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Journal of Asian American Studies 4.2 (2001) 147-164



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One Year After The Sit-in:
Asian American Students' Identities and Their Support for Asian American Studies

Okiyoshi Takeda *


On April 20, 1995, seventeen undergraduate students at Princeton University staged a sit-in at Nassau Hall, a historic building that once lodged the Continental Congress in the eighteenth century and now houses the university president's office. Frustrated by what they saw as the school administration's delay and inaction in institutionalizing Asian American and Latino studies, the students stormed the university's central administrative building and vowed to remain there until the university made a firm commitment in those fields. Outside the building, student supporters held a rally, a rare sight on campus where demonstrations were seldom seen. The sit-in ended thirty-six hours later when the university offered to publish in a campus newspaper its promise of faculty hire.

The 1990s saw the second wave 1 of student movement for Asian American studies (hereafter AAS) that took place mainly at college campuses in the "East of California" region. At these colleges, courses in AAS had hardly existed before but demand for AAS courses had risen significantly because of intellectual reasons as well as increasing Asian American student enrollments. 2 Some universities, such as the University of Pennsylvania, established an AAS program peacefully, owing to the collaborative efforts of an active group of faculty and students and the school administration. At many universities, however, advocates for AAS met various obstacles, ranging from bureaucratic inaction to ideological opposition from faculty. It is no coincidence that similar protests for AAS [End Page 147] broke out about the same time that the Princeton students staged a sit-in. In April 1995, students at Northwestern University went on a hunger strike to demand permanent AAS courses, and in April 1996, a multi-racial coalition of students at Columbia University held a hunger strike and took over university buildings to demand an ethnic studies department.

As practitioners of AAS, we know all too well why we need to institutionalize AAS programs in colleges across the nation, and why students who strive for this goal sometimes have to resort to drastic action that risk being viewed as illegitimate in light of university procedures. Less well known is how these direct actions are perceived and interpreted by students as a whole, in particular by Asian American students for whom AAS courses are intended to serve. We know from our daily interactions with activist students that AAS courses successfully raise students' racial/ethnic consciousness and help build ties with communities. 3 Yet we do not always vigorously reach out to non-activist Asian American students and find out what they think of AAS unless they happen to enroll in AAS courses. If AAS is supposed to benefit all Asian American students, including students who are not active in student movements, however, it is important to understand what attitudes non-activist students hold toward AAS and how their attitudes are related to their racial/ethnic identities. Conducting research on these topics will not only help us make links between academic analysis and student activism but also find ways to broaden the support base for AAS among students.

In this article, I examine the attitudes and opinions toward AAS held by Asian American students at Princeton University and map their perceptions within the overall framework of their racial/ethnic identities. As members of a racial minority group subjected to discrimination and stereotypes, Asian American students must negotiate their relations with mainstream society and search for their racial/ethnic identity. Many students face this task for the first time in college, when they are thrust into an environment with a different racial composition from the neighborhoods in which they grew up. 4 Past studies have pointed out that Asian American students develop different patterns of racial/ethnic identities as a result of their immigration status, generation, racial composition of childhood neighborhood, and experience of racial discrimination. 5 The [End...

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