| Username |
Post |
| ashu |
Posted
on 14-Jun-02 04:24 AM
The Invisibility of Asian-American Scholars
By FRANK H. WU
There are no Asian-American public intellectuals. The absence of such scholars from public-policy discussions may be the result of external as well as internal causes, but it is detrimental to more than Asian-Americans alone. The democratic process depends on the equal participation of all individuals and groups. Changing the situation is crucial and will require our determined efforts.
Public intellectuals lead an open life of the mind, commanding a broad audience with a deep understanding of their specialized fields of inquiry. They serve as translators of sorts: writing accessible prose without technical jargon but with a grasp of the latest peer-reviewed literature.
Yet Asian-Americans with such viewpoints are simply missing in the public dialogues of our day. While we can probably all cite at least one or two respected Asian-American scholars, they are hardly household names.
No Asian-American professors have intellectual influence that extends far beyond their campuses. No Asian-American television commentator regularly analyses the crises of the day. No Asian-American columnist's nationally syndicated views reach the heartland. No Asian-American activist of any prominence can be relied on to respond to anti-Asian-American bias -- or can count on being offered a forum for doing so.
Nor are there periodicals dedicated to Asian-American conversations but possessing crossover appeal -- read by those who do not hold doctorates or who claim other forebears -- like Commentary and Tikkun, or the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Black Issues in Higher Education, and the defunct Emerge.
Public intellectuals have always been marked by notions of racial or ethnic identity, whether they sought to impose restrictions on others or escape from the limits set on them.
The gentlemen amateurs like Henry Adams -- who was glorified in his Education, and who dominated high culture in an earlier era -- took for granted that their domain was properly old-stock white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. As they were joined by thinkers of other backgrounds -- with mutual uneasiness -- they usually treated the newcomers' lineage as more than incidental. To them, Freud's psychoanalysis was a "Jewish" science.
Consequently, Jewish writers -- from Israel Zangwill and Horace Kallen, in the early part of the 20th century, through Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Lionel Trilling, and others in that storied group that converged on New York City following World War II -- were compelled to struggle with anti-Semitism, cultural assimilation, or a combination of those forces. Yet they attracted a wide readership among the educated.
The American canon needed the fiction of Jewish novelists and the interpretations of Jewish critics for a complete picture of the urban landscape; American newspapers depended on Walter Lippmann to explain political trends.
Eventually, Michael Novak single-handedly challenged Protestant and Jewish intellectuals alike with his 1972 book, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics. His pluralism was capital-c Catholic but not cosmopolitan. He asserted that white ethnics were and should remain culturally and politically distinct; they should not be treated as identical to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
Most visible today among the recent additions to the pundit lineup are African-American professors. The Harvard brain trust in Afro-American studies -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., William Julius Wilson, and Cornel West (who has since left for Princeton University) -- arrived on the scene soon after the iconoclast Russell Jacoby coined the phrase "public intellectuals" to announce their demise.
A younger generation, which boasts Robin D.G. Kelley, a professor of history at New York University, and Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of religious studies at DePaul University, is coming along. The right is ably represented by Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and, until his recent reconsiderations of affirmative action, Glenn Loury, director of Boston University's Institute on Race and Social Division.
More:
http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i40/40b01201.htm
Frank H. Wu, a law professor at Howard University, is author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (Basic Books, 2002).
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| Asian-Asian |
Posted
on 14-Jun-02 07:24 AM
Asian-Americans have better things to do: wash dishes, clean toilets, and post lengthy opinions on web sites like this. Get it?
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| bill_pusateri |
Posted
on 14-Jun-02 08:29 AM
Mr. Wu Here is your chance to make a place for yourself, since no one else is visible to you. Boohoo. Maybe you could make yourself first.
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| PS |
Posted
on 14-Jun-02 09:13 AM
An integral part of the Asian culture dictates keeping a low public profile and out of the spot light. We might be living up to it unintentionally. Do you agree/disagree?
