, it should be “we are a unique
part of
our great American experience.”

Student G’s reason for supporting AAS is worth consideration.
While
acknowledging the need of Asian Americans for combating
racism, he
conceived of AAS in connection with the larger society. His
opposition to
an ethnic studies department did not stem from skepticism
toward AAS
but instead reflected his strong support. According to his belief,
just as
Asian American individuals should keep their ethnic pride and
at the same
time penetrate into mainstream society, AAS should retain its
core beliefs
but also become part of a larger curriculum.
Another example of maintaining a delicate balance between
ethnic
pride and integration into a larger society can be seen in the
following
testimony. Student H (Chinese, second generation) grew up in a
predomi-
nantly white neighborhood. In her high school, which was
fifteen to twenty
percent African American with very few Asian Americans, she

had what
she described as a dual identity—American during daytime at
school,
speaking English, and Chinese at home, speaking in Chinese
with her
parents. By the time she came to Princeton, however, she
realized that the
two sides of her identity were in fact one, and felt that she
“became an
Asian American.” Since then, she became comfortable with both
her Asian
American and white friends. She would become uncomfortable,
how-
ever, seeing Asian American students criticizing each other for
socializing
only among themselves for one group and for staying away from
Asian
Americans for another. Although she did not associate with the
latter group
of Asian American students, she tried not to criticize them and
believed
that they were the products of the American society that
encouraged mi-
norities to act like Whites. At Princeton, she actively joined

various ac-
•
tivities to raise awareness of Asian American political and
cultural issues.
She was also one of the leaders who organized the sit-in for
AAS and
Latino studies. Not surprisingly, she took AAS courses before
and after
the sit-in. Yet her campus activities were not limited to ones
that dealt
with minority-related issues. She held a leadership position in
many or-
ganizations that were not based on race and ethnicity.
Being one of the planners of the sit-in, Student H’s support for
AAS
is unquestionable. She had many non-Asian minority friends
and worked
with them on many issues. Her life and identity, however,
cannot be fully
captured by the “Asian American” category presented by the
Sue brothers

and Lee. While recognizing herself as a minority, she had a
diverse racial
mix of friends and found positive values in participating
mainstream
political and social activities.
The group of students like G and H poses a difficult but
interesting
question to those of us who wish to expand the institutional
base of AAS.23
Some might be tempted to believe that these students should
focus on
working with other racial minority groups without acquiescing
to the
inherently racist society. Others might delight in finding strong
support-
ers for AAS within a group of students who often socialize with
white
friends.
Whichever is true, we should recognize the importance of
measuring
individual students’ support for AAS in a multi-dimensional
framework.
If we see a group of students who associate primarily with white
friends

and dismiss them as not supportive of AAS, we would lose
ardent AAS
supporters like students G and H. The racial composition of
their friends
does not necessarily reflect students’ political opinions.24
Similarly, if we base our judgment on simple yes-no questions
such
as “Do you support the idea of an ethnic studies department?”
we would
categorize student G as non-supportive of AAS. As student G’s
testimony
suggests, there are several ways to institutionalize AAS in
relation to Ameri-
can studies and other existing academic units, and it may vary
according
to the particular culture and organization of a school. Students’
prefer-
ence in the format of AAS’s institutionalization does not
necessarily re-
veal the degree of their support for AAS. Without asking why
one is for or
against a particular type of AAS program, we cannot ascertain
how strongly

one supports AAS.
160 • JAAS • 4:2
CONCLUSION
Since its inception in the late 1960s, AAS has been an academic
endeavor
with a mission to address the needs of Asian American students
and trans-
form racially unjust aspects of American society. Those of us in
AAS have
therefore engaged in serious discussions of our political
strategies, orga-
nizational developments, theoretical orientations, and teaching
materi-
als. In particular, we have tackled pedagogical issues as the
central con-
cern of our enterprise, rather than treating them as secondary to
research
as discipline-based academic fields often do.25 We have
discussed what
perspectives we should present to our students, what kinds of
ties stu-
dents should build with their communities, and what identities

and po-
litical orientations we hope students to develop.
Although we have been keen on what we can do for Asian
American
students, we might not have spent enough time to find out who
they
really are—that is, what racial/ethnic identities they have and
what per-
ceptions they hold of us. Our knowledge of Asian American
students who
choose not to take our courses is particularly limited.26 We
may casually
assume that they are apolitical with little interest in remedying
racial in-
equalities in the United States, but we have not seriously
examined if our
assumption was true or whether we could work with them.
The testimonies of the last two students in this article suggest
that
students who choose not to enroll in AAS courses or associate
mainly
with white friends are not necessarily apolitical with weak
support for

AAS. Rather, these students may turn out to be strong
supporters of AAS.
With their primary concerns in life being outside ethnic studies,
they may
not become core members of the student movement for AAS,
but they
have great potential in expanding our support base. Likewise,
for stu-
dents who have only moderate support for AAS, we have not
fully devel-
oped our strategies that take their racial/ethnic identities into
consider-
ation. We need to ask ourselves why these students do not
perceive AAS
as a strong academic field, and what we can do to change their
opinions
given the identities and attitudes they have. Overall, our
strategies for
developing and expanding the AAS curriculum should reflect
the diverse
nature of the racial/ethnic identities of Asian American
students.

