I hope everyone had a greatThanksgiving break. There are only two more weeks of class left before exams,so good luck!
If your organization wouldlike to be on our next digest, please send information to priscilla.baek@duke.edu.
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HiEveryone,
Just sending a reminder email that the Asian American Studies Working Group
will meet this Sunday, December 3 at 2pm. I've selected the location tobe
on East Campus, by the couches near the entrance of the Marketplace. Ilook
forward to seeing all of those who came last time, and also new faces!
Remember to invite friends you think might be interested.
This Sunday's meeting, I'm hoping we can brainstorm some more concrete
projects/questions that you'd like to tackle together. We can split upinto
smaller groups too, if there's more than one thing we'd like to look into,
and depending on how many people want to be involved. In the meantime,I'll
also try to create a listserv for us so we can begin to communicate/share
info more easily.
Some initial thoughts (just thoughts to put out there):
1) Planning out an afternoon for us to do a preliminary, face-to-face survey
on campus in order to get a better sense of the experiences of students of
Asian descent at Duke, as part of further research/investigation.
2) Working with me and others to invite some professors/grad students whose
work relates to Asian American studies to give presentations to us, and
engage in a discussion.
3) Maybe planning a group trip to the Nasher museumto view the exhibit
there.
4) Planning a group road trip to the annual Association of Asian American
Studies (AAAS) conference in April, this year to be held in NYC. See their
website (http://www.aaastudies.org/call.tpl),or below, for more
information.
Please do email me if you can't attend this Sunday's meeting, but are still
interested in AASWG, so I make sure to keep you in the loop. Also, feel
free to send out emails as well, about interesting articles/events/ideas you
come across!
All the best,
Vivian
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DUU Major Speakers: Actor, Kal Penn
Monday, December 4, 2006, 4-5:30pm
Kal Penn, best known for playing Kumar in Harold andKumar Go to White Castle
and Taj in the upcoming Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, will be speaking at Page
next Monday.
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SUKETU MEHTA: A Conversation AboutBeing Human in Megacities
November 28, 4-5:30, Social Sciences 139
World famous author Suketu Mehta will discuss hisbook Maximum City, a 2005
Pulitzer Prize finalist. A riveting account of Bombaythat covers every slice
of that city, from its gangsters to its Bollywoodstars, Maximum City has been
an international bestseller since its publication. Mehta's intelligentand
energetic way of examining Bombaygets at the heart of what it means to be
human in any of the world's megacities.
Whether a resident of Bombay or a one-timetourist to New York,come take part
in what will surely be a wonderful and energetic conversation
What: Suketu MehtaConversation
When: November 28th, 4:00 pm- 5:30 pm
Where: Social Science 139
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The KOREAN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT ORGANIZATION presents...
What: Korean Dessert Sampling and Film Festival
Which: "A Moment to Remember" (2004, Dir.JohnH. Lee)
When: 11/29 Wed 7:30pm (Dessert), 8:00 pm Film
Where: White Lecture Hall, East Campus
Come take a break from work and watch "A Moment to Remember" thisWednesday. The
film will be preceded by a reception with some delicious Korean sweets and a
brief introduction by Prof. Susie Kim of the AALL department at Duke.
A Moment to Remember (Starring Jung Woosung and Son Yejin)
-This movie represents Korean melodrama at its best with two of Korea's hottest
stars. Having won accolades for best screenplay at the Korean equivalent of the
Academy Awards, "A Moment to Remember" shines from beginning to endwith its
tragic, but beautiful love story. Directed by NYUFilm Schoolgraduate John H.
Lee, this movie is the highest grossing domestic film in the romance genre in
Korea.Subsequently released in Japanin 2005, "A Moment to Remember" broke box
office records for all Korean film openings in Japan.
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:::::::::::::::Participate in"What is Sexual Assault" Campaign:::::::::::::::::::
With a minute of your time, you can help contribute to our campus
understanding of issues surrounding sexual assault. Go to
www.duke.edu/web/saturdaynightand post your anonymous viewpoints to the
following questions (and sample responses).
Be honest, be creative, if it means saying non-PC thing, go ahead. There
you can also find out what other members of Duke communitythink.
