Link to Audio Clip: https://www.bravevoices.fieldscenter.princeton.edu/princetonians-fight-for-asian-american-studies

Zoom Interview on June 14, 2020

LZ: Linda Zhong (interviewee)

FM: Fumika Mizuno (interviewer)

FM:

I was wondering if we could start off with a little bit about your background. I was wondering if you could tell me about your hometown and where you grew up?

LZ:

Yes, so first of all, I'm class of 2015. I'm originally from Basking Ridge, New Jersey. I mean, I've always been in the East Coast Tristate area, although now, ever since graduation, I've been living in Seattle. I went to public high school, a rich high school. It's a public school, but it's really good. And then we always send a few people to the Ivies and I was one of them that went to Princeton. Yeah.

My town was really interesting. My town is caught between really old neighborhoods where white families have been living there for like the entire lifetime of their children. And then you have an influx of Asian American immigrants who are moving here to send their kids to the high school or who are coming here and starting their kids in elementary school.

But there's definitely like a generational gap. So you'll have some elementary schools that have like, over 50% Asian Americans which is wild, and then the high school, there were fewer Asian Americans, but most of them seemed to be newer to the area. And they all lived in these new planned neighborhoods that sort of sat outside the central town area.

FM:

Is it similar to Edison?

LZ:

Yeah, exactly. Is that where you're from?

FM:

No, I'm from Portland actually. Being in such a white and Asian neighborhood, did you think about race a lot when you were in high school before coming to Princeton?

LZ:

So, yeah, not at all. I think a lot had to do with when you're a moody teenager and you grew up with the internet, you sort of live most of your emotional life online and there just wasn't a lot of Asian-American emotions online. I'm thinking of old Tumblr and like, you know, places like SoundCloud. It was just a lot of more generic America slash whiteness.

FM:

Do you remember what emotions were going through your mind when you first found out that you were going to Princeton?

LZ:

I felt relief. I think if anything, I just felt really good for my parents. My mom was standing over my shoulders. I was looking at all my college acceptances or rather lack of acceptances.

I hadn't made it into Harvard, UPenn, Columbia. And then we saw that I got into Princeton and she let out this really long sigh and then like what to take a shower. Didn't even say anything. And I just felt like at that moment, I was aware of all this like stress and anxiety that she must've been carrying for decades, and it was nice to see that full offer.

FM:

Were you born in the States or?

LZ:

I was born in Ohio when my mom and my dad were finishing up their PhDs and they came to the States for their graduate studies and they were part of that wave of Chinese graduate students who were offered permanent residency after the Tiananmen Square shootings.

So they were very lucky because the plan was for them to always go back to China.

FM:

Do you ever go back to China?

LZ:

So my dad works there actually. And he comes back every, he comes back two weeks out of every eight weeks. So he's traveling back and forth a lot. We try to go once a year or so. I was, this is very Chinese, I was raised by my grandparents because my parents were working full time. So I'm pretty close to the grandparents on my dad's side of the family.

FM:

Would you identify yourself as Chinese American, Asian American?

LZ:

I think I identify as, I think I identify outwardly and publicly as Asian American, and then at home, it's very much like Chinese American, like to the point where, you know, my family, they are Chinese.

And so they'll like make like, kind of bigoted comments about other, I mean, in like a playful way, like about other countries, but they see themselves as very distinctly not Korean or not Japanese. Yeah. Like when I'm alone and now that I'm living on my own, I feel much more connected to people who just have Asian faces, regardless of where they're from.

FM:

Transitioning to coming to Princeton, what was it like? I guess since you're from New Jersey, it wasn't too far of a move.

LZ:

It wasn't too far. It was, I mean, it was scary. I didn't really know what to expect. And then, I feel like Princeton, like never, you can never know what to expect. At every stage there's a bunch of new stuff that you haven't even thought about that's just like thrown onto you, happens every semester.

But I think that when I started learning about and when I started getting involved in AASA and learning about the long history of the struggle for Asian American Studies, and I looked into what Asian American studies is, that was a pretty eye opening and emotional experience for me. That happened around the end of freshman year going into sophomore year.

FM:

How did you first find out about it? Was it through AASA?