•
Notes
* I received useful comments and warm encouragement from the
following
individuals at various stages of this research: Gary Okihiro,
Franklin Odo,
Isao Fujimoto, Yasuko Takezawa, Noriko Shimada, Masumi
Izumi, Emily
Martin, Karen Ho, Jennifer Hochschild, Dana Schmitz, and
Makiko Deguchi.
I also would like to thank past presidents of the Asian American
Student
Association, April Chou, Alan Wang, and Audrey Jean, and all
of the thirty-
four informants for sharing their precious time for my research.
An earlier
version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of
the Association
for Asian American Studies in Seattle in April 1997 and at the
“Intersections
and Divergences: Contemporary Asian Pacific American
Communities”
conference at the University of Southern California in April
1998. Some of
the interview data in this article were included in my article,
“The Multi-
Dimensionality of the Racial/Ethnic Identities of Asian
American College
Students: Evidence from Research at Princeton University” (in
Japanese),
Amerika Kenkyu (Japanese Association for American Studies)
31 (1997) and
used here with permission.

1. Peter Nien-chu Kiang, “The New Wave: Developing Asian
American Studies
on the East Coast,” in Reflections on Shattered Windows:
Promises and Prospects
for Asian American Studies, edited by Gary Y. Okihiro et al.
(Pullman:
Washington State University Press, 1988), 43–50.
2. Stephen H. Sumida, “East of California: Points of Origin in
Asian American
Studies,” Journal of Asian American Studies 1:1 (1998): 83–
100; Mitchell J.
Chang, “Expansion and Its Discontents: The Formation of Asian
American
Studies Programs in the 1990s,” Journal of Asian American
Studies 2:2 (1999):
181–206.
3. Peter Nien-chu Kiang, “Bringing It All Back Home: New
Views of Asian
American Studies and the Community” in Frontiers of Asian
American Studies:
Writing, Research, and Community, edited by Gail M. Nomura
et al. (Pullman:
Washington State University Press), 305–14.
4. Nazli Kibria, “College and Notions of ‘Asian American’:
Second Generation
Chinese and Korean Americans Negotiate Race and Identity,”
Amerasia
Journal 25:1 (1999): 29–51.
5. Stanley Sue and Derald W. Sue, “Chinese-American
Personality and Mental
Health” Amerasia Journal 1:2 (1971): 36–49; Laura Uba, Asian
Americans:

Personality Patterns, Identities, and Mental Health (New York:
Guilford Press,
1994); Stacey J. Lee, Unraveling the ‘Model Minority’
Stereotype: Listening to
Asian American Youth (New York: Teachers College Press,
1996); and Kibria,
“College.”
6. Chang states that some of the student demonstrations in the
1990s were “at
times pursued naively without substantive knowledge of AAS or
institutional
politics.” Chang, “Expansion,” 183. However, my interviews
with Princeton,
Northwestern, and Columbia student leaders suggest that
students rarely
162 • JAAS • 4:2
resort to drastic actions before exhausting all peaceful options.
Columbia’s
students’ demand for AAS dates back to at least the formation
of the Ad-
Hoc Committee on Asian American Studies by concerned
students in the
fall of 1991, and Northwestern students on the Asian American
Advisory
Board initiated student-led AAS courses since spring semester
1992. Author’s
interviews with a Northwestern student leader, April 21, 1996,
and with a
Columbia student leader, May 26, 1996. The fact that large-
scale
demonstrations at these institutions all broke out in April

suggests that
students who had negotiated with the school administration
since September
in the preceding year had no choice but to resort to direct
actions before
some of the student leaders graduated.
7. Sit-in protesters’ letter to the Daily Princetonian, April 23,
1995, 8.
8. Author’s interview with a Princeton student leader, April 23
and May 13,
1996.
9. Daily Princetonian, April 22, 1995. Typical of reactions that
schools take in
settling disputes with students, the administration maintained
that it had
prepared to offer these solutions since before the sit-in, and
hyphenated the
term “Asian American” although student leaders did not do so.
10. When I conducted this research, I was an international
graduate student
from Japan at the same university. As a non-American Asian, I
was conscious
of the effect that my outsider status might have on building
rapport with my
informants. See Dorinne K. Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power,
Gender, and
Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago:
University of Chicago
Press, 1990). Although my relationship with the students may
not have been
as tight as an Asian American researcher could establish, my
outsider status

may have helped me become sensitive to the diversity of the
identities that
Asian American students themselves may not have fully
recognized.
11. Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research (Belmont,
California: Wadsworth,
1995), 287.
12. Partly because many of the ethnic-based organizations were
headed by female
students at the time of the interview, my sample included more
women
(twenty-one) than men (thirteen).
13. They also included two students who had not obtained U.S.
citizenship and
another two Canadians. I included these students in light of the
particular
roles they played on campus, rather than excluding them solely
on the basis
of government-imposed nationality. Interestingly, both the two
Pacific
Islanders and two South Asians I interviewed expressed that
they did not
consider themselves Asian Americans and did not want to be
identified as
such. For the ambivalent position of South Asians within Asian
Americans,
see Shilpa Davé et al., “De-privileging Positions: Indian
Americans, South
Asian Americans, and the Politics of Asian American Studies,”
Journal of
Asian American Studies 3:1 (2000): 67–100.
14. Among the thirty-two interviewees (excluding two Pacific

