Asian American Studies Department Solidarity Statement

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We, the undersigned faculty of the UCLA Asian American Studies Department, express our outrage over the series of events that have occurred over the past week, including the university administration’s declaring of the peaceful student protest “unlawful” and “unauthorized” and the subsequent failure to protect UCLA students within the encampment from violent attacks from outside agitators on multiple nights, culminating on the night of April 30, 2024. 

We also denounce Chancellor Gene Block’s decision to call in the LAPD, CHP, and LA Sheriff’s Department to disband the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on the night of May 1, 2024, which resulted in the use of rubber bullets, batons, and flashbang grenades against our students, as well as the detainment and arrests of at least 200 peaceful protestors. Last night our campus felt like a militarized war zone, akin to, but by no means equivalent to, what Palestinians have endured for decades. We object in the strongest possible terms to all of these actions, which are not reflective of the values of our campus community and of academic freedom more generally.

As faculty, our utmost commitment is to the safety and well-being of our students.  We strongly condemn the attacks on our students, from outside agitators as well as UC-condoned police forces.  We echo UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine’s demand for full legal, academic and disciplinary amnesty for all protesters.  We call upon UCLA to stand up for the safety and the rights of the campus community by honoring the students’ constitutional right to peacefully protest without fear of punishment. We insist upon a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Block for endangering our students.  

Asian American Studies is rooted in a rich tradition of student protest against war, imperialism, racism, settler colonialism, and police violence in the United States, its territories, and abroad. The Palestine Solidarity Encampment is part of a longer history of student activism at UCLA, which includes protests against the US War in Southeast Asia and an international campaign that boycotted the apartheid state in South Africa. Like our students, we too are horrified and grief-stricken by the rising death toll in Gaza.  We echo and uplift our students’ demands that UCLA disclose its investments and divest from the US-backed genocide against Palestinians.  

Asian American Studies is indebted to student voices and protests. Given our history, we stand committed to the First Amendment right of free speech and the right for our students to exercise their free speech, safely and without fear of retaliation. We are horrified by the acts of violence committed against our students who are continuing a long legacy of demanding social change. We support student-led efforts that advance human rights and social justice.

 

Signed,

Victor Bascara, Associate Professor

Lucy Burns, Associate Professor

Keith L. Camacho, Professor and Chair

Jolie Chea, Assistant Professor

King-Kok Cheung, Professor Emeritus

Jennifer Jihye Chun, Associate Professor

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Associate Professor

Grace Kyungwon Hong, Professor 

Nour Joudah, Assistant Professor

Purnima Mankekar, Professor

Valerie Matsumoto, Professor

Natalie Masuoka, Associate Professor

Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, Professor

Kyeyoung Park, Professor 

Loubna Qutami, Assistant Professor

Cindy C. Sangalang, Assistant Professor

Renee Tajima-Peña, Professor

Karen Umemoto, Professor

Lee Ann Wang, Assistant Professor

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.

 

UCLA Newsroom: Bringing migrant and refugee stories – and connections – to light

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UCLA Newsroom recently published an article on UCLA Asian American Studies Department Professor Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi’s relational approach to Asian American studies. Read more about it here.

The Academic Senate Faculty of the Asian American Studies Department’s Strike Solidarity Statement on Grading

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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.

 

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.

Elemental Cartographies: Mapping Winds in Indigenous Economies of Abundance in the Era of Climate Change

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Stop by Young Research Library on Tuesday, November 8, 2022 at 12pm to attend the public lecture by Candance Fujikane on Tuesday, November 8, 2022 as she covers the topic, “Elemental Cartographies: Mapping Winds in Indigenous Economies of Abundance in the Era of Climate Change.”

This event is cosponsored by the UCLA Department of English, Asian American Studies, Center for the Study of Women, Center for Asian American Studies, and the Laboratory of Environmental Narrative.

The Faculty of the Asian American Studies Department’s Statement of Solidarity with Afghanistan

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The faculty of the UCLA Asian American Studies Department stands in solidarity with Afghan people who are facing Taliban rule as only one of a number of brutal consequences arising from twenty years of invasion, occupation, and war waged by the US military and its allies. In tradition with Asian American Studies’ long critique and opposition to US militarism in Asia writ large, including Central Asia, Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA), we condemn and oppose this war and all imperialist wars from the Americas to Asia, Africa, and beyond.

We stand firmly with the growing movement in the US and join our voices to say: our government must ensure that those seeking to leave Afghanistan continue to have ways to do so safely, remove admissions caps for refugees, and provide genuine resources for the resettlement of Afghan refugees. Neighboring countries must keep their borders open and ensure safe passage for fleeing refugees, and grassroots organizers and humanitarian workers must recognize Afghan people as leaders in the struggle against authoritarian and military regimes. Our own university must commit to creating safe harbor for Afghan scholars, students, and teachers and all peoples displaced by imperial military violence.

Refugee histories, forced migration, asylum, detainment, and the separation of families have unavoidably shaped and splintered communities and peoples across Asia and the Pacific.  Thus, war and its aftermath of management of international peace and relocation are ongoing violences our field continually takes up in our intellectual inquiries, oral histories, and memory of what has and can constitute Asian American Studies. In this vein, we lift up all who have built ongoing challenges against US militarism and support peoples displaced, erased, and resilient.

 

In solidarity,

The faculty of the Asian American Studies Department, 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.

Asian American Studies Department’s Statement of Solidarity with Palestine

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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. 

Congratulations Class of 2020

Congratulations Class of 2020!

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Dear Class of 2020,

 

We congratulate you on the difficulties you had overcome to get to where you are today. Your graduation and accomplishments are milestones that our department wishes to celebrate with you. We understand the disappointment many of you may have experienced due to commencement shifting to the virtual platform. Nevertheless, the form of celebration does not define your accomplishments, we are proud of you and we thank you for allowing us to be part of your journey here at UCLA. Please enjoy this small video that Professor Renee Tajima-Pena has helped put together in honor of you and your graduation.

Click to Watch Video Here!

 

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Edward A. Bouchet Honor Society – Deadline: Monday, November 26th at 9am PST

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The UCLA chapter of the Edward A. Bouchet Honor Society (Bouchet Society) is now accepting applications. The Bouchet Society seeks to develop a network of preeminent scholars who exemplify academic and personal excellence, foster environments of support and serve as examples of scholarship, leadership, character, service and advocacy for students who have been traditionally underrepresented in the academy.

 

Doctoral Student Membership is available to any individual who is currently a doctoral student in good academic standing, and through initial research achievement in a humanities, social science, or science field, has shown outstanding promise as a scholar.

Postdoctoral Membership is available to any individual who has received their PhD degree over the last 6 years, and through initial research achievement in a humanities, social science, or science field, has shown outstanding promise as a scholar.

 

Applications are due by Monday, November 26th at 9am PST. For more information about Bouchet Society at UCLA, see our Bouchet Society website or you can link directly to the application.

 

Contact Maggie Gover, Assistant Dean of Diversity, Inclusion, and Admissions for questions (mgover@grad.ucla.edu)