A History of Asian American Studies at the Claremont Colleges

A History of IDAAS (written in 2009)

by Linus Yamane (Pitzer College)

Since I was the founding chair of the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies (IDAAS), I am often asked to relate the story of the struggle to establish Asian American Studies at the Claremont Colleges. However, the only reason I was the founding chair was because I was the only faculty member with tenure at the time. The reality is that IDAAS is primarily the result of many, many Asian American student activists over time. In fact, the entire field of Asian American Studies has always been the product of student struggle and student activism.

It was in November 1968 that the Third World Liberation Front began a student strike at San Francisco State University. These students demanded an educational curriculum which reflected the realities of students of color. There were similar demands being made by students at UC Berkeley. The strike ended in March 1969 with the creation of the College of Ethnic Studies. Thus Asian American Studies was born in the late 1960s as a part of the third world movement on the West Coast that gave birth to African American Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Native American Studies.

While African American Studies, and to a lesser extent Chicano/Latino Studies, spread quickly to hundreds of colleges and universities around the U.S., Asian American Studies grew more slowly. Here at the Claremont Colleges, the Intercollegiate Department of Black Studies and the Chicano Studies Department were established in the Fall of 1969. The Office of Black Student Affairs and the Chicano/Latino Student Affairs Office were also created in the Fall of 1969. But the needs of Asian American students would continue to be ignored for another 30 years.

During the 1970s Professor of Psychology Rick Tsujimoto (Pitzer) and Tim Dong (Pomona) jointly taught an introductory course on Asian American Studies several times. After Tim Dong left, Professor Tsujimoto taught the course by himself a couple times as well. But through the decade of the 1980s, there would be zero courses in Asian American Studies at the Claremont Colleges.

One of the reasons for the lack of Asian American Studies at the Claremont Colleges has been the “model minority myth.” There has been the mistaken belief by faculty, staff, and administrators that Asian Americans are a “model minority,” ethnic minorities who, despite their marginalization, have achieved success in the United States. Consequently they do not see the need for curricular representation or student services for Asian Americans. However, events occasionally occur which force administrators to modify their views of the world. And in 1987 a female Asian American student at Pitzer committed suicide. From the perspective of student services at any college, there is no greater failure than a student suicide. Thus it became clear to many people that Asian American students had needs which were not being met at the Claremont Colleges.

I joined the faculty of Pitzer College in the fall of 1988. Coming from the East Coast, I assumed that there would be many Asian American faculty here. But I was mistaken. There was Sam Yamashita at Pomona, Mitsuru Kubota at Harvey Mudd, and Rick Tsujimoto at Pitzer. I was only the fourth Asian American faculty member. When I arrived Professor Sam Yamashita was agitating for courses in Asian American Studies, and had been doing so for five year. He spent a lot of time explaining that Asian American Studies was different from Asian Studies. And he explained that he was trained in Asian Studies, not Asian American Studies, and that the colleges needed to hire faculty specifically trained in Asian American Studies.

During the 1988-89 academic year I attended the meetings of several Asian American student organizations to understand the needs of our students here. I was most impressed by the efforts of four female Pomona College seniors. During the year they drafted an impressive proposal to establish a 5-college Asian American Resource Center, and presented their proposal to the Council of Presidents in the Spring of 1989.

Unfortunately the 5-College AARC proposal was not approved by the Council of Presidents. Part of the problem was that the proposal was drafted by four Pomona students and only had their names on the cover. Thus while Pomona was actually supportive of the proposal, the other four colleges would argue that their own Asian American students were doing fine. And while it was a Pitzer student who had committed suicide, Pitzer claimed not to have any money.

When the 5-C AARC proposal died, Pomona still needed to respond to its students in some way. So beginning in the Fall of 1989 Pomona created the Asian American Mentor Program (AAMP). AAMP is an organization aimed at meeting the specific needs of first year Asian American students. It fosters a growing and learning experience for both mentors and “mentees” and helps to develop Asian American leaders.

In the Fall of 1989 Professor Lynne Miyake joined the Pomona faculty in the department of Asian Languages and Literatures. She would teach a course on “Japanese and Japanese American Autobiography” and begin to introduce Asian American literature into the Claremont College curriculum.

During the Spring of 1990 we benefited from a Ford Foundation grant at Pitzer to develop a course in Asian American Studies. A number of faculty across the colleges met regularly to read and discuss literature in the field. During the summer I tried to read everything I could find in the field of Asian American Studies. I even went up to UC Berkeley and bought all the course readers for all their Asian American Studies classes. The state of the field was such that you could pretty much read everything over a summer.

