Asian and Asian American Studies Program at Cal State, Los Angeles

An interesting piece of news crossed my path today. Apparently, the administration at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) was making the consideration in January of this year to do away with their Asian and Asian American Studies program due to low enrollment rates. 

According to a spokesman for the university, “There has been some discussion regarding the current state of the program. This discussion is based on the results of [the department's] self-study for its Program Review. The self-study showed that there had been only six graduates and two minors in this degree over the past five years…The next step in the process will be providing input to [Dean James Henderson, College of Natural and Social Sciences] and gathering input from the appropriate program reviewers and [the department]. From there, Academic Affairs will decide whether or not to suspend the program.”

The CSULA campus is located at the gateway to San Gabriel Valley, which houses one of the nation's largest Chinese community. CSULA itself is made up of 20-30% of Asian American students.The program has been operating since 2005 and has suffered from what Dr. Enrique de la Cruz, a professor at CSU, Northridge, calls fiscal neglect despite various funding sources and donors. An online campaign was launched to fight the suspension and various protest acts (marches, petitions, blogs, letters of support, etc.) were set in motion.

Finally, in June of 2011,  the former director of the program (who was a professor in anthropology!) wrote a thank you letter to summarize the support the program received and the current state of affairs. A new director of the program was appointed to the program in April of 2011 and has subsequently received full reassigned time on par with other department chairs, an implicit recognition of the lack of university support to the previous director.

So there you have it. Social action works. This gives us all good reason to stand up for what we believe, to articulate our beliefs in infectious words and action, and to inspire the same enthusiasm in others.