LZ:

Yeah, it was through also, I was just looking for friends anywhere. And then I thought it was more like a social club where you went and ate food together or did activities together. But underneath all that, there were a few really big initiatives that they were driving. I don't actually know how, in particular I learned about Asian American Studies. I think I had a few really passionate upperclassmen who were in the social sciences, Tara and Charles, and they introduced the whole idea to, I think the freshmen class because they had these book clubs and things like that.

I think at first I was really upset and angry that I, I don't know what I felt. It was really complicated. I mean, the main thing I felt was that like here was this experience that I thought was very personal and singular, and I didn't realize that there were so many people who have already taken that experience and turned it into art and culture, writing and poetry and paintings and everything. And that it was such a large body of work that it was worth a study of its own. And that a lot of the experience didn't start in the wave of educated Asian immigrants that came over in the nineties. It goes back generations in every decade. There's like this shift in attitude. You learn things like Chinese Americans, or rather the Chinese that immigrated over here, who

built the railroads, you know, a lot of significant parts of what America looks like today is because of those early waves of immigrants. You never really hear about their stories or the role that they played.

FM:

Could you tell me more about the logistical side, like putting together reports and meeting with administrators?

LZ:

So it started off as just a more personal project for Evan and I to really understand where Princeton sat in the context of all the other educational institutions, not just Ivies, but like all the other ones. That introduced us to a community of other college students who ran conferences like ECAASU and stuff like that.

That just was about showing the body of work and literature around and research around this. So we're just trying to document it. We wanted to also document Princeton's personal history and struggle with it because it was important to us to connect it in one really large narrative, because that way we were able to tie all these individual points together into a larger thread of like, constantly meeting and requesting this work. Somewhere in the middle, we were noticing some gaps. We were noticing Princeton was falling behind.

We were noticing that there were some really big movements that were supposed to generate some concessions from the administration. And it seemed like those promises were never followed up on. We also, at the time, had the partnership of Professor Anne who was pushing for it in her own space. She wasn't exactly involved in the writing of the paper, but she kind of kept us motivated and she was a good touch point throughout the whole process.

So we wrote about it and we found out that not only did we write about it, students were interested because we had to do surveys of the student body to see like, how does the past compare to the present. We also started to do surveys of the alumni groups, and all those opinions together, there was a clear message coming out of it. We felt at that point that we actually had a few publications, the alumni magazine would reach out to us about doing a news story on it.

At that point, the administration actually proactively reached out to us. We didn't even have a concrete plan of really going to them and demanding things per se. It was very organic and it came out of just like this, I think, this need to see how deep the desire and the push for this field really went at Princeton.

FM:

What was it like meeting with the top administration? Where they really receptive to having this new program?

LZ:

We actually met with [Christopher] Eisgruber who was provost at the time. He was really nice and he was really candid. I mean, he was like, look like I'm all for it, because he's all for academics and the exploration of all these different fields, and you know, in the ideal world we would have enough time and faculty and funding for every single program. And he said that the reason that we saw the growth, like the Lewis Arts Center and the CS department, and not Asian American Studies is just a question of money. We were having a pretty frank and discouraging conversation.

I mean, it was both lack of faculty and lack of money. And it's true at the time, Professor Anne Cheng didn't have any grad students. She didn't have, like when she had her department and Professor Hartog, I don't know if he's still around, but he was a huge supporter too, but I think he was in charge of the whole American Studies department. He was busy. And so that was kind of where we left it with him, with Eisgruber. Then we just tried to start raising money for it. We put out a student video appeal talking about how much this would mean to us, how much we needed it as an institution.

Then I think a few alumni ponied up a lot of money and that was enough to kick off a couple of grad students coming. This is kind of crazy because I was an Econ major. I wasn't actually interested in pursuing the whole certificate program, even though I wanted it legitimized, so I only ended up taking a few classes for it. But that was still kind of the start. I wasn't able to take it much further than that in my capacity as a student. I didn't take all the classes that were offered, but it was still interesting.

Oh, also speaking of the money question, it also had to do with the amount of faculty time given to have Asian American Studies classes and who signed up for them. I think that Professor Anne who split between, I think English and American Studies, could only dedicate, had to carve out or like negotiate for her own time to have these classes. Then those classes needed to be well attended. That was also an important data point to show the administration that there was teeth behind our requests. That was another part of it. We did some light campaigning around the classes, but honestly, I think they like filled up on their own.

