“...if I just sort of came up and said I’d like a class on on Asian American history, I don’t think I would have had the resources without the older folks in the group and those in the years below me, of how exactly it is that this fits in into other movements that happened in the past and what kinds of tactics and strategies have already been tried before, what exactly about a given movement and moment makes certain kinds of progress possible.”

“Part of what we came to realize is that the institution and universities in general take a long time to change. Student life, in the scheme of things, is very short in terms of the university’s memory. We really came to realize our time is going to run. They can, by doing very little, run down the clock and then we’re not going to be here putting this pressure on.”

“I think for me it’s not just the story of taking an artificial category at some level [of] Asians, which is so broad and just superimposing a filter through which you view American history, but [also] seeing how there actually are so many commonalities about how Asians in the United States experience race. Ultimately, even if cultural backgrounds or perspectives or what people care about might be different, ultimately, how you are perceived as being Asian in the United States is so important and fundamental that you can’t just ignore the aspect of race and how that does help to actually in many ways make Asians Americans have many things in common.”

“These studies are about learning the larger historic social processes. It’s about learning how groups get constructed and categorized and made in the first place. Not a priori. It’s about how categories get put against one another and pitted against one another. It’s about the relationship and the unequal relationship. We spent a lot of time thinking about why this was important and why this was important for social justice and academia writ large.”

“I think ethnic studies and Asian American Studies is important because a lot of the times, we don’t have the vocabulary or the words to situate ourselves in the conversation. Everything that I learned in Asian American history - it gives you the language to break down the monolith of Asian Americans.”

“I think it’s important to give students the kind of framework that they need to understand the world they live in. It doesn’t just have to be Asian American students, Asian American studies. And I think it’s something that it equips all students with the tools to understand their world, be it in my line of work with politics, or even being able to understand things in the workplace, or just understanding the broader context for things, when they pick up the news and try to reconcile headlines they see about xenophobia and COVID with also the Asian American officer involved in the George Floyd case. It makes it incredibly important for students. ”

“But for it to be institutionalized and for it to be baked into the system, I think it is sending a very clear message to students that we see that you’re a part of our community. And we want to hear from you and we respect your legacy and your history, that the legacy that we believe in is not just a white one. It’s not just a white male one. I think specifically to Princeton, it’s also really important for Princeton as an institution to have ethnic studies, to have indigenous studies, to have African American Studies, to have all these different ways and perspectives of looking at history and people and narratives, because historically Princeton has been one of the slowest to involve other people”

“I, like many of my Asian American peers, was initially drawn to Asian American Studies because I thought it would help me uncover “my” history. I quickly found out, however, that Asian American Studies is not simply about representing the U.S. with Asians at the narrative center – as important as that project may be. What excites me about Asian American Studies is how it draws from Asian American experiences in order to interrogate both the racial formation of Asians within and outside of the U.S. and the maintenance of the U.S. nation-state as a whole. Asian American Studies is not simply for Asian Americans; rather, it is a versatile discipline that provides everybody the tools to destabilize notions of race, citizenship, gender, sexuality, class, etc. History, literature, the arts, technology – these are all forms through which people can engage in Asian Americanist critique. ”