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| 1 |
Posted
on 14-Jun-02 03:56 PM
You will see Asians in West coast. silicon valley is full of Asians. May be the survey was done in East or Mid-west.
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| Voltaire |
Posted
on 14-Jun-02 06:27 PM
As soon as you click on any Kurakani, press Ctrl+F and type "Harvard"...if anything gets highlighted,you can be quite confident that the topic was posted by Ashu.
Ashu, can we have something non-Harvard from you please? Something that does not mention Harvard at all...
ashu's your wellwisher
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| Voltaire |
Posted
on 14-Jun-02 06:29 PM
last line should read: Ashu's well wisher.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 15-Jun-02 06:54 AM
Voltaire,
With due respect to your august pen-name, and assuming that you are not joking,
I think you are taking a very NARROW and perverse view of things here.
Since you are my well-wisher, allow me to explain.
Even if you don't know anything else about me, the least you should know about me by now is this: I happen to be a Nepali who is fiercely passionate about ideas and the world of ideas -- someone who likes to come up with ideas, someone who likes to share ideas, someone who likes to challenge established ideas,
someone who likes to argue/debate with ideas, someone who is impressed with better ideas, someone who respects/admires people with ideas, and someone who is always looking/seeking better ideas that are out there and someone whose Nepali and non-Nepali friends are dominantly, well, people who are excited by
the possibility of ideas.
Put simply, I give a damn about ideas.
And I don't really care whether those ideas (on whatever topics) come from Harvard professors or Quincy College instructors or whoever else. Good ideas
are good ideas, regardless of the source.
It is in that spirit of finding out more about the world we live in and in a spirit of PUBLIC SERVICE, Voltaire, that I -- despite my very busy personal and professional schedule -- consciously choose to participate in this sajha
forum:
TO SHARE IDEAS with you fellow-Nepalis from all over the planet;
to share ideas that you may agree or disagree with, but to share ideas
nonetheless. And sharing ideas here may mean either posting my own views (which I have done aplenty), commenting on other posters's views
or posting what OTHER people have published in whatever publications (as
in this Asian-American article).
Sure, universities like Harvard or MIT or Princeton are Harvard or MIT or Princeton precisely because they ARE, whether you like it or not, among the world's foremost "factories of ideas" -- ideas that shape and influence our world in
ways unimaginable.
But to view my particular idea-sharing postings on sajha.com ONLY thru the
lens of Harvard just because association with that university would be a
gross and unfair misunderstanding and misinterpretation of my deep-seated
sense of, well, small act of this kind of public service.
I posted Wu's article NOT to show off any palpable Harvard connection (FYI,
Wu teaches at Howard University in DC and NOT at Harvard), but because what
he says about Asian-American scholars seem INTERESTING ENOUGH to share
with you all -- especially in light of the fact that are now many talented second-generation Nepalis in the US (who are regular sajha visitors), some of whom, I hope, will go on to be public intellectuals and more in the US and beyond.
Besides, some of Wu's arguments are relevant for those of us in Nepal -- the
place where better and more ideas about democracy, governance, civic participation and so on and on. . . are URGENTLY required and needed.
In that spirit, let's forget his stuff about Harvard-Sarvard.
Harvard-Sarvard are not not that important.
Ad that's because ideas are more supreme than Harvard-Sarvard.
Since you are Voltaire, I offer you a toast in the sajha tradition of keeping
ideas -- conformist and non-conformist -- alive and kicking s that we can all
take joy in (legally) expanding our mind :-)
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| Dr. Pangloss |
Posted
on 17-Jun-02 04:00 AM
Ashu,
Your writings are as cliche as the articles that appear in aldaily(your favorite isn't it?) Didn't you ever hear about the importance of brevity?
Still, I'd give a few semesters to write like that. I mean talk about passion for words, typewritten words!
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| ashu |
Posted
on 17-Jun-02 05:27 AM
Dear Dr. Pangloss,
I may or may not know about brevity.
That's a separate issue.