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*1. What does sexual assault look like at Duke?*
"It looks like two of my best friends- I never anticipated that I would
be forced to be so personally affected and confronted by this issue when
I first arrived at this school."
"Ugly. Secretive.Widespread."
"I don't know. I just got here."
*2. Is there a gray area when it comes to sexual assault at Duke?*
"Absolutely not. Despite what some of my peers think, my short skirt,
flirty behavior, and high heels are not an invitation"
"Yes, there's a gray area, especially when people fail to communicate
with each other… "
*3. How can sexual assault be reduced?
*
"We need to stop having an attitude that sexual assault is a woman's
issue..... "
"I think there are two keys: education and communication.... "
Again, www.duke.edu/web/saturdaynightThanks so much!!
Yours sincerely,
Editors of Saturday Night: Untold Stories of Sexual ASsaultat Duke
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Thenext speaker in the APSI fall speaker series is Joan Kee,who will
speak on Thursday, November 30. Sponsored by Asian/Pacific Studies
Institute, the Nasher Museum of Art, and Departmentof Art, Art History,
and Visual Culture, talk information follows.
Joan Kee
Critic and Scholar
Kee was editor of a special issue of positions (12,3, Winter 2004) on East
Asian contemporary art and has published on film and art from Korea,
Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia in a wide range of journals
including Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Yishu, andin the upcoming Duke
University Press book Alien Encounters: Asian American Popular Culture.
Joan Kee will speak on:
Thursday, November 30, 2006
6:00-7:30 pm
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
2001 Campus Drive (at the intersection of Duke University Road and Anderson
Street)
"In and Out of Context: Imagemakingin Hong Kong"
Over the course of the past decade, much of Hong Kong's visual art has
centered on images of people, places, or objects belonging to a specific
Hong Kong, and more recently, a general Chinese context. The energy
invested in producing such images, and in particular, imageslinked to a
specific cultural provenance has been tremendous, thereby raisingquestions
of purpose. What is the purpose of such an enterprise of imagemaking?
Matched against the recent events of Hong Kong'shistory, these images
allude to a stratigraphy of conditions at play.Images act not only as
metaphors of a particular psychological state but as alibis that provide
believability to the work's claims of inhabiting multiple spaces of
reference at once.
Reception with light refreshments and cash bar immediately following talk
For additional information, call 684-2604 or visit www.duke.edu/APSI
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JP Morgan Asia Pacific Summer Internship
2007 SummerAnalyst and Associate Program: Internship Application Deadline December17th, 2006 (Sunday)
JPMorgan Asia Pacific offers exciting, challenging and hands-on summerinternship programs for talented individuals graduating in 2008. Ourinternships will give you insight to our business, opportunity to work with ourbanker on deals, live the life of a trader, or be a member of the Asia research team!
Our deadlinefor resume submission is December 17th, 2006 (Sunday)
To submit your resume please apply on line via our recruitingwebsite at: http://asiapaccareers.jpmorgan.com/content/content_75.asp
Please clickon “Apply Now” --> US/UK Universities application.
2007Internship Programs:
BachelorsProgram
- InvestmentBanking Summer Analyst
- Sales &Trading Summer Analyst
- Research SummerAnalyst
- PrivateBanking Summer Analyst
MastersProgram
- InvestmentBanking Summer Associate
- ResearchSummer Associate
- PrivateBanking Summer Associate
Fluency ofan Asian language is preferred.
Forenquiries please send to jpmorgan_asia_recruiting@jpmorgan.com.
Pleasedo not submit resume via this e-mail. You should apply online to ensure that wecapture your details accurately and can get in touch with you.
Bestregards,
AsiaPacific Recruiting Team
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CrosstownConnections: Asian American Urbanism and Interracial Encounters
2007Association for Asian American Studies Conference
April 4-8, 2007
New York City, New York, Grand Hyatt
Submissions due by October 31, 2006
Send to: Stephanie Hsu at ssh13@cornell.edu
The theme of the 2007 AAAS Conference is "CrosstownConnections: Asian
American Urbanism and Interracial Encounters". Taking off from the
conference's location in New York City--thelargest city in the United
States and a historic internationalcrossroads for immigrants, visitors, and
commerce--this meeting explores cosmopolitanism in Asian American life, and
the multiple and shifting identities, attachments, and worldviews of Asian
Americans and those with whom they interact. The metropolitan area is home
to approximately 1.5 million people of Asian ancestry, the nation's
second-largest concentration, and Asian American laborers, students,
artists, businessmen, and intellectuals form a durable and central core
group in the city's fabric.
