UC Berkeley awarded $5 million grant to expand study of AANHPI Christians

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

AANHPI Christians are an often overlooked demographic.

Most Americans still view Asian Americans are Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus or Muslim, adding to the "perpetual foreigner" stereotype that haunts AANHPI.

“Among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Christians are the largest religious group," says Ethnic Studies Professor Caroly Chen of University of California, Berkeley.

UC Berkeley's APARRI, part of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, has secured a $5 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to expand the study of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Christian experiences. 

The initiative will fund archival projects, media fellowships, and public lectures to highlight the diversity of AAPI faith communities in American history. 

        FYI: For more details about the APARRI, click here.

The Christian majority among AANHPI is "something that is not commonly known, nor is it a dimension of AAPI life that often is studied in academia,” sys Chen, who serves as the executive director of APARRI and co-director of BCSR.

 “Our goal is to transform and diversify our understanding and knowledge of American Christianity and highlight the experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.” 

Pew Research Center findings:

According the Pew Research Center, roughly 34% identify as Christian as of 2023. This diverse community includes prominent evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic groups, frequently characterized by distinct first-generation immigrant churches alongside second-generation English-speaking ministries.

Affiliation Breakdown: Asian American Christians are roughly split between Catholics (17%) and Protestants (16%). Among Protestants, approximately 10% identify as born-again or evangelical.

Ethnic Concentration:

• Filipino Americans: Predominantly Catholic (roughly 75%).

• Korean Americans: Predominantly Protestant (roughly 59%), with a high concentration of evangelicals.

• Chinese & Vietnamese Americans: While these groups have high numbers of religiously unaffiliated or Buddhist members, significant Christian minorities exist (roughly 15-30%).

The UC grant and study comes at an important time for exploring American Christianity, when most of the public attention is focused on white Christian nationalism, Chen said. “But in fact, American Christianity is becoming increasingly non-white.”

“On one hand, you have a side that's digging in on a white nativist understanding of American Christianity,” she added. “And then on the other side, you have this growing population of folks who have a very different experience of Christianity, race and nation.” 

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, views and chismis from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X, BlueSky or at the blog Views From the Edge. 

#FAHM2022 Jessica Hagedorn: Focusing on cultural representation can limit your humanity

Filipino American writer Jessica Hagedorn

By IVAN NATIVIDAD

BERKELEY NEWS

REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

In mainstream media, art and literature, there is a lack of Filipinx American representation and recognition. But Filipina American writer Jessica Hagedorn says that artists who make their work solely about their own culture and history are placing themselves into institutional “niches” that “limit your humanity.”

Hagedorn’s literature, which spans nearly 50 years, is featured in an online Bancroft Library exhibit released Wednesday, and centers on Philippine and Filipinx American histories. Her archives include drafts and notes from her work as a novelist, poet and playwright, public relations material and correspondence dating back to 1976.

Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Library also has an in-person exhibit — “An Unfinished Revolution: Transnational Filipinx Activism in the 1970s” — that will be displayed at the library through the end of October to honor Filipinx American History Month.

Born in Manila, Hagedorn moved to San Francisco in 1963 when she was 14. Her writing examines the influence of American imperialism and pop culture on the development of Asian American and Filipinx American identity. Hagedorn’s many honors include the 2021 Rome Prize for Literature, a Guggenheim Fiction Fellowship and a Philippine National Book Award.

Her award-winning book, Dogeaters, was published in 1990 and captured life in the Philippines during the Ferdinand Marcos era of martial law. The novel won the American Book Award and has been adapted for the stage and performed at venues across the country.

Berkeley News spoke with Hagedorn recently about the time she spent as a “young activist writer” in the Bay Area, and how writers can break through the identity niches that institutions have placed them in.

Berkeley News: The Berkeley campus will celebrate and acknowledge Filipinx American History Month this year. Are these “identity month” recognitions important to acknowledge?

