King-Kok Cheung, professor emeritus of English and Asian American Studies at UCLA, was recognized with a lifetime achievement award by the Association for Asian American Studies for her lifelong contribution to advancing the field of Asian American and Pacific Islander studies. Click here to read more about Cheung’s achievements.
On November 2, 2022, the Asian American Studies Department released a statement expressing our solidarity with striking UAW graduate and academic workers.
Aligned with this statement and in accordance with the recommendations of Council of UC Faculty Associations, the Academic Senate faculty of the Department of Asian American Studies agree unanimously that until the strike has concluded:
We will not pick up struck work.
We will not hire additional labor to make up for the labor the strikers are withholding.
We will not submit grades on assignments that have already been graded or otherwise insert grades that are not representative.
In addition, those of us who are teaching courses without TAs or readers will also withhold grades in solidarity.
We may make exceptions for individual students whose circumstances as those on international visas, about to graduate, on financial aid, or other such considerations make them particularly vulnerable to withheld grades.
In doing so, we exercise our rights as protected by HEERA (Higher Education Employee Relations Act).
Graduate student labor is fundamental to our pedagogical and scholarly enterprise, which cannot be sustained without improving their living and working conditions. To resolve the disruption to the continuity and quality of student education, we urge the UC toward a speedy settlement that honors the value and rights of graduate and academic workers.
The Department of Asian American Studies in partnership with the Asian American Studies Center (AASC) at UCLA invites applications from Pacific Islander Studies scholars in the humanities, social sciences and/or the arts for an open rank position. We seek an innovative thinker who already is or has the potential to become a leading scholar of Pacific Islander issues in the United States and related diasporas and whose work will play an important role in shaping public narratives and/or public debates concerning Pacific Islander peoples and communities. This position is part of the Chancellor’s Native American and Pacific Islander Bruins Rising Initiative that aims to create an ecosystem of support for Indigenous research, teaching and civic and community engagement. We are open to scholars with a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches.
If you would like to apply, you can find all the information here.
Statement of Support for UC Graduate Academic Workers
Asian American Studies Department
November 2, 2022
As scholars in a field created by student movements for social justice, the faculty of the Department of Asian American Studies call on the University of California to negotiate in good faith to honor the demands of teaching assistants, tutors, readers, student researchers, postdocs, and academic researchers represented by three unions–UAW 2865, UAW 5810, and SRU-UAW–for livable wages, affordable housing, child care subsidies, and other basic necessities. We also firmly recommit to our policy of non-retaliation for any of our students who engage in union activities. Graduate student labor is fundamental to our pedagogical and scholarly enterprise, which cannot be sustained without improving their living and working conditions.