Asthe world's financial center and the hub of the nation's publishing and fashionindustries and artistic scene, New York has drawn both exceptional individualsof Asian ancestry, including writers, scholars, painters, musicians anddancers, and masses of workers. The port of New York serves as acontinuing place of welcome for Asian entrants and a point of transnationalcontact, transit and supply.
Weseek panels, papers, workshops, roundtables and teaching sessions that explorethe presence of Asian Americans in New York City and other urban environments--downtown,boroughs and suburbs alike and their experience within the various places andinstitutions that characterize city life: theaters, prisons, offices, museums,factories, streets, mass transit, schools and universities, restaurants, andtourist sites. In keeping with the theme of interracial
connections, we especially encourage papers that explore the correlations
and interactions between the experiences of Asian Americans and those of
other groups and communities that make up the urban landscape, notably
African Americans (including Caribbean Blacks); Latinos; Jews; Arab/Muslim
Americans; Irish, Slavic, and Italian Americans; Gays/Lesbians; and
evangelical Christians. In using New York as aspringboard, we also
encourage papers that discuss generally the experience of Asian Americans in
the Northeast (Mid Atlantic states and New England).In addition to paper
proposals, we invite panel proposals as well as workshops, roundtables, and
teaching sessions that explore ways of historicizing, contextualizing, and
critiquing the impact of urban life and interactions on the Asian American
experience.
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It is our great pleasure to invite students fromDuke¹s Asian Student
Association to apply to the "On Common Ground 2007" conferencesorganized by the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford (FACES), whichwill be held at Stanford University from April 8-14, 2007 and in Beijing or Shanghai
in November 2007.
The Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford (FACES) is a student-ledgroup founded at Stanford University and dedicated to fostering personal
relationships and understanding among future leaders in the United States
and China.FACES strives to promote interest and awareness inU.S.-China
relations and to build the foundation for a more constructive bilateral
future.
For "On Common Ground 2007", we will bring together 40 outstandingstudents
for a seven-day program in April at Stanford and then, in November, at a
university in Beijing or Shanghai. Our delegates will attend speechesand
panels with current and past leaders of both countries from academia,
business, and government. In the past, our delegates have had the privilege
to interact with and hear from former President George H.W. Bush, Sr.,
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, General Brent Scowcroft, Former U.K. Prime
Minister John Major, Former Vice Premier Qian Qichen, former National
Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski,former Secretary of Defense William J.
Perry, U.S.-China Business Council President Robert Kapp,and Ambassador
Michael Armacost.
We are contacting you because we believe that the students in your
organization will be a great addition to our conference and we hope that you
can inform them of the 2007 FACES conferences and encourage them to apply.
FACES will pay half the cost of international air travel, in addition to all
food and accommodation, for all delegates. For more information and
applications, please refer to our website at http://faces.stanford.edu.We
also encourage you to explore the attached FACES flyer and pamphlet. Please
feel free to distribute these materials through whichever means you find
most convenient.
Once again, we thank you for your help in spreading the word about FACES.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns. We look
forward to your students¹ participation in and contributions to "On Common
Ground 2007".
Sincerely,
Drew Camarda, Randy Yang and Wynn Tanner
Directors of Recruiting
Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford
http://faces.stanford.eduor http://www.stanford.edu/group/faces
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INVITATION TO AN INFORMATION SESSION FOR THE MELLON MAYSUNDERGRADUATE FELLOWSHIP
DATE: MONDAY, DECEMBER 4
TIME: 7:00 P.M.
PLACE: MULTICULTURAL CENTER, THE BRYAN CENTER
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program, now in its 10th year at Duke,is a two- year fellowship program for students who are thinking seriously aboutgetting their PhDs and becoming professors in a wide variety of disciplines. The program is targeted to underrepresented minority students and otherswith a demonstrated commitment to eradicating racial disparities.