Jessica Hagedorn: Yes, I think they are for students of color. But why has it taken so long for UC Berkeley to celebrate and acknowledge Filipino Americans? Kinda ironic.

I’m friends with many distinguished Filipino scholars and artists who came out of Berkeley, and it’s very discouraging to me to hear that this recognition is just happening now after all this time. I don’t even think many people at Berkeley know that my archives are in their library and have been for years.

Do you think the accomplishments and influence of Philippine literature and Filipinx American writers often get ignored by institutions?

Yes. I think that’s why I try to be vocal and public about this situation, because I feel like I’ve had the privilege of having a bigger platform.

Charlie Chan Is Dead, an anthology of contemporary Asian American fiction, which I edited and was first published by Penguin in 1990, featured pioneering Filipino writers like Bienvenido Santos and N.V.M. Gonzalez, alongside young writers like Gina Apostol and R. Zamora Linmark.

We’ve been around a long time!

There are a lot of literary institutions that have awarded funding to writers, including yourself, to help them continue to produce literature. Would it also help if writers from the Filipinx American community got more of that financial pie?

Having support is crucial. We all need money to live and continue to make our art. And sometimes these prizes and awards can be a sort of validation.

But money and prizes don’t mean that the work you produce is going to be any good. Sometimes those accolades actually get in the way. The lean times are often when the good stuff happens. So, let’s not get fixated on fame and money.

Dogeaters was adapted for the stage in 1998. This swag shows the face of former first lady of the Philippines, Imedla Marcos, whom a character was loosely based. (Courtesy of UC Berkeley Bancroft Library)

Write like you’re on fire, be fearless, dream and explore.

Some of your writing reflects on specific moments in Philippine history. Is it important for Filipinx/Filpinx American storytellers to focus on Philippine culture and history in their work?

No. You should feel free to write whatever you want to write.

We don’t make art to represent. That has to happen organically. Filipinos are not a monolith. Humans aren’t a monolith. We all have different experiences and need to write across the different identities we hold. As artists, we should be free to write about a wide range of complicated characters and subjects.

Don’t limit yourself to only what you know. But definitely do your homework! Being a writer is hard work.

So, in a sense, are you saying that focusing solely on your identity and/or cultural history can limit your imagination and creativity?

That depends. It can limit not just those things, but it can limit your humanity. And that’s something Gina Apostol and I hope to talk about at this event on Wednesday.

How are history and memory and literature connected? How do different writers deal with these complicated topics? Is everything political? What is our role in the world?

Hagedorn was featured in this Kearny Street Workshop/Balay virtual histories series that explores the cultural impact of the Filipinx and Asian American arts activism community in San Francisco.

Those are questions that many students at Berkeley may be asking themselves at this point in their lives, as well. What is your advice to them?

When I was a young activist writer in the Bay Area, I thought I had all the answers. Sometimes I was right, and a lot of times I was just plain ignorant and wrong. There were a few positive things that came from my impatience, energy and anger: I dared to do things with my artistic comrades that hadn’t been done before.

We came together in writing collectives to make books because most writers of color were not being published at the time. We didn’t know how to publish, but we learned how to do it guerrilla-style. We organized readings, performances and concerts, made posters and came out to support each other big-time.

We brought the noise. And got it done.

It all boils down to that old cliche: believe in yourself. Trust in your creative vision and the power of your distinct writer’s voice.

Originally published by Berkeley News.

Diversity advocate named journalism dean at UC Berkeley

Geeta Anand will head UC School of Journalism.

The Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley welcomes its new Dean, veteran journalist Geeta Anand, who had been serving as the school's interim Dean.

"Journalism has never been more attacked than during the past four years of the Trump presidency when even the most deeply reported stories are denounced as fake news," Anand said in her vision for the school. 

"The idea of a society based on facts hangs in the balance. The truth needs reinforcements. Berkeley Journalism stands ready to shore up our profession and defend our democracy by sending the most diverse, best trained and most passionate revealers of truth and injustice into our troubled world."

