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Conquering Harvard: Asian American Studies
Mike Liu
12/10/07
A recent article in the Harvard Crimson described a petition in 1987 for the hiring of an Asian American studies professor and the lack of realization of this goal, twenty years later.
The Asian American Association (AAA) is starting yet another campaign to bring the field to Harvard.
In fact the struggle for Asian American studies dates back even further. In the early 80's the Asian American Resource Workshop conducted an Asian American Studies campaign in conjunction with Harvard students. The Ivy-League universities, despite a growing percentage of Asian American students, have a ill-concealed disdained for ethnic studies. The Crimson article quotes the former chair of Harvard’s history department says that "a general slowdown in social science and humanities growth in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is partly to blame, and that advocates of Asian American studies have yet to make a compelling argument for why it should be emphasized."
The slowdown is a bullshit excuse. Harvard has a record endowment of 26 billion with more money than it knows what to do with. Slowdown or no slowdown, Harvard has enough money to repave the Boston neighborhood of Allston, so one or two Asian American studies professors is not going to cripple it. Harvard is merely exercising its elite white skin privilege view of looking at the world through its class position and dismiising the histories of communities of color. Harvard knows little of the contributions of Asian Americans to uniting the continental U,S., or the development of Califronia and Hawai'i. Where Asian American studies has achieved success on the east coast is primarily in public universities, where the Asian American population can bring political pressure to bear.
To conquer Harvard's disdain and the entrenched opposition of the Harvard bureaucracy, the Asian American Association must devise a sustained campaign if it is to succeed. While the AAA has shifted strategies to emphasize small steps, student activists say the continuing failure of their campaigns is a result of Harvard’s academically conservative culture. However, what is needed is dramatic confrontation and mobilization of the larger Asian American students and community. An institution such as Harvard will only respond to power that comes from those willing to make personal sacrifices for larger ideals.
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