AAST Publishes 2024-2025 Annual Report

AAST just published the program’s 2024-2025 Annual Report, which opens with a Director’s Note from Dr. Janelle Wong.

The past year marked significant progress for Asian American Studies. We offered 11 diverse classes each semester, thanks to our dedicated full-time teaching staff. AAST educators taught courses on Immigration and Ethnicity, Asian American Foodways, South Asian American Literature and Culture, Public Policy, and Filipino American History and Culture. Their efforts resulted in enrolling over 700 students annually, with more than 3,400 students attending classes over the past five years alone. Our minor program remains robust, with more than 40 students graduating with an AAST minor. We kicked off the year with our AAST Welcome and launched our “AAST at 25” campaign, celebrating our milestone 25th year and focusing on strengthening and sustaining our minor program. The Office of Undergraduate Studies featured current AAST minor Kaia Lee-Espirtu ('25) and her mother Tanya Lee ('01), who shared memories and perspectives on the value of Asian American Studies. To support our Working for Asian American Studies Expansion (WAASE) efforts, AAST hired three undergraduate students, all AAST minors, to enhance visibility and participation in APIDA student organizations and assist our social media and communications impact. We launched “Lunch and Learns,” informal gatherings to connect with faculty and staff, responding to student interest in more informal contact with our program. This year, AAST hosted two powerful talks: Dr. OiYan A. Poon on her book, "Asian American is Not a Color," and Tuyet Duong, Chief Policy and Government Affairs Officer of NAPAWF, for the 2025 Chandni Kumar Annual Lecture, highlighting reproductive justice and federal advocacy. This year, we initiated a new search for the Calvin J. Li Postdoctoral Fellow. We received the strongest applicant pool to date.

Because of the work to establish the program and its expansion over the years, generations of students have had the opportunity to see race in the United States through the lens of Asian Americans. As the conversation about race in the United States becomes more fraught, it is more important than ever that students of all racial backgrounds understand our shared histories and our distinct encounters with white supremacy, our complicity with and our challenge to anti-Black racism, the work of Asian Americans who have resisted oppression even in the darkest days, and the power that comes from coalescing with other marginalized communities to stand together in the face of multiple oppressions. In a moment marked by hot takes, people talking past one another, and deep suspicion across ideological divides, Asian American Studies and other race and ethnic studies programs stand out. Why? Because Asian American Studies classes constitute the exact opposite of a one-off comment about race in America. Instead, Asian American Studies classes allow for a sustained conversation about race that is informed by research and thoughtful theoretical and historical ideas. This long conversation is the work of ethnic studies and its gift to students and to our communities. This is the contribution of ethnic studies and Asian American Studies, and we are so grateful and inspired by the fight for AAST that established our program 25 years ago.

Read through the entire 2024-2025 Annual Report to learn more about courses and enrollment, program highlights and recognition, people within AAST, scholarship recipients, and our students who graduated with the AAST minor this year!