During the Fall of 1990 Pomona decided to do a production of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera “The Mikado.” In response, Professor Dorinne Kondo detailed the specific forms of oppression that that the opera represented. And she organized a multi-ethnic coalition to protest the clownish yellow-faced characters and the general bastardization of Japanese culture. The multi-ethnic nature of the coalition was crucial to the success of the protest. For example, Professor Sid Lemelle was instrumental in making the placards, getting the bull horns, and leading the protest songs. “Hey hey, Ho ho, Racism’s go to go!” The protest brought much needed awareness to the oppression of Asian Americans.

During the Spring of 1991 Jack Ling (Dean of Students at Pitzer), Joe Parker, and I taught the first course in Asian American Studies in a decade at the Claremont Colleges. We called it “Asian American Experiences.” There was a lot of excitement about the class. We had about 50 students from all five colleges. But we really did not know what we were doing, and I personally thought it was the worst class I had ever taught. Nevertheless, the course evaluations we received at the end of the semester were all extremely positive. In the end I realized the students really connected with the course material, and what we did as professors really did not matter^[1]. I taught this introductory course again the following year with Jack Ling, and continued to teach it through the decade.

The Mikado protest and the course in Asian American Studies made people more aware of the needs of Asian American students. And in the fall of 1991 the Asian American Resource Center (AARC) was established at Pomona. The AARC has served as a resource for the campus community, designed multicultural activities to educate the entire community about Asian American issues and perspectives, and helped to develop Asian American student leadership. It started with one part-time director, and gradually expanded to two full time directors.

The (in)famous Walker Wall incident occurred in the Spring of 1992. Some Asian American students had painted “AsianAmericanStudiesNow!!!” on Walker Wall at Pomona. Then one night someone defaced the sign to read “AsianAmericanS die Now!!!” The perpetrator was never apprehended. This incident made the national news, and inadvertently proved beyond a doubt that the Asian American students were right. In the face of death threats and an FBI investigation, we clearly needed to have Asian American Studies at the Claremont Colleges.

With funding from a Pew Foundation grant, a number of interested faculty members met regularly during the summer of 1992. Through this Pew Faculty Workshop, they developed a vision for an Asian American Studies department. They wanted to have faculty teaching in the specific subfields of Asian American history, Asian American psychology, Asian American sociology, Asian American literature, and Asian American theater/arts. At that point it was mostly all a dream. Besides Dorinne Kondo, we did not have any tenure track faculty in any of these fields at that time. However, the collective vision was drafted and presented to the Academic Deans Council.

In order to work towards our vision of an intercollegiate department in Asian American Studies, the Academic Deans Council then organized the Intercollegiate Asian American Studies Curriculum Planning group. This group consisted of one faculty member and one student from each of the five colleges. They began to meet regularly in the Spring of 1993. They would share information across the colleges about courses, part-time and full-time faculty positions, and job candidates in Asian American Studies. The idea was to coordinate efforts across the five colleges to bring courses in Asian American Studies to Claremont.

Then on February 1, 1993 some Claremont College students took over Pomona’s Alexander Hall, and closed it “due to racism.” They refused to leave until the Claremont Colleges agreed to their demands for a more diversified curriculum, faculty base, and student representation. The primary focus was on the retention of faculty of color at the Claremont Colleges. Faculty of color tended to have temporary appointments, and consequently had no long term presence on campus. Pomona made some promises, which eventually were not fully met, but did move the college in the right direction. After two days, the protest was resolved peacefully.

There was a lot of anti-Asian sentiment in the larger American psyche at this time. In January 1992 President Bush threw up on the Japanese Prime Minister during a state dinner in Tokyo. This was symbolic of the perceptions of the relative status of the two nations. During the Summer of 1993 the movie “Rising Sun” was released. This movie, based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, was a clarion call against the “yellow peril” and the epitome of Japan-bashing.

In this climate, A/AASU at Scripps got its first part-time coordinator in the Fall of 1993. The goal was to provide opportunities for students to expand and enrich their awareness and understanding of Asian American issues. But administrative support for A/AASU would not be long lasting. Eventually A/AASU would become purely student run and student driven.

