Today’s Asian-American Alumni panel, titled "Trailblazers," brought back Don Lu ’88 and Chris Lu ’88, who are not related, to discuss being Asian-American at Princeton and in the world today. Chris Lu pointed out that Asian-American studies is not a department here at Princeton and urged Asian-American alumni to withhold their annual giving until such a program was installed in the university.
Though Princeton already has East Asian studies as a major, a department in Asian-American studies would not be redundant. East Asian studies (and, for that matter, South Asian studies — a small department, but a certificate program nonetheless) focuses on the history, sociology, literature and politics of Asians who live in Asia. Though we are talking about ethnically the same people, the history, sociology, literature and politics change drastically when you move from studying Asians in Asia to studying Asians in America.
This department need not be a full-fledged major, as it would undoubtedly see a high degree of overlap with East Asian studies, but a certificate program is not unprecedented. There are two distinct departmental certificates that one can get here in either African studies or African-American studies; similarly, there are different certificates available in Latin-American and Latino studies. The reasoning is simple: While they might both be studying the same concept, they study them in radically different contexts. Culture is radically different.
The University gains a great deal by allowing for more departments. There’s no need to consolidate or purge, as Spencer Shen suggested in his February 2013 article “Studying the melting pot,” as that effectively throws all minorities into a common pool, a collective box titled “Other”.