8 Asians

As an alumnus of Princeton University, I was happy to hear that a course on Asian Americans will be offered at Princeton in the fall of 2012. Students there hope that the course “Asian-American Law, Bodies and the Everyday” taught by Anne Cheng will eventually lead to a broader Asian American Studies program. Princeton’s first courses in Asian American studies were said to have been student initiated courses taught by visiting scholars in the 1980s. A sit-in protest in the 1995 did not lead to courses, and an effort to establish a certificate in Asian American studies also did not succeed. Getting Princeton to offer Asian American studies was an issue when I was an undergraduate there, and I was never able to talk any courses in the area. Other Ivy League universities such as Cornell, Penn, and Columbia offer courses in Asian American studies.