AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

The COVID-19 pandemic coincided with rising anti-Asian rhetoric and violence fostered by government leadership. The Visualizing Our Identities and Cultures for Empowerment project based at the University of California, Irvine trained student researchers in the photovoice methodology to document the experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Described as “ethical photography for social change,” photovoice seeks to democratize knowledge production and to enact social justice. This approach of community participatory action research and community-centered archival creation could serve as a model for other Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions that embrace the mission of “service” as well as “empowerment” and “care” for marginalized communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced significant stressors for Asian American college students: distance learning, financial hardship, prolonged isolation, and a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes. Simultaneously, a national reckoning has urged confrontations with anti-Blackness across institutions. The Hunter College AANAPISI Project (HCAP) provides programming attending to Hunter College’s Asian American student community. This article describes COVID- 19 stressors and reflections on anti-Blackness and anti-Asian racism from Hunter’s Asian American college students, as evaluated by HCAP’s mental health specialist. It will then describe strategies HCAP implemented throughout the pandemic to engage students, as well as challenges and reflections for future programming.

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked the civic mobilization of various communities of color, including Asian Americans. This chapter discusses the corresponding role of Asian American Native American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) within this context, serving as critical sites in cultivating Asian American students’ civic engagement toward social justice agendas. Educational research, scholarship, and personal reflections of practitioners are integrated throughout the chapter to discuss how AANAPISIs at Sacramento State and Coastline College fulfill this call by providing culturally relevant and community responsive programs and practices influenced by an ethnic studies framework.

The U.S. News and World Report has ranked the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) as being one of the most racially diverse institutions, and UNLV has received dual-designations as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution and Hispanic-Serving Institution. Concurrently, pervasive physical threats, student demands for change, and results of a campus climate survey created a peremptory need to center the cultural wealth of minoritized students to organize and coalition build. This essay focuses on the UNLV Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) Student Council (MSISC) and its charge to lead campus initiatives that promote success for minoritized students to become a truly serving MSI. Written by one of the MSISC members and their advisor, we historicize the MSISC’s creation and share ideas for similar MSI-focused student committees and task forces.

This article examines and interrogates the formulas used to determine funding at both the designation and institutional levels for Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA); as well as general annual appropriations for MSIs and AANAPISIs. In doing so, the authors aim to facilitate a greater understanding of the current AANAPISI funding landscape, while providing policy makers with new insights and implications to ensure greater equity in future appropriations for AANAPISIs and MSIs. Results indicate that AANAPISIs are severely underfunded, particularly given their large enrollment of Asian American and Pacific Islander students and high number of institutions that meet AANAPISI eligibility.

This essay presents a framework for a practice of Asian Americanist advocacy. Participant observers discuss a case study of a community college in northern California where Asian American employees have sustained organized advocacy since May 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement. The heuristic framework introduces four questions to help practitioners determine the direction of their advocacy, focusing on approaches to self-organizing, analyses of racial relationality, and engagements with institutional power. The case study highlights tensions around the legibility of Asian Americans in campus discourse, the politicization of Asian American employees, and the efficacy of Asian Americanist advocacy.

This article will focus on ways the Sacramento State campus community is working to build a strong inclusive sense of community amidst the multiple challenges from anti-Asian hate from COVID-19, attention to police violence, the renewed emergence of Black Lives Matter, as well as heightened awareness of social justice and increasing economic inequality. Particular attention will focus on how Asian American and Pacific Islander students, staff, and faculty are stepping up to the call for engagement and organizing on campus. Current events were the spark for increased activism among AAPIs on our campus, but it did not emerge in a vacuum. Having the Full Circle Project (FCP), our established Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI) program on campus was, in fact, foundational for the genesis for the rise of social action we are witnessing today.

Although Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AA&PI) represent 29 percent of San Francisco State University’s (SF State, 2021d) student body and have one of the nation’s largest Asian American Studies Departments, we continue to fight for our existence within higher education. This essay focuses on the development of AA&PI Student Services’ response and praxis to COVID-19, anti-Asian racism, and anti-Blackness in the AA&PI community. As we faced enormous challenges of a global pandemic, we began to see the connection of what was happening in the world within our own lives. Grounded with the legacy of Ethnic Studies and Community Responsive Pedagogy, we employ the critical race methodology of counterstorytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and Talanoa Research Method (Tecun et al., 2018; Vaioleti, 2013) to center our experiences.

Grace Lee Boggs suggested that activism must move beyond protest. Rather than action from above, she believed that change takes place at the local level through small actions. In this practitioner essay, the staff of the Asian Pacific American Resource Center at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities explores the multiple dimensions of local action we engaged in with students and colleagues to advance social justice for Asian American and Pacific Islander students. We highlight some of our work toward addressing anti-Asian racism and anti-Blackness on our campus and local community; building community and solidarity across racial-ethnic communities; participating with student groups as partners to challenge inequality; and engaging as a “critical collaborator” with other campus units to advance the institution’s goals toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. Against the backdrop of the anti-Asian racism instigated by COVID-19 that received little attention and the murder of George Floyd in our “backyard” that garnered widespread outcry, we argue that we were able to productively respond because we nurtured relationships and other actions over several years of local activism. Our explication significantly advances an understanding of the role of Asian American Native American Pacific Islander–serving institutions in activism at the local level that is critical for institutional change.

Community service learning is a high-impact practice that nurtures retention and graduation among undergraduates. Professor Yoo is a medical sociologist trained in public health who worked with the Auntie Sewing Squad during the pandemic to create facial coverings. Professor Jeung is a sociologist who cofounded Stop AAPI Hate in March 2020. Through an assessment of students who were involved in these two projects, this paper illustrates the efforts and impact of student involvement with the Auntie Sewing Squad and the Stop AAPI Hate Youth Campaign. The findings showed that both projects created a space where students could integrate Ethnic Studies with the communities they served. In the face of uncertainty, fear, and exhaustion, these two community-service projects became examples of responding with resilience, healing in community, leading with care, and embodying solidarity.

As Asian Americans and Pacific Islander (AAPI) practitioners in higher education, we assert our cultural values to leverage important connections between members within the community. These values are centered on collective responsibility, demonstrating care for the community, offering respect, and acting with love. These values manifest through our daily interactions with others and in the spaces we occupy, whether it is in physical proximity or virtual settings. COVID-19, the unprecedented global health crisis that forced campus closures across the nation, along with tensions provoked by blatant racism, racial violence, and ongoing microaggressions, have reminded us that AAPIs are not immune to the injustices present in society. These environmental conditions have prompted negative self-perceptions, induced stressors, compromised physical and mental health, and destabilized income. Student affairs professionals have the potential to intervene, offering students guidance and support as they contemplate personal decisions (e.g., family health crisis, job loss, food and housing insecurities, unattended cultural practices) amidst these harrowing conditions. This article discusses how student affairs professionals at Mt. San Antonio College, an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander- Serving Institution, utilized their cultural values and employed creative strategies to demonstrate an ethic of care and responsibility for the student community amidst COVID-19 and the rise in violence toward Asian Americans.