Each year, five sophomore students at Duke are selected as Mellon MaysUndergraduate Fellows. They receive stipends for the academic terms and summersfor two years. During the summers the Fellows, under the direction of a facultymentor, pursue some form of directed study intended to give them a sense ofscholarly research activities. During the academic year they may: (1)continue their independent research; or (2) work as a research assistanton a project which the faculty mentor is currently pursuing; or (3) work oncurricular or teaching projects of interest to their faculty mentor.
A student applying to the Program must have a faculty mentor and adefined initial project. Fellows are awarded an annual stipend of $5,100 ($3300for the summer and $900 per semester), a $750 summer housing allowance, and atravel budget of up to $400. In addition,each Scholar receives a project supplies budget of $350 per year. Mentorsreceive an annnual award of $750.
For more program details, including the "Mellon disciplines," visit our website: *http://www.aas.duke.edu/trinity/mmuf*
If you think you may be interested in applying for this fellowship program,please plan to come to the informal information session on December 4.
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ConvenientElitism [The Harvard Crimson] Opinion
Published On 11/27/2006 1:20:36 AM
By DEBORAH Y. HO and SHAYAK SARKAR
Harvard is not a meritocracy. Not only do the costs of thissystem weigh disproportionately upon Asian Americans, the considerationsprioritized above merit also come at the expense of true diversity beyondracial tokenism: a diversity of socioeconomic background and representationfrom within racial groups.
To pretend that applicants’qualifications and life experiences are all that matter in admissions onlyresults in superficial explanations for the discrepancies in admissions ratesamong different groups. College admission is an unavoidably subjective process,and, according to the admissions office, the vast majority of applicants couldbe successful at Harvard. The limited number of places available demands somekind of secondary screening process beyond academic ability, and rightly so:All students are more than just numbers and contribute both inside and outsidethe classroom. That said, the rosy vision of the admissionsprocess as choosing a diverse set of the best of the best is not the wholestory.
Harvard, for better or worse, would not be Harvard without legacies, athletes,and underrepresented minorities, considerations that complicate an alreadynot-so-meritocratic process. Recent discussionsregarding the lower acceptance rate for apparently more qualified AsianAmerican applicants have revealed an ugly bias against Asian Americans at IvyLeague admissions offices. According to Jerome Karabel’sbook “The Chosen,” this bias has been prevalent since the 1980s.
In fact, in response to public pressure about discrimination and quotas in1988, Harvard’s Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67asserted that “while Asian Americans are slightly stronger than whites onacademic criteria, they are slightly less strong on extracurricular criteria.”These comments are eerily reminiscent of the stereotyping of Jews in attemptsto limit their enrollment in the early 20th century.
Daniel Golden reveals in “The Price of Admission” that Harvard admissionsofficers rank “Asian American candidates on average below whites in ‘personalqualities,’” as well as frequently comment that they are “‘quiet/shy” and “hardworkers.” Without evidence to substantiate these generalizations, thesecomments smack of a self-fulfilling stereotype: Admissions officers expectAsian applicants to have such qualities, and therefore see these in them moreso than they would in a non-Asian applicant. Besides the intrinsicallyproblematic nature of such generalizations, since when did shy, quiet, andhardworking somehow become “below average personal qualities?”
We, the students of this university, are not some hand-selected intellectualelite that unquestionably earned our place here. We were chosen to reflectdiverse forms of merit in an arguably arbitrary way. Asian Americans areunderrepresented relative to their academic performance simply because, inlight of other considerations that are prioritized above merit, there are morequalified Asian applicants than will be accepted. Rationalizations based onspeculation about the personal qualities of these students compared to those ofother ethnic groups are based on ill-informed and racist stereotypes.
Arguably, there are benefits that come with preferring legacies and athletes,but these come at the cost of not only rejecting well qualified Asianapplicants but also admitting a more diverse candidate pool. Karabel reports in “The Chosen” that 40 percent of legacieswere admitted in 2002 compared to 11 percent of other applicants. There is abias here that is not simply based on merit: While one might argue that legacyadmits are simply correlated with better qualifications, high-performing AsianAmericans are suffering the opposite of this kind of preferential admission.
Furthermore, former Princeton President William G. Bowen and interim UniversityPresident Derek C. Bok show in their book “The Shapeof the River” that only one percent of white students at the most selectiveinstitutions come from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds, while over 90percent of students at these selective institutions come from households abovethe median American income ($60,000 per year). This lack in socioeconomicdiversity is also linked to racial diversity, skewing not only students’perceptions of what is normal or average in this country, but also what racialcategories such as “Asian American” really represent.