FM:

Seeing the report and seeing the demands [from the 1995 sit-in], like with eight classes every semester or a year? I can't recall. But then I'm looking through the course selection for this semester, this coming semester in the fall, there's only two ASA classes and they're both like cross-listed. So it's like we have a certificate even now, but it's still, we only have one tenured faculty member and she's also in the history department. So it's still a very ongoing struggle.

LZ:

Yeah, it is. But it's still amazing. Like, I don't think it was a code when I was there. It definitely wasn't a surrogate certificate program, so it's still amazing. And I think like the arc of these things are long. I mean, the thing about what I was told from the students who pursued it before me, before I inherited it is that the administration can just wait out students. They can wait two or three years. Students get busy with their thesis or they just graduate. And then, you know, like it's gone, that push has gone, so at least this is like some formalization of it and it means you can't just forget it. Yeah, but of course, you know, there's so much more to explore beyond two classes a semester.

FM:

Do you remember how you found out about the certificate when it became formalized in 2018? You were graduated for a couple of years.

LZ:

Yeah, I think I heard about it on Facebook probably. Yeah, I learned about it on Facebook.

Oh my gosh. It was so crazy, but like, I had not really spoken to a lot of Princeton people since then. This is my bad, I'm terrible at keeping in touch and that's something I want to change. I think the pandemic has taught me that you never actually have that much time to invest in personal relationships.

So I didn't really have anyone to celebrate it with, is my point. And I mean, I had Evan [Kratzer] and Lena [Sun], and I messaged them and I was like, can you believe it guys? But yeah, I want to go back to all the alumni who were there for us and just thank them, thank them for their support and be one of those people who are actively supporting, like go to the events, talk about how it's important to me.

FM:

What about the conversations about race when you were a student at Princeton, I guess 2015 is like when the first BLM movement sort of started. Yeah. I'm not really sure what came before, but what was it like on campus?

LZ:

I feel like I just missed the movements, or maybe I was just too deep in work senior year. The conversations about race were very, I guess like nascent and unsophisticated. I definitely was not able to have the conversations then that I can now because of the additional insight and nuance put out by all these individuals of color.

For me, it was, it was also very centered around me. When I talked about race, it was only in the context of wanting to push this academic program forward, wanting to formalize it as like a legitimate field of study at Princeton. It wasn't more like, you know, stepping back, like how does our relationship with race change going forward? It was more like, let's make sure that we have a relationship with race when we look back. The whole concept of microaggressions and things like that. Like just learning that term was already a really big learning point for me and just exploring the different vocabulary around it. That was where we were at our race conversations.

I think ethnic studies and Asian American Studies is so important because a lot of the times, we don't have the vocabulary or the words to situate ourselves in the conversation. And it's like, everything that I learned in Asian American history, it's been helpful now, figuring out what's happening and how Asians can play a role, because it can often feel like it's a white, black conflict, and then figuring out where we fit. I think also one of the things that's interesting is it, it gives you the language to break down the monolith of Asian Americans, which allows you to break down the monolith of Black Americans, and understand that there are-- I know this is like so obvious and reductive-- but there are so many different types of people within each group.

There are people who have just immigrated over here whose families tend to be pretty highly educated and wealthy, and their needs are totally different from groups of people who came over as refugees. But they're both significant enough communities that they warrant their own label. Like, they're not just one offs and we're not just like a group of one. It's a large group made of very specific types of people that are a large enough population that need to be reckoned with in their own way.

Every time I try to think about Asian Americans, there's so much, so much going on. And even, I think you can trace it back into history. American history had a really hard time with that too, because you know, it's like, the Japanese are white, but like Chinese Americans are colored.

That is really more of a manifestation of America's political relationship with those countries than like anything else. We're not the first ones to deal with the struggle.

FM:

Could you tell me more about your leadership and also what running AASA day to day was like?

LZ:

Oh my gosh. So long ago. I think when I was running AASA, I was really focused on the report and the initiative. After I stopped being the lead, the main thing that I had left behind is, we should renew these surveys and make sure that we are keeping all our documentation up to date and that we're staying in touch with the professors who sponsor us and university administrators who we've already worked with. The actual activities wise, I was just all about making sure that we had enough people that AASA wouldn't die over the next few years and we wouldn't have to rebuild it and sort of restart from zero, you know, the whole waiting it out sort of thing.