In the next few years we would make a number of serendipitous faculty hires. Professor David Yoo arrived on campus in the Fall of 1993, though he did not start officially start teaching at CMC until the Spring of 1994. David Yoo is a specialist in Asian American history, and was the very first faculty member hired with graduate level training in Asian American Studies. In September 1994 Professor Sharon Goto started teaching at Pomona in the field of Asian American psychology. Her hire was one of the direct results of the Alexander Hall takeover. And in September 1995 Janet Clarke was hired in the field of Asian American literature at Pitzer. Thus, in a relatively short period of time, we were able to establish tenure-track faculty in four of the five primary subfields of Asian American Studies as outlined in the Pew Faculty Workshop report.

During the Spring of 1996 some students of color at Pomona documented the racial problems they had seen and experienced in Claremont, and demanded that changes be made by the Colleges to fix them. They published their manifesto in a document titled “A Call to Action.” This student action spurred a push for ethnic studies, and eventually led to the upgrade of AARC from one part-time director to two full-time directors.

During the 1996-97 academic year, the Asian American Studies Curriculum Planning Group continued to meet regularly under the auspices of Dean Laura Hoopes at Pomona. We felt that the time had come to propose the establishment of an Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies (IDAAS). We had a number of tenure track faculty in place with some obvious holes in our offerings. We drafted a proposal, and submitted it to the Academic Deans Council and the Council of Presidents in February of 1997.

The politics of the proposal were complicated in part because the political process on each campus is so very different. But in short, we needed the support of three of the five colleges. We knew that Pitzer and Pomona would be supportive. We knew that CMC would be opposed. And we knew that Scripps and Harvey Mudd were on the fence. We needed to bring Scripps and/or Harvey Mudd over to our side of the fence. And Scripps became the battleground.

During the Spring of 1997 the Asian American Student Alliance (AASA) organized a landmark event at Scripps to rally student support for Asian American Studies. The Balch Hall Teach-In was an overwhelming success. Balch Hall was completely packed with dozens of people sitting in the aisles. With Deans of Faculty and Deans of Students in the audience, AASA students showed the very first powerpoint presentation I had ever seen. The theme of the presentation was that “there was a hole in your education,” and they had a picture of the Claremont College Undergraduate Schedule of Courses with a fire burning a hole in the middle. While Dean Fucaloro of CMC walked away unimpressed because very few CMC students were there, Dean Quinley of Pomona walked away scared that students might take over another building.

The proposal to create IDAAS was approved during the next academic year. And the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies was born in July of 1998. As the only faculty member with tenure, I became the first chair of IDAAS. And the IDAAS office began as just two shelves in my Pitzer office. During the summer I contacted James Miho of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and managed to get him to design a logo for IDAAS. And in the fall we invited Professor Ron Takaki from UC Berkeley down to give a keynote address about Asian American Studies and multiculturalism. We completely filled Little Bridges Auditorium at Pomona with the first public event hosted by IDAAS.

In terms of our Asian American Studies curriculum, our major hole was in Asian American sociology. While we had our chances, we seemed unable to close the deal with several scholars. We had Karin Aguilar-San Juan teaching for us for a couple years, but we were unable to convert her position into a tenure track position. We offered a one year position to Linda Vo, but she took a UC Berkeley post doctoral fellowship instead. We made a tenure track offer to Timothy Fong, but he turned us down because his wife did not want to relocate. So we limped along for many years hiring adjunct faculty members to teach a course or two in Asian American sociology.

In September of 2000 we brought Professor Thomas Kim on board at Scripps. This was an unexpected coup. We were not involved in the search process per se, but were invited to attend the job talk when Professor Kim made the short list for campus visits. Since the Scripps Politics Department was searching for someone working on the politics of gender, we did not think we would get the offer. However, we were very pleasantly surprised when he was made the offer. The vast majority of our faculty members have been hired out of general searches, and not a search targeting someone in Asian American Studies. Similarly, Professor Ming Yuen Ma started at Pitzer in the Fall of 2001. The general search in media studies was not targeting Asian American studies. But Ming Ma rose to the top of the candidate pool, and was made the final offer.

In the Fall of 2001 the Center for Asian Pacific American Students was established at Pitzer. This happened after years of work by a Pitzer student named Laura Tamashiro. During the first year, Loy Nashua was the director of CAPAS. He took on these responsibilities above and beyond his full-time obligations in the Office of Student Affairs at Pitzer. During that year we did a search for a full-time director. We hired Stephanie Velasco who came on board for the Fall of 2002.

The seed money for Stephanie Velasco’s position came from an Irvine Foundation grant of approximately $850,000 to Pitzer. I was appointed Associate Dean of Faculty at Pitzer to primarily manage this grant. The grant also provided some seed money for a faculty position in Asian American studies. We hired Professor Edith Kaneshiro to teach Asian American history for two years. But this position was ultimately converted into a position in Asian American sociology.

