Asian American Studies Department Professor Renee Tajima-Pena featured in UCLA Newsroom story about her UCLA video campaign focusing on multiracial solidarity for AAPI month. Read more about it here.
Statement of Solidarity with Palestine
May 21, 2021
The Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people as they continue to fight for the right to land, life, dignity, and freedom. We mourn the staggering loss of life, in which over 200 Palestinians have been killed in one week alone, including 64 children and 38 women at the time of this statement. The latest upsurge in violence has taken the form of deadly airstrikes, unauthorized evictions, beatings and imprisonments intended to terrorize and displace Palestinians. Media distortion and censorship has further suppressed Palestinian narratives, and threatened freedom of speech and academic freedom. With our colleagues from the Palestinian Feminist Collective, Palestine and Praxis: Scholars for Palestinian Freedom, National Women’s Studies Association, Association of Asian American Studies, Middle East Studies Association, Gender Studies Departments in Solidarity with Palestinian Feminist Collective, UCSC Feminist Studies, UCSC Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, UIC Global Asian Studies, UCSD AAPI Studies Program, UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies, UC Davis, UIUC Asian American Studies Department, Princeton University, and Yale Ethnicity, Rights, and Migration, we understand that such violence and intimidation are but the latest manifestation of seventy-three years of settler colonialism, racial apartheid, and occupation.
As an academic department situated on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples, we oppose settler-colonialism in all its forms, from Tovaangar to Palestine. We condemn the exploitation, theft, and colonization of land and labor and we strive for freedom and justice for all peoples. Asian American Studies, which traces our history to the Third World Liberation Front Strike of 1968, has long advanced a critique of imperialism, militarism, and settler colonialism in the United States, Asia, Oceania, and elsewhere. We condemn the exchange of military tactics and financial support between the United States and Israel, noting how U.S. counterinsurgency techniques and military equipment used during the Vietnam War were then extrapolated to the Occupied Territories; how the Israeli military’s policing of the apartheid wall dividing Jerusalem and isolating the West Bank has influenced the U.S.’s own brutal border security policies along the U.S.-Mexico border; and how Israel has too often upheld its support of Asian and Asian American individuals as proof of multicultural democracy, over and against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine via a process of “yellow-washing.”
At this moment of historical juncture, we call for the end of evictions of Palestinians from their homes, especially in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and in the South Hebron hills. While we commend the ceasefire of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which as of May 19th, 2021 have killed hundreds, injured thousands, and displaced over 40,000, we insist that the 15-year-old blockade on Gaza must be lifted immediately. We call for an immediate end to state and settler violence against Palestinian citizens of Israel, including mob lynchings, imprisonments, and the beatings of protestors. We demand an end to the military occupation of the West Bank and the renewed assault against Palestinians who have joined the protest. We implore the Biden administration to halt all funding to Israel until it complies with international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, and stops its crimes against humanity and human rights violations. We condemn the 735 million dollar weapons sale to Israel that the Biden administration has recently approved.
We remain inspired by the ongoing resilience of the Palestinian people. We salute the “Unity Uprising” as people across all parts of Palestine (inside historic Palestine, Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank) and around the world rise up together to say, “Enough is enough.” We remain committed to teaching about Palestine in our classes. We stand in support of our students, who even as they mourn and grieve, remain committed to activism and advocacy in all forms. In sum, we lend our voices to uplifting the struggle of the Palestinian people as part of our ethical, scholarly, and pedagogical commitment to knowledge relevant for justice and freedom for all people and geographies of the world.
In solidarity,
The Department of Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
In accordance with Regents Policy on Public and Discretionary Statements by Academic Units, this statement should not be taken as a position of the University, all members of the Department, or the campus as a whole.
David Myers, the director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy, spoke with Karen Umemoto, the Helen and Morgan Chu Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and David Yoo, vice provost of the UCLA Institute for American Cultures. They talked about the alarming increase of hate crimes against Asian Americans due to the Coronavirus this year and discussed the history of anti-Asian Violence within America. The conversation about the history and present-day events was recorded for an episode of the “Then & Now” podcast.
You can find notable moments of the conversation highlighted by Cheryl Cheng here.
For anyone who is interested, we are still accepting enrollment for one of our summer sessions courses, ASIA AM 191A: Topics in Research Methodologies: Seminar 1. This course will be held via Zoom on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from 1:00pm – 2:20pm with Lecturer Albert Kochaphum.
Please see below information regarding ASIA AM 191A:
For more information, please reach out to Albert Kochaphum at albertkun@idre.ucla.edu.
UCLA alumna Rita Phetmixay is the host of “Healing Out Lao’d,” a podcast dedicated to supporting the healing of intergenerational trauma that many of the Lao diaspora face. Read more about it here!
“Please allow me to share a podcast episode I have been working on that was just released today, on Operation New Life and the role Guam played in processing Vietnamese refugees after the Fall of Saigon.”
“On this day 46 years ago, my mom and grandmother left Vietnam as refugees and were processed on Guam. This podcast episode discusses their experiences; the contributions of local Chamorros in welcoming the Vietnamese refugees; the motivations of 1,600+ Vietnamese repatriates who actually decided to return to communist-unified Vietnam; and the role that Vietnamese refugees and their descendants can play in the ongoing decolonization movement on Guam.”
“This podcast episode is based on my book manuscript research. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to translate my academic writing into a format that is more accessible to a wider community!”
– Professor Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi
To listen to this episode, please go to the Memoirs Pasifika website or you can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music/Audible, etc.
The Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), invites applications for part-time Lecturer positions (Non-Senate) with primary responsibility in teaching interdisciplinary courses in Asian American Studies for the 2021-2022 academic year. Appointments are usually per course, on a quarter by quarter basis and we expect to need enough Lecturers to cover 15 courses. The UCLA Department of Asian American Studies offers a major, minor, a graduate concentration, and a Master of Arts.
If you would like to apply, you can find all the information here.
Since its establishment in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in fellowships to more than 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors.
In this year’s class of fellows, it holds a wide range of backgrounds, fields of study, and accomplishments. In all, 49 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 73 different academic institutions, 28 states and 2 Canadian provinces are represented this year.
We would like to congratulate our very own, Keith Camacho, for being awarded as a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. You continue to lead our department with full strides, and we look forward to see what you create and research.
To see more professors who have been awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, click here.
We wanted to congratulate all undergraduate students, graduate students, as well as faculty members who have been awarded this year by the Asian American Studies Center for their scholarships and research.
In honor of the recipients, the Asian American Studies Center created a short montage here.
The Asian American Studies Center also produced a booklet highlighting all of the recipients, their awards, as well as the work that they have produced here.