Islanders), there
were five to seven who were first generation, twenty-two to
twenty-six, second
•
generation, and two to three, third generation. I allowed a range
in the number
of students in each generation because the boundaries between
generations
are not clear-cut, as is the case of “1.5 generation” Korean
Americans.
15. Sue and Sue, “Chinese-American Personality.”
16. Kibria, “College.”
17. Lee, Unraveling.
18. Kibria, “College,” 42–43.
19. Rudy V. Busto, “The Gospel According to the Model
Minority? Hazarding
an Interpretation of Asian American Evangelical Students,”
Amerasia Journal
22:1 (1996): 133–47.
20. Similarly, Busto observes that “[a]mong activist,
progressive non-evangelical
Asian American students, the tendency for evangelical students
to shy away
from campus politics is regarded as complacency and
assimilationist.” Busto,
“Gospel,” 147.
21. To offer such a course, we have to prevent either activist

students or first-
time learners from dominating class discussion. One way to do
this is to
provide separate tracks of the same AAS course for activist
students and
first-time learners. Okiyoshi Takeda, “The Dilemmas of
Teaching an Asian
American Politics Course (Or The Pros and Cons of Offering a
Course Called
‘Asian American Politics for Dummies’),” paper presented at
the Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Washington, D.C., 2000.
22. Sue and Sue, “Chinese-American Personality”; Lee,
Unraveling.
23. Another important question is what factors contribute to the
formation of
identities like students G and H. It seems that the upper-middle
class
background of students allows them to consider the possibility
of earning
occupational success that their fellow white students are
expected to win.
Research at private universities like Princeton might produce a
bias toward
identifying such students.
24. Consistent with this argument is Ting-Toomey’s analysis of
her survey data
on Chinese American college students that shows that students
who identified
themselves as “Chinese” rather than “American” were more
likely to have a
predominantly white friendship network, and conversely,

students who
identified themselves as “American” were more likely to have a
predominantly
Asian friendship network. Although Ting-Toomey presents this
result as a
puzzle, it is not a contradiction once we notice that students’
affirmation in
ethnic pride and choice of friends belong to different
dimensions of their
identities. Stella Ting-Toomey, “Ethnic Identity and Close
Friendship in
Chinese-American College Students,” International Journal of
Intercultural
Relations 5 (1981): 383–406.
25. Defying the practice of traditional disciplines to relegate
pedagogical issues
to newsletters, JAAS, the official journal of the Association for
Asian American
Studies (AAAS), has published a number of articles with
pedagogical
concerns. Sumida, “East of California”; Keith Osajima,
“Pedagogical
Considerations in Asian American Studies,” Journal of Asian
American Studies
164 • JAAS • 4:2
1:3 (1998): 269–92; and the entire issue of 3:1 (guest edited by
Shirley Hune
and Phil Tajitsu Nash), which includes articles by Kenyon C.
Chan, Nancy I.
Kim, and the above cited Davé et al. See also, Lane Ryo
Hirabayashi (ed.),

Teaching Asian America: Diversity and the Problem of
Community (Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).
26. A discipline that has provided insights in this area is
psychology. Despite
their large number and accumulation of work, psychologists
who conduct
research on and for Asian Americans are not as deeply
integrated within
AAAS as scholars in other fields such as history and literature,
however.
These journals are due weekly by the Sundays at the end of
weeks two through nine. These are primarily a place for you to
record your thoughts on the weeks readings and show me how
you’re thinking about them. If you do not cover all of the
readings for the week, then you should show that you have
deeply analyzed the readings you do cover and justify your
exclusive focus on those readings. You can use an informal
style in the writing.
The journals should be one to four pages long. You can use
single- or double-spacing and a standard 12-point font. These
journals are evaluated almost exclusively along effort lines. At
a minimum, I would expect to see a discussion of what each
reading argued and what (if anything) you found interesting
about it.
Here is the rough scale I will use:
15 = Shows passion and insight while providing a full analysis
of all the readings.
14 = Covers all of the readings with a full analysis (summary,
questions, context, and reflection).
13 = Covers all of the readings (or makes an argument about
readings uncovered) with a basic analysis.
12 = Covers most of the readings without suggesting careful

analysis.
11 = Barely addresses some of the readings.
10 = Does not meaningfully address the readings.

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