In September, ER&M Professor Daniel Martinez HoSang and ER&M junior Lakshmi Amin participated in a panel on the topic of racism and anti-racism among Asian Americans. Professor Janelle Wong (University of Maryland) and Odette Wang (Yale Alumna) joined them in this important discussion. The panel was organized by the Asian American Cultural Center and can be viewed here.  

As the pandemic, racial unrest, and protests against police brutality crisscrossed the country this past summer, many ER&M students did not watch in idle. Some embarked on meaningful summer opportunities such as interning at non-profit social justice organizations, or finding new ways to connect with and advocate for underrepresented and underserved communities in New Haven, their hometowns, and beyond. This series of posts highlights the summer activities that our inspiring students undertook and features the students’ reflections on their work. This week, Isabella Zhou ER&M’22 shares with the ER&M community her internship experience at CT Mirror, a non-profit digital news site that covers current events in Connecticut. Continue reading →

As the pandemic, racial unrest, and protests against police brutality crisscrossed the country this past summer, many ER&M students did not watch in idle. Some embarked on meaningful summer opportunities such as interning at non-profit social justice organizations, or finding new ways to connect with and advocate for underrepresented and underserved communities in New Haven, their hometowns, and beyond. This series of posts highlights the compelling summer activities that our inspiring students undertook and features the students’ reflections on their work. This week, Isabelle Rhee ER&M’22 shares with the ER&M community her internship experience at the Hawai‘i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice in Honolulu. Continue reading →

As the pandemic, racial unrest, and protests against police brutality crisscrossed the country this past summer, many ER&M students did not watch in idle. Some embarked on meaningful summer opportunities such as interning at non-profit social justice organizations, or finding new ways to connect with and advocate for underrepresented and underserved communities in New Haven, their hometowns, and beyond. This series of posts highlights the compelling summer activities that our inspiring students undertook and features the students’ reflections on their work. This week, Meghanlata Gupta ER&M’21 shares with the ER&M community her work with Indigenizing the News, a digital magazine that she founded to “create space for Indigenous  peoples to write and share their stories and a space for non-Indigenous peoples to engage with important topics and pursue meaningful forms of allyship.”

Continue reading →

As the pandemic, racial unrest, and protests against police brutality crisscrossed the country this past summer, many ER&M students did not watch in idle. Some embraced meaningful summer opportunities such as interning at non-profit social justice organizations, or finding new ways to connect with and advocate for underrepresented and underserved communities in New Haven, their hometowns, and beyond. This series of posts highlights the compelling summer activities that our inspiring students undertook and features the students’ reflections on their work. This week, Ananya Kumar-Banerjee ER&M’21 shares with the ER&M community her work with the YPEI Creative Writing Workshop, which she helped develop over the summer. Continue reading →

In August, ER&M Lecturer Leah Mirakhor penned a moving op-ed published with the Los Angeles Times about how James Baldwin spoke to immigrants like herself. She writes, “I wouldn’t encounter Baldwin’s searing and impassioned prophecies for another decade — no one in my family had read him, no one in my primary schools had taught his work. But when I finally encountered him after starting college, his words changed my life.”  Read the op-ed here.

ER&M Professor Matthew Frye Jacobson joined Dr. Lisa Coleman, NYU’s Senior Vice President for Global Inclusion and Strategic Innovation, as a part of NYU Summer Reads Program to discuss how race and whiteness historically shape the multiple emergencies that we currently grapple with as a society in the Black Lives Matter era. Check out Professor Jacobson’s talk here.

ER&M Professor Daniel HoSang and members of the Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective (ARTLC) shared their thought on the urgency and significance of dismantling racism in the classroom with CT Mirror. Prof. HoSang co-founded ARTLC, a network of Connecticut teachers who, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, are developing, implementing and sharing curricula to dismantle racism from their classrooms outwards. An added bonus, the article is written by ER&M rising senior Isabella Zou!

My dear students,

My colleagues and I have been reflecting on the power of your work this spring. You more than fulfilled our hopes for shared learning in diaspora by completing bold projects while attending to the concerns of your families and communities. We found special meaning in celebrating the Class of 2020. Graduation is a cherished rite for marking new beginnings, and even at a distance, it seemed to defend against the tremendous costs imposed by the pandemic and the forces that isolate us. That was at least our hope, that we would find new ways forward in one another.
 
The murder of George Floyd, just one week after our commencement, calls us together once again, now in shared pain and the demand for justice. Protesters have taken up other hallowed rites to make a stand for him, for Breonna Taylor, for Ahmaud Arbery, and for the countless more whose names are no longer remembered or declaimed in public.
 
I write simply to be with you, now, in anger and in defiance, against all that denies these brothers and sisters their rightful places in this world.
 
Our traditions of learning demand that we reckon openly and honestly with racial terror and anti-Black violence. It is a violence manifested not only by police and vigilantes, but under cover by actuaries, zoning boards, and demagogues. By the ones who set the price of admission to the protections of safe housing, resourced schools, preventative medicine, sustenance and clean water – in short, life in all its abundance. To be educated at this moment in the world means ensuring that learning as a gateway to mobility and belonging cannot belong to a precious few.
 
Whatever university plans unfold for the coming academic year, the anguish laid bare in these protests will be with us. I know that ER&M students will help make our teaching and scholarship responsive to the calls for attention emerging from afflicted communities. Your experience, your questions, and your understanding open vitally important windows of social possibility.
 
Know this too, that we are a community of care. Please check in with one another and reach out for support when you need it. When things are too much, we can find refuge in one another and in that wild imagination that is the privileged birthright of every living being.
 
With respect and concern for your friends and families,

Alicia Schmidt Camacho
Professor and Chair of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration

Yale University
she/her/ella

Recently, Teen Vogue profiled Asian American teens who are helping their small-business owning families weather the impacts of the pandemic. Among these incredible teens is ER&M rising senior Kevin Chen. Read about Kevin’s inspiring story here.