The new Dean began teaching at Berkeley in 2018 after a distinguished career as an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent.

RELATED: On newsroom diversity: Let there be a thousand Elaine Quijano's

As the school's first woman of color to lead the school, increasing diversity in the profession will be one of school's goal.

"The tragedy of George Floyd’s death was met with the global call to end systemic racism, not only within the rank and file of law enforcement but across all institutions," she said in a statement. 

"For their part, our students told us in angry, painful letters how the pangs of structural racism are felt here on our campus. They told us how they have struggled to get the education that Berkeley Journalism promises while also working almost full time to pay for basic living expenses. Some have even fought eviction or just plain hunger while attending classes here. This is hard for them to say. This is hard for us to hear. But we heard them."

"After working for nearly 30 years as an investigative reporter, a foreign correspondent and a political reporter—in beats dominated by white men, I know how hard it is to have your work recognized, to be offered equal opportunities for advancement when perceived as other. I know how hard it is to rise within a system that makes it harder for you and your talents to be truly seen."

Anand began her career covering local government in Vermont before going on to become the city hall bureau chief for the Boston Globe, and later serving as a foreign correspondent in India for The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Anand is the author of the nonfiction book "The Cure." She was a key member of the team of reporters that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for their coverage of the history and consequences of corporate scandals in America. She was a finalist for a 2004 Pulitzer Prize for her contributions to a series of articles that revealed how hidden decision makers make critical choices about who gets health care, writing the lead article for that series. 

Among her other honors, Anand is also the recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, and the Danny Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting.

It is her experience, not only as a journalist, but as a journalist of color that Anand says she will be bringing to her new position.

"It is my entire lived experience that I bring to this position, my success and humiliating discrimination that fuel my determination to transform not just our school but also our industry so that women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community are seen, supported, and unencumbered in their pursuit of success."

UC Berkeley students figure out a way to hold commencement ceremonies virtuallly

BLOCKLEY UNIVERSITY

Overhead view of the campus. The Campanile is left of center.

Spring commencement is one of happiest events at the University of California, Berkeley. But this year, along came COVID-19. Campus buildings emptied, lights went off, doors locked and students, staff and faculty disappeared. 

But leave it to the students of UC Berkeley to find a way to hold graduation ceremonies in the era of coronavirus and social distancing.

At 2 p.m. today (May 16), Cal graduates can attend a virtual, mock commencement ceremony in Memorial Stadium— complete with “Pomp and Circumstance,” the chancellor, the conferring of degrees, singing of “Hail to California” and flying mortarboards.

It will happen within Blockeley University, an amazing recreation of the campus built by Cal students and alumni using Minecraft, a video game many of them first played as tweens.

BLOCKLEY UNIVERSITIY

Blockley University recreated Sather Gate, the entrance to the campus.

A two-day Blockeley Music Festival will follow, starting at 4 p.m. on Saturday, with 40 artists performing on a Blockeley University stage. Donations to the event will go to Off Their Plate, a COVID-19-related grassroots effort that’s reviving restaurant jobs while providing meals to health care workers.

This one-of-a-kind, maybe never to occur again, event is made possible courtesy of 100 of  their fellow students and alumni -- most of them are STEM majors. The technology behind the effort is way beyond me, a Baby Boomer but to the students who grew up playing the game, it was like breathing air.

They recreated the entire campus and most of its landscaping online including familiar landmarks like the stadium, Sather Gate and the Campanile. Speakers will avatars and those who want to take part int he ceremonies can also create their own avatars.

All the festivities will be livestreamed on Twitch. Those with Minecraft accounts can join in-game from anywhere in the world by clicking here. They’ll be able to move about, even fly, through campus, where more than 100 buildings have been painstakingly reinvented, as have tiny details, from the Campanile’s falcon chicks to Kiwibots to boba shops to campus banners for the current “150 Years of Women at Berkeley” observance.