It was more around figuring out how to keep these people engaged, build a community, and then also have some dialogue around how AASA should be focused on a few key initiatives. I think it was really the next generation like Lena and Evan and the next generation, they were just the year below me, but they really took it and they really expanded the programming. I grew the membership, but they started sending people to ECAASU. Evan started a journal that published literature but from other students, and that was really cool.

So they supercharged it for me. It was all I could do to get the report out and to get membership. But that's still huge. Like the report is huge. It was really tough. I think I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I was just like, I didn't expect it to be what it became. I was like, I'm just trying to get through my sophomore year. I just wanted to pass my classes and not mess up any of my friendships. And then like, I felt like I had this second life where I was this undercover researcher, like fighting for academic justice.

FM:

So I found a lot of the stuff, the archival stuff on the WordPress website. Is that something that your generation built up?

LZ:

I believe so, especially because you say WordPress, because I don't think people build sites via WordPress anymore. Yeah, I think we did. I vaguely remember it. Yes.

FM:

It still exists and there's a lot in there.

LZ:

That's really interesting. See, I always feel bad because, in some ways I wanted it to be an academic field at Princeton because there was already so much energy in it. And because I felt like it was important, but I personally was not going to ever really go deep into the literature or the classes or anything.

Here I am five years later, I would probably shake my finger at my past self and say like, no, you have the time, go invest. It's really cool. There's a lot of stuff going on, but just immediately coming out. I was like, oh my god. That was really tough. The toughest four years of my life, like I need to give myself a brain break. I still have that report saved on my computer and I go back to that, like once every two years being like, wow, can't believe I did this. Well, I can't believe it was entirely student run and like that's so much, so much work. But isn't everything at Princeton that isn't strictly within a class, like all student run? Right, and like students do crazy stuff, like put together entire plays, like dance performances programs. It took a lot of work and leadership. I think like, while you're doing it, while you're at Princeton, it seems like a very normal thing. It's like, oh, everyone else is doing this. This is just how it is.

FM:

Why do you think at Princeton specifically compared to other Ivies, compared to other schools, it took so long for Asian American Studies to be institutionalized?

LZ:

Yeah, I think about this, because it's not like Princeton is lacking for money. I just think it's really slow and conservative and is less risk-taking than all the other programs. I think in a way, not having a robust grad school program actually makes it harder to introduce new fields of study or cross-listed studies. So even though it's a strength in the student experience, because you get more professor time, it hinders us in other ways.

I think the second thing, because it's not just ethnic studies, it's a bunch of other fields too-- like we don't have a sustainable development major. We don't have a business major. I don't know if we should have all these other majors, but it's definitely things that our peer institutions offer that we choose not to.

FM:

Yeah. So transitioning to post-grad and where you are now, when do you find yourself thinking about race, like in the workplace or every day?

LZ:

I think about it all the time. I do think about it every day. I think that, and I don't know if this is true for everyone else, but I think that race will always first be a really local, personal way of thinking about it.

I always think about it in the context of Seattle as a city. We don't have a ton of diversity here. In my day to day, I see mostly-- all my coworkers tend to be white or Asian American or South Asian American. I think about it because it seems like the treatment, I really do see that the treatment is all equal across those three groups, but then there's the absence of other ethnic groups or the absence of other people of color. So it's not even a question of like, are they being discriminated against? They're just not even part of the picture. I think about that a lot.

As I advanced through my career, I think a lot about my parents and how they were actively held back because of their language and immigrant background. I see a really marked difference between people like me who were born in this country and people who maybe went to school here, maybe moved here for work, just in really small ways, like how they're perceived socially and what they do at work.

I think long term, it manifests into things like how they're seen as leaders and team players and stuff like that, which is horrible. I'm thinking a lot about outside of the workplace and outside of our immediate community as a nation, how to tear down structural, systemic barriers, programs that have created wealth gaps and safety gaps and like expected lifespan gaps.

There's a lot of conversation right now around defunding the police and things like that. And I think that even though the term is very raw and I initially was like, you know, guys, we can't just cut funding to the police and the next day expect everything to get better. That's not how things work, they would get much worse first. I think underneath that is an exploration of like, what are the specific institutions and what within them need to actually change in order to address the root causes of these issues? I think in the last few years we've done a lot of like, you know, cops are racist, and that's not a very nuanced position. I think there are a lot of thinkers who have already gone beyond that. I'm just saying as a member of the general American public, I did not see a lot of nuance that I now see today. That's racism in 2020 for you.