But who the hell is forcing you to read these non-brief and cliched postings?
No one.
More to the point, different people learn things differently.
Some learn by observations.
Some by thinking out aloud or by talking with other people.
Some by reading, and so on and on.
Different strokes for different folks.
It's just that after some trial and error, I have decided that I, for one,
LEARN new things/concepts and ideas by writing about them, by
writing things up on the screen, by sharing those ideas and thoughts
with others.
Doesn't matter whether I am right or wrong: what
matters is this act of wrestling with ideas through
words on the screen or paper AND sharing them
with others. That's how I learn, and that's how I
want to use sajha forum for my learning and
public service purposes.
Thus, writing -- for better or worse -- helps me think about and think
through, test, retest, evaluate and analyze ideas and thoughts.
And, you know what, even though I write a lot -- both in my personal and professional life -- I don't find writing easy: it's damn difficult, even for me.
I'd rather stare at the blank computer screen all day, drink countless
glasses of water or cups after cups of Ilam chiya than write :-)
But because writing IS difficult, it is challenging.
And because it is challenging, I want to do it everyday, whether
I'm in the mood for it or not. :-)
And anyone who says that writing is easy is lying :-)
Have a good week ahead.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| Dr. Pangloss |
Posted
on 17-Jun-02 06:02 PM
Dear Ashu,
You proved my point.
I didn't say writing's bad, did I? It is verbose, which is not the same as bad. Your feelings probably aren't hurt but you got angry. Wasn't it obvious that I was winding you up?
I read your posting's because, unlike most postings (including mine), your opinionated mini-essays have, umm..yes, insights.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 17-Jun-02 10:45 PM
Dear Dr. Pangloss,
I am delighted that I have proved your point.
Glad to be of service, yaar!!
By YOUR standards, sure, I am verbose and all that.
Then again, in this FREE forum, I like it that way.
But thanks anyway, buddy, for reading my stuff.
And, no, I am neither hurt nor angry.
I am just having fun with capital FU and N.
Have a good week ahead!!
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| KDW 95.4 |
Posted
on 18-Jun-02 08:39 AM
Live Commentary:
Ashu hits an explosive uppercut on contender Dr. Pangloss's jaw. Dr. Pangloss staggers to the floor. (Boy, if it was me, i'd see stars with a powerful blow like that)
The referee is counting now...
1..... 2..... 3...... 4.....
(c'mon boy you can do it).
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| Dr. Pangloss |
Posted
on 18-Jun-02 01:33 PM
Commentry guy,
Your enthusiasm on (or at?) my fall is duly noted.
But isn't this dot com considered to be Ashu's territory? He has the home crowd advantage whereas
I, on the other hand, am in exile.
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| KDW 95.4 |
Posted
on 18-Jun-02 01:40 PM
Dr. Pangloss,
In spite of my enthusiasm for you. YOu have let me down by admitting defeat. I don't thing there is anything such as someone's territory in the virtual world. If you're good, you knock out others. If you're not you find excuses. The good team always wins. Remember the Lakers?????
You can still do it...
6...... 7...... 8.....
get up will you?
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| Dr. Pangloss |
Posted
on 18-Jun-02 02:02 PM
Commentary guy,
Your determination on getting me virtually slaughtered (through Ashu's killer sermons), looks sadistic. Give it up mate!
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| ashu |
Posted
on 20-Jun-02 07:15 AM
Dr. Pangloss wrote:
"But isn't this dot com considered to be Ashu's territory? He has the home crowd advantage . . . "
Negative, my dear Dr. Pangloss.
Negative about this "home crowd advantage"
To keep up with my verbosity . . . :-)
Though I am lucky to have a number of friends and supporters on and off the Web, I think it's also well worth keeping in mind that there was/is and will be a
time when a few punks -- who hate me (and I wish them well!) the way Bin Laden hates America -- thought they could destroy me by hurling all kinds of
anonymous and false abuses against me here in this PUBLIC forum.
