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  • Editor’s Preface
  • Tony Peffer

In presenting their work, the contributors to this issue of JAAS have made periodic reference to a proposal that was presented to the membership of the Association for Asian American Studies at their 2002 annual meeting, which took place in Salt Lake City, Utah. That proposal, as approved by the members, sought to engage AAAS in discussing the merits of adding "Pacific Islander" to its name. Whenever an incorporated organization chooses to make such a change, it encounters numerous irritations and expenses: e.g., the articles of incorporation must be refiled; everything that bears its letterhead must be replaced; its website must be revised; and its publications must change their names. Thus, the AAAS executive board, of which I was a member at the time, entered the subsequent discussions with a degree of caution. Still, the board moved forward with plans to submit the proposed name-change to the general membership in 2003.

Although I can only speak for myself, I suspect that many felt as I did—that changing the organization's name would initiate a daunting process to which I didn't look forward but would be worthwhile if it helped to properly honor my Pacific Islander colleagues. As debate of the ballot initiative continued, however, its merits grew increasingly unclear. Some Pacific Islander members enthusiastically supported the name-change as an important symbol of inclusion, but others feared that it symbolized nothing more than academic colonialism and would trigger an unhealthy [End Page v] subsumation of their field. Faced with this kind of division, which suggested that changing the name of AAAS might do as much harm as good, the executive board postponed the ballot initiative and has allowed it to die a quiet death in 2004.

Although the organizational element of this proposal has been relegated to the archives of AAAS, I am most pleased that one remnant of the 2002 proposal has survived. In Salt Lake City, and at the 2003 meeting in Boston, we decided to highlight the growth of Pacific Islander scholarship through the publication of a special issue of JAAS. That aspiration has been achieved with the following articles, and I am grateful to their authors for contributing their substantial energies and expertise to its realization. Had the AAAS name-change proposal appeared on my ballot in 2003 or 2004, I still don't know how I would have voted. Thus, I will conclude this brief reflection by celebrating that of which I am certain: the value of JAAS 7.3 and the bright future of Pacific Islander Studies.

Tony Peffer
Lakeland College
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