In September of 2002 Professors Seung Hye Suh and YouYoung Kang began tenure track positions at Scripps. Professor Suh worked in Asian American literature, and Professor Kang worked in Asian American music. Professor Suh was hired out of a search in ethnic American literature. Professor Kang was hired out of a search in music theory.

In November of 2002 Claremont College students drafted another proposal for a 5C Asian American Resource Center, and submitted it to the Claremont University Center. While Pomona had its AARC, and Pitzer had its CAPAS, the Asian American students at CMC, Harvey Mudd, and Scripps did not have similar levels of support. Furthermore, the students wanted to bring the Asian American communities across the five colleges closer together. Unfortunately the proposal would be defeated again, in part because the two colleges who might be most supportive already have student services for their own students.

While the colleges would not approve a 5C AARC, the colleges needed to respond to the students demands in some way. So the five colleges created the Asian American Advisory Board (AA Ad Board) beginning in the Fall of 2003. The AA Ad Board consists of two students from each campus and a member of the Dean of Students office from each campus. They have a budget of $20,000, and meet regularly to build a sense of community and understanding among all the Asian American students in Claremont. A faculty member of IDAAS is always asked to attend the meetings.

In the Fall of 2003 IDAAS moved out of my office and into a suite of offices in Mead Hall at Pitzer. Madeline Gosiaco was hired as an almost full-time administrative assistant. And Professor Sharon Goto became the third chair of IDAAS. By this time we had established the chair’s primary obligation of getting another faculty member tenured so that they could take over as the next chair of the department.

In May of 2004 we had an ethnic studies retreat at the Laguna Cliffs Marriot funded out of Pomona’s Irvine grant. Perched high atop the cliffs of Dana Point, the three ethnic studies departments met to discuss the needs and concerns of ethnic studies in Claremont. Our main was concern was the problem with joint appointments. Since everyone in ethnic studies has a joint appointment with another department, none of us are able to devote all our energies to the ethnic studies departments. Thus we demanded some changes, and the ability to hire faculty who were full-time in ethnic studies. We called our proposal “The Laguna Plan,” and submitted it in the Fall of 2004.

After years of struggle, we finally managed to hire someone in Asian American sociology beginning in the Fall of 2004. Because it was a joint position in Asian American Studies and sociology, it was a tricky search. But luck seemed to be on our side when Professor Kathy Yep rose to the very top of both departments’ short lists. In 20 years I have never seen a job candidate come to campus as well prepared as Professor Kathy Yep.

At this point in our history I felt that my personal vision for Asian American Studies in Claremont was complete. From the Pew Faculty Workshop in 1992, we wanted to have tenure track faculty in the five subfields of history, psychology, sociology, literature, and theater/arts. We now had people in all these subfields. Furthermore, we had someone in Asian American economics, Asian American politics, and Asian American music. We had, by far, the strongest Asian American Studies department of any liberal arts college in the nation. I never imagined that we would have come this far in about a dozen years.

Of course, this was not to say that all was well in Claremont. During the Fall of 2004 some Pomona student activists published “Revisiting a Call to Action.” Eight years after the original “Call to Action,” these students realized that little had changed at the Colleges, and many of the same problems still persisted unaddressed. This 56 page document shed light on the specific issues faced by marginalized students, and made recommendations for positive change.

We must always be moving forward, or become obsolete and irrelevant. We were able to recruit Professor Hung Cam Thai back to Pomona in the Spring of 2006, and brought Professor Wei-Chin Hwang to CMC in the Fall of 2006. Both faculty members added to our strengths in Asian American sociology and Asian American psychology. And in the Spring/Summer of 2007 IDAAS moved into its new office spaces in the Lincoln Building on the north end of the Pomona campus. We share the larger facility with IDBS (Intercollegiate Department of Black Studies) and CSD (Chicano Studies Department) which helps us to do a lot more joint programming. For example, we held a very successful joint open house several weeks ago.

The current academic year is the 10^th year of IDAAS. In this time we have moved from being a vision to becoming a reality. None of this would have been possible without the efforts of many, many students. Though students come and go, their efforts while they are here have long lasting impacts on the generations of students that follow. The students usually get, at best, just a fraction of what they demand. But each and every time they move the colleges in the right direction. And so I am privileged to be a long term faculty member enjoying the fruits of student activists long after those students have graduated, fruits which the student activists themselves never got to enjoy.