“Our priority, for the graduating class this year, was to provide a sense of closure, especially now that we’re in such a weird time that brought an abrupt end to senior year,” said Bjorn Lustic, who came up with the idea of Blockeley University after seeing a Facebook post suggesting a virtual graduation in Memorial Stadium built on a Minecraft platform.

At the simulated event, UC Chancellor Carol Christ and Vice Chancellor for Administration Marc Fisher will appear in-game to give speeches, along with speakers Lustic and fellow builder Nga Nguyen; Lydia Winters, head of brand vision and strategy for the global Minecraft franchise; Justin Kan, co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch; and Min-Liang-Tan, co-founder of gaming hardware company Razer Inc.

Fisher admits he didn't know a thing about Minecraft until he heard they pulled data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to generate the terrain with pinpoint accuracy.

The two-month effort was joined in by freshman Nga Nguyen, one of the few women to help build the virtual campus. A Minecraft player since she was 12, she said, “It’s 100% still a thing with my peers, ...It’s a great way to spend time with friends, while simultaneously relieving the stress of impending adulthood.”

Photo by Hong Nguyen

Nga Nguyen, was one of the few women "builders" of Blockeley University.

Nguyen, a chemical biology major from Southern California, said she’s built or helped construct Dwinelle, Sproul, Bowles, Lewis and Mulford halls, the stadium, International House, Maxwell Family Field, the law and business schools, Foothill residence hall, the Genetic and Plant Biology building and Doe Library.

She’ll also be a guest speaker at the virtual ceremony, proud to be one of the few women builders of Blockeley University and to have accomplished this at Berkeley as it celebrates the outstanding women in its 150-year history.

Elliot Choi, a senior majoring in economics and data science who oversees many of Blockeley University’s different project teams, was introduced to Minecraft about 10 years ago by a cousin. At the time, an account cost about $12, compared to around $27 today.

“My dad is a software engineer; he helped my friends and me set up our own Minecraft server, which regularly had 60 to 70 players, which was pretty high for back then,” said Choi, who is from West Hills, California. “I also was able to set up a donation system to keep upgrading the server. I made about $1,200 in my second year of running it.”

BLOCKLEY UNIVERSITY

A lama can be seen wandering Memorial Glade

In high school, he said, “I don’t think it was as much of a craze as it is right now, and most people weren’t very open about playing it.”

When he saw a Facebook post about a Minecraft commencement at Berkeley, “I thought it was a joke and forgot about it for a week,” he said. Choi coined the word “Blockeley” in mid-March and helped transfer the burgeoning files from Lustic’s server to a more stable web hosting service.

SCREEN CAPTURE / ABC

Eliot Choi, one of Blockeley University's builders.

President of Golden Records, an electronic music industry club at Berkeley, Choi also thought up this weekend’s Minecraft music festival. He reached out to alumnus Johan Yang, of Beauz, a DJ/music producer duo, “and from there it really took off. We started getting interest from A-list artists around the world, and currently, we’ve reached a point where we’ve had to make a waitlist.”

"We've gone through protests, we've gone through power outages, we've gone through fires, but I think this whole project itself shows our resilience and our ability to carry on," Choi told ABC News.

Commencement begins at 2 p.m. followed by the music festival at 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. Sunday and continues Sunday, May 17 @ 11 a.m. - Midnight (PST)

Join the ceremonies and the music festival.

International students stuck between coronavirus and limbo

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Sather Gate, the main entrance to the Unviveristy of California, Berkeley is eerily empty as the campus has closed down for the remainder of the school year.

International students are in a bind, stuck between a hard place and the coronavirus: Go home, or stay? If I stay, where will I live? If I go, will I be allowed to return to the US? Do online classes qualify for the F-1 visa requirements? 

