ASAM reading journals paper

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

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

149ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN • TAKEDA •

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.

151ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN • TAKEDA •

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.

153ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN • TAKEDA •

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

155ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN • TAKEDA •

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-

157ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN • TAKEDA •

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-

159ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN • TAKEDA •

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.

161ONE YEAR AFTER THE SIT-IN • TAKEDA •

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

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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

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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

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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.