File photo of students at the Pacific Islander, Asian & Asian American Student Center
Eli Vossler will graduate from Portland State this June with a bachelor's in social work, but for all he has learned, he says there's a topic that's been noticeably absent from his education: an understanding of his personal history, identity and culture as an Asian American.
"I have not learned anything about the history and how the history connects to what's happening today," he said. "All these anti-Asian attacks, there's so much history behind it and as someone who's adopted, I don't know any of it and I just wish it was there so I could know and for other students to know too."
Vossler is not alone. For more than a decade, students have led calls for an Asian Pacific American Studies program and more support for Asian American and Pacific Islander students, who today make up 14.8% of PSU's student population.
After fits and starts, an effort to establish a Pacific Islander and Asian American (PIAA) Studies program is finally gaining momentum. A new course prefix, PIAA, was approved earlier this year, paving the way for the development of a new undergraduate certificate and new courses for Fall 2023. The hope is to add new faculty lines and eventually offer a major and minor. Although the more commonly used acronym is AAPI — short for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — PSU flipped the acronym in its commitment to centering Pacific Islanders.
"We're the second-largest [racial or ethnic] group at PSU and yet there isn't a program devoted to Pacific Islander and Asian American Studies," said Marie Lo, professor and chair of English. "Students have been agitating for this for a very long time."
YEARS IN THE MAKING
Student activism began in earnest in 2012 when the Coalition for Asian Pacific American Studies submitted a petition to the administration requesting the development of a department and more support for Asian Pacific American students.
CURRENT COURSES:
- ANTH 318U Asian American Experience: Histories, Adaptation, Identities
- ENG 369U Asian American Literature
- ENG 469 Advanced Topics in Asian American Literature and Culture
- WS 306U Contemporary Asian American Issues
- WS 470U Asian American Women's Studies
Lo said that at the time the administration dismissed the need for it, saying PSU already had an Asian Studies program. But unlike Asian Studies which focuses on the history and culture of Asian people living in Asia, PIAA Studies would be more U.S.-focused and critically examine the identities and historical and contemporary experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Topics would include immigration, race-based exclusion policies, challenging the "model minority" and "forever foreigner" stereotypes, settler colonialism, and intersectional struggles with other groups like Latinx, Black and Indigenous populations.
"These topics likely wouldn't be part of an Asian Studies curriculum, but they’re important for understanding race and race relations in the U.S.," said Betty Izumi, an associate professor in the School of Public Health.
Some steps were taken in response to a Students of Color Speak Out event in 2015: the Pacific Islander, Asian & Asian American (PIAAA) Student Center opened, a retention program coordinator for Asian and Pacific Islander students was hired and a task force was formed on Asian American, Asian and Pacific Islander Student Success.
But the task force's 2017 report and recommendations for how PSU could better serve the needs and aspirations of Asian American, Asian and Pacific Islander students was shelved for more than three years amid changes in university leadership. In 2020, amid the racial reckoning in the country, President Stephen Percy prioritized acting on equity and racial justice and appointed two presidential fellows to advance the task force's work. Izumi and Bree Kalima, program coordinator for the PIAAA Student Center, laid out three action items, the first being the establishment of a PIAA program. Their report was backed by 800 signatures in spring 2021 by students, faculty and staff.
"It's been frustrating for our community and we've always just quietly gone away, but this time is different," Izumi said.
THE NEED FOR INVESTMENT
Izumi says lasting institutional change requires significant institutional investment, and the PIAA Studies Initiative is seeing a new level of commitment from the university that it has not seen before.
The workgroup — made up of students, faculty, staff and community partners — received funding from President Percy to develop academic-community partnerships, primarily around research, and from Global, Diversity and Inclusion to put on a speaker series and engage the PSU and broader community. A grant from the School of Public Health's inaugural Anti-Racism Faculty Fellowship program is helping compensate workgroup members for their work on course development, strategic planning and programming.
The group made clear, though, that for a PIAA Studies program to succeed, two new faculty need to be hired: a tenure-track professor whose scholarship and teaching focus on Pacific Island Studies and a tenure-track faculty member whose scholarship and teaching focus on Asian American Studies.
"When you have a department, it's more than just courses for students," Izumi said. "You've created the infrastructure for community — a landing place for engaging in scholarly discussions about issues affecting our communities, where students can come and see themselves reflected in the university and where faculty can come together and engage in collaboration around teaching and research."
The workgroup is also trying to engage community organizations and nonprofits from the get-go to build partnerships around courses, internships and research support. Duncan Hwang, associate director of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and Metro councilor, has been part of the workgroup and is working with Lo on a capstone that explores Asian American activism.
"We would really like to have more partnerships with higher education and think about how we can move students from student activism to broader civic life after they've graduated," Hwang said. "How do we create that pipeline to leadership not just in Portland but across the state and across issue areas like housing, workforce development and public health?"
Vossler wants to do just that — he's interested in macro-level social work and community organizing and has his sights set on a job at APANO after graduation.
CENTERING PACIFIC ISLANDERS
What will differentiate PSU's program from others is the intentional centering of Pacific Islanders and how they differ from Asian American experiences. The group said that historically, the nuances of Pacific Islander identities have been erased or tokenized and putting Pacific Islanders first will make the curriculum more inclusive, much like the PIAAA Student Center does.
"As someone who is Pacific Islander and Asian as well, I really do try to center Pacific Islanders in all the work that I do," Kalima said. "It would be helpful if we were to have PIAA Studies to be able to provide really dynamic support and programming for all PIAA-identified folks at PSU as well as a way for the larger community to learn more critically about who we are and our place in the state. I think a lot of people have misconceptions of who Pacific Islanders are, who Asian Americans are and our worthiness when it comes to what we offer America."
Kalima says the absence of a PIAA academic unit has meant she has had to fill the gap with educational and social justice programming. By contrast, La Casa Latina, Pan-African Commons and the Native American Student and Community Center can tap the resources and faculty expertise of the Chicano/Latino Studies, Black Studies and Indigenous Nations Studies units.
"Maybe one day, the PIAAA Student Center can go back to programming that is more social-forward where students can just come and hang out, eat food, play games and enjoy the company of others," she said. "But right now I don't feel like our programming can or should be super social because students are coming to our space looking for those critical conversations."
Members of the PIAA Studies Initiative include Betty Izumi; Marie Lo; Bree Kalima; Kai Hang Cheang, Sri Craven and Lisa Weasel from Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Alma Trinidad from the School of Social Work; students Eli Vossler, David Hoang, Mui Easland, and Misha Belden; and Coua Xiong and Duncan Hwang from APANO.