The US is home to about 1.1 million international students, most of them from Asian countries. According to the 2019 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange. International students make up 5.5 percent of the total U.S. higher education population.

For the tenth consecutive year, China remained the largest source of international students in the United States in 2018/19 with 369,548 students in undergraduate, graduate, non-degree, and optional practical training (OPT) programs, a 1.7 percent increase from 2017/18. India (202,014, +2.9 percent), South Korea (52,250, -4.2 percent), according to Institute of International Education.

RELATED: Indian American hoteliers offer free rooms for students from India

All of the schools with the largest international-student populations have moved their classes online, according to a Quartz analysis of the 36 universities that enroll a third of international students in the US. 

Despite the anti-China sentiment seeping through the Trump administration, China still provides the most students to the US with 368,800 students. Next comes India with 194,556 students, then South Korea with almost 60,000.

As of March 23, 72% of the universities told students to leave campus housing. The others left the choice to students. All universities say that they will help students who cannot return home stay on campus or find alternative housing.

While most universities and colleges leave the question of whether or not to stay in the US up to the individual student as a personal choice, some, like the UC Berkeley, University of Washington and University of Arizona advise their foreign students to stay because of the uncertain future the Trump administration's restrictive immigration policies.

UC Berkeley suggests that international students make up about 16.2% of the student body, or a total of 6,768 international students, graduate and undergraducate, on campus. Students from China number about 3,000, or about 7% of the entire student body. India and South Korea follow with about 700 and 550 students, respectively.

RETURNING HOME?

Some countries like China, where the coronavirus was first discovered, are discouraging the students' returning. Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of Beijing’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a recent press conference that Chinese students overseas should “refrain from coming home unless it’s very necessary,” because the government fears a resurgence of the virus from students returning from the US, which now has the most cases of COVID-19.

UC Berkeley points out that the visa offices have been closed in most US embassies and consulates. As the coronavirus spreads, at any moment the Trump administration may add more countries to the travel ban already applied to China , Iran and European countries, 

The schools also point out that returning to their home countries, the students may live in areas with shaky Internet services and might be unable to watch the online classes being offered in place of the in-person classes of pre-coronavirus pandemic. Also, because of the time differences, online classes might be shown in the middle of the night in some countries. For example, a class taking place at 3 p.m. in the eastern time zone of the US,  might begin at 3 a.m. in China.

International students in a quandary on what to do next.

F-1 STUDENT VISAS

Typically, the F-1 student visas require in-person instruction and limit a student’s ability to participate in online courses. 

The Student Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), which is a unit within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that oversees the F-1 international student visa program, has offered these guidelines for online courses.

Off of the University of Southern California website: "Due to the rapidly evolving situation with COVID-19, SEVP issued guidance to universities that allows for increased flexibility to ensure international students can continue their academic progress. Universities can implement temporary adjustments such as moving to online instruction without negatively impacting the immigration status of enrolled international students."

International students face an uncertain financial and economic future as the Isolate-in-place mandates might extend into the summer. Some schools are considering offering part-time jobs to those students to help them defray costs of staying in the US over the summer.

At the same time, colleges are scrambling to advise students who are set to graduate this spring. Those who do not plan to continue their studies or to stay in the US to work must leave the country within 60 days of graduation when their F-1 visa would expire. It’s not clear if the Department of Homeland Security’s relaxation of current rules — which a spokeswoman said were intended to ensure that students “can continue to make normal progress in a full course of study” — would apply to departure deadlines.

Bri Rhodes, director of international-student advising at Mount Holyoke College, said his intitution is looking a various scenarios: What should they advise students whose visas or passports expire? If the outbreak persists into the summer, will they need to provide housing for those stranded in the United States? With quarantines slowing the global economy and keeping many people out of work in China, will international students need emergency financial help?

“We’re trying to have four or five different plans at the ready,” she told the Chronicle for Higher Education.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Graduation celebrations like this  at Columbia University in New York City in past years, will not be held
on US college campuses this Spring because of coranavirus concerns.

