Building Our Legacy: A Kickoff Dinner for the 50th Anniversary Fundraising Campaign on November 7th
The Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies (AAADS) Program, formerly known as Asian American Studies (AAS), will be hosting a kick-off dinner on Friday, November 7th at the Far East Café in San Francisco for a five-year fundraising campaign in connection with the 50th Anniversary of program.
It was in 1969 that Asian American Studies was established within the new Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Along with the Department at San Francisco State University, it was the first Asian American Studies program in the country, and UC Berkeley’s program is the first at a research institution.
AAADS is initiating the campaign to continue the growth and development of the field and to help train future generations of Asian American leaders. The five-year campaign will conclude in Fall 2019.
Coming out of retirement to spearhead this effort is Professor Emeritus Ling-chi Wang, former chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies and one of the original professors and founders of Asian American Studies at Berkeley.
“Very simply, I am doing this in my old age because I want to see AAADS continue to develop and grow in the next 50 years. I also want my grandchildren and future students to take AAADS courses, which provide spaces for students to understand their histories and their own identities.”
The November 7th dinner will be the beginning of the program’s first major fundraising effort. Professor Wang has a developed a 5-year plan with a primary object “to raise at least $5 million dollars for the future of AAADS/AAS. This fund will put our program on a solid footing on the Berkeley campus and position the field of AAADS for further development in its various subfields, in its support of both undergraduate and graduate teaching and research, and in community services.”
Toward this end, the plan calls for the establishment of several substantial endowments, in the range of $500,000 to $1 million, for our teaching and research on the experiences of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Southeast and South Asian, etc., in the U.S. and in their respective transnational and diasporic connections. These endowments can be in the form of endowed chairs and endowments for specific research areas, graduate fellowships, and undergraduate research and community engagements. The endowments will also be used for capacity building and forming institutional linkages not only among the diverse Asian American and racial minorities communities in the U.S., but also across the Pacific Ocean.
Many faculty, community leaders, alumni, and current students will be at the the dinner. The keynote speaker is actor/director and Berkeley alum John Cho (BA ‘96).
For more information and to register for the Nov. 7th fundraising dinner, please click HERE