While race does tend to correlate with socioeconomic status, a broad range ofsocioeconomic backgrounds is represented in the category of Asian Americans.Comprised of all people from Asian descent, the majority of whomare close to the immigrant experience, Asian Americans came to the U.S. aseverything from job-seeking professionals to refugees fleeing oppressiveregimes. A recent post to The Crimson’s blog, TheMagenta, admitted that The Crimson’s editorial on Asian American admissionsused the term “loosely” to denote people of East Asian descent, completelydisregarding entire subpopulations of the term “Asian American.” Sadly, thiscasual use is far from uncommon but does a serious disservice to populationssuch as underrepresented Southeast Asian Americans, who were found in a studyby New York University to have one of the highesthigh school dropout rates.
When considering how much further admissions must progress in order to includethese and other often forgotten communities, there is more to consider thanrace. Our concern is not simply about clarifying the contentions regardingAsians in the college admissions process; it is about acknowledging thatprivileging legacies, athletes, and other groups necessarily precludes ameritocracy.
There is a fine line between subjectivity and systematic exclusivity, and thecomments documented by Golden attest to how easily the former can lead to thelatter when the process loses transparency and accountability. We sacrificemeritocracy because of our belief in the merit of diversity, but it is ourresponsibility to ensure that this diversity is not used to justify aconvenient elitism.
Deborah Y. Ho ’07 is a biochemistryconcentrator in Mather House. She is the co-founderand co-president of the Asian American Women’s Association. ShayakSarkar ’07 is an applied math concentrator in Mather House.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=515995
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Affirmativeaction, despite its shortcomings, is largely effective
Published On 11/20/2006 1:18:20 AM
By THE CRIMSON STAFF
A Nov. 11 Wall Street Journal article by Daniel Golden—a 2004winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his series of articles exposing the hugeadmissions advantages afforded to privileged white students—exposed what mightappear to be another disturbing college admissions trend. Some analyses ofstandardized test scores show that Asian-American applicants, on average, mustattain higher scores to snag admission to some of the nation’s most desirableschools. But these statistics, while initially disturbing, are the result of ajust and well intentioned system of affirmative action in college admissions.That system should not be abandoned in the face of harsh numbers.
Yet the numbers are startling. A studyby the Center for Equal Opportunity found that Asian-American applicants toselective colleges have significantly higher test scores than applicants ofother races. For example, in 2005, the median test score for Asian studentsoffered admission to the University of Michigan was 50 pointshigher than the median score for white students, 140 points higher thanHispanic students, and 240 points higher than black students. (The SAT used a1600-point scale at the time.)
This comparison yields figures worthy of pause. It suggests the existence of animplicit quota on the numbers of Asian-American students at some schools.(Asian-Americans make up about 4.5 percent of the nation’s population, but only10 percent to 30 percent of students at elite U.S. universities.) But there aretwo reasons why the score gap is not as startling as it should seem. First, thenature of affirmative action exaggerates the differences in measures ofacademic success for which it is trying to correct. For instance, students ofcolor, who tend to be poorer, average lower SAT scores than wealthier students.Their lower SAT scores perhaps indicate a lack of opportunity to succeedacademically, because of their financial circumstances, more than they suggestan academic deficiency.
Second, quantifiable academic criteria, especially SAT scores, are not the solecriteria for college admissions. Colleges are first and foremost academicinstitutions, but when a college chooses each new class, it does so with theknowledge that not everybody who graduates will be launched into an academiccareer. A college such as Harvard is searching for students who will be leadersin all spheres of the world, and that search requires picking applicants fromall walks of life. Moreover, colleges seek to balance their classes withstudents of all backgrounds, which is difficult to do if some minorities arenot sufficiently represented.
Colleges, then, are right to forgive some students’ lower scores. Leadershipqualities, extracurricular involvement, achievement outside of the classroom,and raw demographics are factors that are key inevaluating every applicant. When the numbers are tabulated, a few snapshots ofthe data will look extreme, but this is no reason to flee from a worthyprocess.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=515908