Still, being optimistic and sermon-oriented :-), the lessons I drew from all those anonymous and false attacks against me are:
a) If you haven't done anything wrong, no matter what some people say about you behind your back, those false charges really don't count in the large scheme of things. For people who want to believe negative stuff about you without any evidence, well, let them!!
b) No matter how much good you try to do to others, some people are just genetically wired to react violently to every perceived slight, and trhey try to justify their actions by spreading rumors and negative things about you, and,
hey, you know, that's life.
All you can do is wish those poor folks well, and NOT spread negative rumors about them.
c) Some people may -- if they hear the same negative stories all the time from the same prejudiced people -- believe the worst about you in the short-run, but, in the long-run, in a more OPEN and TRANSPARENT environment, they are bound to see the truth for what it is, and that's what you can hope for. You just have to trust people that they are capable of exercising their judgment, and leave things at that.
d) Never trust a person who takes great care to be everything to everyone and thus has no enemies.As ancient Chinese wisdom put it, that person is merely wearing a (plastic) smile and not living an authentic life. And who wants to be a friend to some inauthentic man or a woman?
I could go on . . . but I'll stop . . . Yada yada yada.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| rai |
Posted
on 20-Jun-02 01:27 PM
Now I guess they become lot more visible !!!!
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_Id=13556063
Scientists arrested for spying
AFP [ THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2002 1:33:40 PM ]
BOSTON: The FBI said late on Thursday it had arrested a Chinese and Japanese scientist for stealing trade secrets from Harvard Medical School and trying to market them through a Japanese company.
Jiangyu Zhu, 30, and Kayoko Kimbara, 32, were arrested Wednesday in San Diego, where they lived together, after resigning their research jobs at the Harvard Medical School, in Massachusetts, in January 2000.
The two scientists were charged in a criminal complaint filed in a federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, with conspiracy, theft of trade secrets and interstate transportation of stolen property, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said in a statement.
Zhu and Kimbara were working at Harvard's department of cell biology as post-doctoral research fellows when they allegedly stole trade secrets to develop new drugs to control organ rejection.
The alleged theft took place between 1997 and 2000, the FBI said, adding that the two scientists took "highly marketable scientific information ... with them to Texas, with the intention of profiting from such information by collaborating with a Japanese company in the creation and sale of related and derivative products."
The Japanese company's name was not disclosed but the statement said it had cooperated fully in the investigation and returned all research data and products to Harvard.
The statement said that by early 1999, Zhu and Kimbara had begun working at night at the their laboratory to escape supervision from the professor in charge of their research.
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| Extrovert |
Posted
on 20-Jun-02 08:50 PM
Ashu,
Now, don't sit there and weep for god's sake. It's your own wrenching that you are in this state of mind. You've practicaly made more enemies than any other nepali I know through your assertive and illogical discussions. For some of you who are not familiar with this 'know-it-all-mayhem' just go to USENET (or http://groups.google.com) and do some search about nepali issues. To your surprise you will find him grinding an ax with almost everyone!
Ashu, I'm sorry to say this, but you've got a history of feuding with almost everyone you come in contact with. Your behavior is such that you think you are god b/c you went to Harvard. Just understand that there are a handful of us, who also attend ivy league schools in the East and the likes of Stanford and Berkeley in the West. Moreover, there are many of us, who attend second or third tier Universities, which are as good as any Universities around. But, unlike you, we don't go around boasting with pride b/c of it.
I don't think you've done well with your Harvard degree, don't you think? You can just let it hang in the wall now; it's just useless, while some third tier University graduates are climbing the corporate ladder to success! :o)
Conformity comes with ones ability to be affable, and not with shallow pride as you have demonstrated time and time again.
Just my 2 cents worth,
-Extrovert
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| ashu |
Posted
on 21-Jun-02 12:57 AM
Thank you extrovert for that wonderful outburst of venom!!
And I still wish you well.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your attack, and have forwarded it to a
number of friends.
