BERKELEY, Calif. — Eastwind Books of Berkeley spent its last day as a brick and mortar bookstore, April 14, like any other day, with owner Harvey Dong laughing among regulars, students rifling through wooden bookshelves, and community members coming together to organize. For the past 27 years, Harvey and his wife Beatrice have been running […]
California high schools are adding hundreds of ethnic studies classes. Are teachers prepared?
April 13, 2023 by Leave a Comment
California high school students will be required to pass an ethnic studies class to graduate, starting with the class of 2030. That means the state needs lots of new ethnic studies teachers. But do educators need a special credential to teach ethnic studies? Some ethnic studies advocates say allowing any social science teacher to instruct […]
California makes ethnic studies a high school requirement
October 14, 2021 by Leave a Comment
SAN FRANCISCO — Along with English, science, math and other graduation requirements, California high school students will have to take a course in ethnic studies to get a diploma starting in 2029-30. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Oct. 8 that makes California among the first in the nation to list ethnic studies as a […]
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: The Japanese American experience and the California landscape
June 24, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Greetings to the Nichi Bei community. My column this month will introduce you to the upcoming ethnic studies course I will begin teaching at Cal Poly Pomona on the Japanese American experience and the California landscape. After reading this, if you have any questions or information you’d like to suggest to include in this class, […]
Push for K-12 Asian American studies
June 24, 2021 by Leave a Comment
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When the Asian American Student Union at a Connecticut high school organized a Zoom call following the killing of six Asian women in Atlanta, senior Lily Feng thought maybe 10 or 15 classmates would attend. When she logged on, more than 50 people from her school were online. By the call’s end, […]
Racist attacks revive Asian American studies program demand
May 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment
As Dartmouth College sophomore Nicholas Sugiarto flipped through the course catalog last semester, two words caught his eye: “Asian American.” The 19-year-old Chinese Indonesian American didn’t know Asian American-focused classes were even an option at the Hanover, New Hampshire, campus. The biomedical-engineering major ended up enrolling in “Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature” and […]
Calif. adopts first statewide ethnic studies curriculum
April 1, 2021 by Leave a Comment
As America reels from its latest spate of deadly hate crimes and racism, the California State Board of Education on March 18 approved the nation’s first statewide ethnic studies curriculum for high schools, saying the teaching of discrimination and oppression has never been more important. After an eight-hour public meeting March 18 board members voted […]
California ethnic studies debate: Whose stories get told?
March 18, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Race and ethnicity can be tricky topics to discuss, especially in the classroom. But the California Department of Education had no idea how heated the debate would get when it set out to draft a model ethnic studies curriculum for high schools statewide. The process took over two years, multiple versions, and drew nearly 100,000 […]
The ties that bind
January 1, 2021 by Leave a Comment
MOUNTAIN MOVERS: Student Activism & The Emergence of Asian American Studies Edited by Russell Jeung, Karen Umemoto, Harvey Dong, Eric Mar, Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani, Arnold Pan (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2019, 276 pp., $22, paperback) Those of us who are involved in Japanese American and Asian American Pacific Islander causes and organizations […]
CSU faculty administrators at odds over ethnic studies requirement
December 3, 2020 by Leave a Comment
California State University took another step Nov. 17 toward requiring students to take an ethnic studies class as part of their lower-division coursework, a move that would also have significant implications for the state’s 115 degree-granting community colleges. During the 23-campus system’s Board of Trustees meeting Nov. 17, the educational policy committee voted 9-2 to […]
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