Having more students remain on the campus means colleges will need to maintain services they usually reduce or eliminate during the summer months. At the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York, administrators will need to decide whether to keep the campus buses running and how many dining halls should remain open, Kathryn E. Tudini, associate vice provost for international-student services, told the Chronicle.

SUNY-Buffalo is looking at providing extra on-campus jobs or internships for international students, Tudini said. Visa rules forbid international students to work off campus, and by staying in the US, they may be further penalized if they seek employment in their home countries.

Besides the legal and academic complexities facing the students, just as important is how are they faring emotionally? These are young people, far from home and family, living in a strange  environment that is increasingly hostile to people of Asian descent.

Reports of students being beaten or harassed on college campuses abound. Since a website, Stop AAPI Hate, was established to record attacks against Asians and Asian Americans because of the coronavirus less than a month ago, over 1000 incidents have been reported.

International students are advised to seek help at their individual college websites for questions regarding their particular situation or to report any hate incidents.

Facebook couple commit $3 billion for bold medical initiative

Dr. Priscilla Chan appeared on the Today Show to explain the plan to spend $3 billion to advance medical research.

THREE UNIVERSITIES in the San Francisco Bay Area are coming together to launch a biomedical science center funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and pediatrician Priscilla Chan, his wife. The $600 million center, known as the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, is the first investment made by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic company created last year to improve education and cure disease, among other goals. Researchers at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and Stanford University, will work together at the center, which will be located on UCSF's campus.

Over the next decade, Chan says the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will invest $3 billion in a sweeping effort to cure all diseases in the lifetime of today’s children.

“We are at the limit of our ability to alleviate suffering,” Chan said Thursday morning at an event in San Francisco. “We want to push back at that boundary.”

Chan and Zuckerberg have been meeting with scientists, doctors, and engineers in hopes of “curing, preventing, or managing all diseases in our children’s lifetime.” In her opening statement at the event, Chan said, “Mark and I believe this goal is possible ... And after we talked with a lot of top scientists, we realized that they do too.”

"Medicine has only been a modern science for about a century, and we've made incredible progress so far. Life expectancy has increased by 1/4 of a year per year since then, and if we only continue this trend, the average will reach 100 around the end of this century," said Zuckerberg on his Facebook page.

"Today, just four kinds of diseases cause the majority of deaths. We can make progress on all of them with the right technology.

"Throughout history, most scientific breakthroughs have been preceded by the invention of new tools to help us see problems in new ways -- like the telescope, the microscope and DNA sequencing.

RELATED:

• Priscilla Chan a product of her experience as an outsider
• Facebook couple make a $45 billion pledge to their newborn daughter

"It's not hard to imagine the modern tools required to accelerate breakthroughs in today's four major disease areas. So we're going to focus on bringing scientists and engineers together to build these new tools and technologies.

In 2015, Chan and Zuckerberg pledged in an open letter to their newborn daughter to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares during their lives for charitable purposes. “Partnering with experts,” they wrote, “is more effective for the mission than trying to lead efforts ourselves.”

The result is the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, saying it would give as much as $45 billion to charity over the course of their lifetimes.

In introducing the broader $3 billion science initiative, Chan, the daughter of ethnic Chinese refugees who fled Vietnam in the 1970s, set the stage, sometimes tearfully, by sharing her personal insights as a pediatrician who has had to deliver such tragic news as telling families their child has leukemia, or that the hospital could not resuscitate their child.

“We want to dramatically improve every life in Max’s generation,” Chan said, referring to the couple’s 10-month-old daughter, Maxima, whose birth last year inspired a commitment from Chan and Zuckerberg to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares over their lives toward improving education and health prospects for this and future generations.

“This doesn’t mean no one will get sick,” said Chan. “But it does mean that our children and their children should get sick a lot less.”

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