After all, let the laughter spread from one corner of the globe to another,
hoi na ta?
Plus, like you, I strongly encourage all and sundry to dig through and read
all the garbage that you and your friend -- in your predictably anonymous
avatars -- have posted about me on the Internet.
Go ahead, yaar!!
My honest experience is that the more reasonable and sensible people read
such pure garbage against me, the more likely are they to end up being sympathetic to me.
And that's because because NO ONE likes real, identifiable fellow-human being
like myself being attacked by anonymous, slimey punks in public forums.
That said, on a philosophical level, why is it so BORINGLY easy to predict that certain -- OK, OK mischievously placed -- phrases such as "genetic wiring" bring the usual foaming-in-the-mouth responses against me in this forum? :-)
But that's OK.
Unlike most (silent) Nepalis, I heartily welcome this sort of anonymous false
attack in PUBLIC because:
a) Such attacks help me smile all the more, and
b) help me build emotional resilience to live and work happily and
productively -- for now anyway -- in the country I love: Nepal.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
PS: I love this image about me being some Harvard snotty: that must come
as a surprise to many of my non-Harvard friends who know that, unlike Ambika Adhikari and a host of other characters, I stand in public on the basis of my own name, on the basis of my own strengths and weaknesses and NOT on the basis of where I went to school. Still, because Harvard is Harvard, I fully accept that certain labels intended for it are bound to stick on me too, and are so easy to believe.
Ah, the price of fame, you know :-)
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| Pangloos |
Posted
on 21-Jun-02 11:27 PM
>Ashu,
>
>Now, don't sit there and weep for god's sake.
> It's your own wrenching that you are in
>this state of mind. You've practicaly made
>more enemies than any other nepali I know
>through your assertive and illogical
>discussions. For some of you who are not
>familiar with this 'know-it-all-mayhem' just
>go to USENET (or http://groups.google.com)
>and do some search about nepali issues. To
>your surprise you will find him grinding an
>ax with almost everyone!
>Just my 2 cents worth,
>-Extrovert
If the _____ you wrote was worth that much, we'd all be wallowing in greenbacks right now!
Ashu,
Why do you keep prefacing ""Oohi"" every time you type your name? Doesn't the oohi imply the reader knows you beforehand? I'm suspecting that it is a habit that never wore of since the fourth grade.
Going back to the topic, here's my guesswork. I would have thought that, proportionately, there would be more South-Asian scholars than other ethnic groups. (excluding the Jews) They probably do not get their share of media glory due to some reason.
It's not only Asian-American scholars, is it? I can not remember the last time I heard of an Irish ( or Polish, or Armenian) scholar.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 24-Jun-02 05:19 AM
Ashu,
Why do you keep prefacing ""Oohi"" every time you type your name? Doesn't the oohi imply the reader knows you beforehand? I'm suspecting that it is a habit that never wore of since the fourth grade.
***************
For some years, the word "oohi" -- with those lusciously rolling double
O's -- has been, for better or worse, a harmless, amusing, instantly
recognizable, if faintly comical, "trademark" of mine, and that's that :-)
If the reader knows me from before, fine and good.
If not, then, well, the reader now has a reason to get to know me
better, and not be
Tetti ho, yaar.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| sally |
Posted
on 24-Jun-02 10:29 AM
I wondered why Francis Fukuyama's name was missing from Wu's article--particularly given that both Wu and Fukuyama are in the DC area, I think--but when I pulled up the whole link I saw what was going on.
Apparently Fukuyama doesn't qualify as an "Asian American scholar" because Wu has a particular definition of an "Asian American scholar." It seems that, to pass muster with Wu, you've got to write about Asian American issues, in some way reference your identity in your work, or have a particular political viewpoint.
Read the link, and you'll see he dismisses both Fukuyuma and Dinesh D'Souza as "honorary whites."
So in other words, ethnicity is NOT the main criteria for Wu in determining who qualifies as an Asian-American scholar. There's also a political litmus test.
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