FM:

How has the way that you think about your own identity changed since graduating Princeton?

LZ:

Yeah. I still see myself politically as Asian American. I think I identify culturally much less the Chinese American stuff now that I've left home. Now I sort of exist in this like generic millennial umbrella, which seems to have a lot of white attributes. I also have really cynically, I think, changed my opinion of how to make change. Like maybe Eisgruber’s words planted a seed in me because I used to feel you know, write to your senator, call your representative. Like this is how political changes are made, these are how systems improve. But now I just feel like a lot of it is like funding and putting money in the hands of people who are doing the hard research and the work to write policy and things like that.

So now, because I want to make change in the world, I want to make a lot of money first and then funnel it into the right causes rather than maybe throw myself into a few, like, as a new person with no work experience into like a nonprofit or something like that in the area.

FM:

What are some causes that you believe in a lot right now?

LZ:

Right now it's really about the 8 Can’t Wait. I've really felt like I've connected to the message of campaign zero. And there are a few, like very critical policing policies that if you change immediately will reduce the actual amount of death that happens in these encounters.

But then also I think like, and I've felt this, and I've always felt this way. The accrual of wealth across generations is something I'm really interested in and a door I want to open for people of color. I've thought about this a lot myself as an immigrant, like my family does really well.

My parents are both PhD graduates. They're very smart. And they've been employed at their companies for years and years. So they've achieved a certain level of seniority, but there's something about having that wealth persist so that the next generation can grow on it.

That makes all the difference. And you can erase a whole generation's worth of progress by not allowing them to take out loans against that wealth that they've accrued so that they can continue to grow, own property, things like that. The movement of wealth through generations, in populations of color, that’s I think a really core issue for me.

FM:

Do you feel like the way that you think about race and the way that you think about society has been shaped by working on the report and trying to institutionalize ASA?

LZ:

Yeah, I think so. I think I've picked up a lot of. I think it comes in two ways.

Like first it's, , the actual work of writing out the report and everything like that, , made me. More aware of has like helped bring me into conversations that institutions have within themselves and has helped show me like how change happens. , and it showed me that, you know, like everyone in a, in a whole program can be like really well intentioned.

, but that like structurally, there might be things in the way. That no single person can really move like questions of money and priority and things like that. I don't think that is any different at companies. , politically, anything like everyone will want everything good to happen, but you need to be able to speak their language of prioritization in order to like actually translate something into a real decision.

And then just the actual, like learning of the different pieces of history, , has helped given me an appreciate, has given me the appreciation. For, you know, what we already have today and, and has helped me like visualize in my head what society should look like based off of what people have articulated in the past.

And then like my own thoughts on top of it. I think that Asian Americans have so much, like we have to. We really have to think black Americans for like the work that they've done around racial equality, because, you know, we've really benefited off of it, even if, you know, not all of us were like, and our families were not like actively participating in those protests and those generations.

And now, you know, we are standing on the shoulders of giants in a way and have to continue pushing that forward. I think to honor the people who came before and in order to like help us reach that final North star that they've spent the time identifying and articulating.

FM:

I think you're getting to my next question, but, , why is ethnic studies important to have in university?

LZ:

Yeah. I think it's the same thing as crushed generational wealth, like crushed generational historical knowledge. Like you can, erase entire bodies of thought if you don't carry them forward. We saw Princeton do that multiple times with generations of students who are pushing for ethnic studies. That's like a micro example.

Then like a macro example is, going all the way back to high school, like circling back in this whole conversation, I knew a lot of high school classmates who really identified as American and who had a lot of white friends and things like that. Then if you forget that there was a whole legacy of discrimination against Asian Americans, you might be surprised now when, with coronavirus coming, that public opinion can turn so harshly against you. And it makes you lose sight that there's a larger legacy of otherization and it might help set the context for why the things that are happening today are happening today.

So instead of being taken by surprise, you can sort of like to catch your breath, and know that this is part of a larger discussion in our country, that there's already been a lot of thought put into it that you can use as a foundation moving forward. Don't reinvent the wheel, and don't get discouraged.