Week1 - Yuchen Qu

Yuchen Qu
Section A03
Week 1

    When  I was reading the article for this week, three emotions jumped out of my head: shock mixed with respect, anger, and grief. Shock and respect because I never thought the professor standing in front of me and giving the lecture was passed by death impossibly close and  could still be so calm  about life. Anger because the environment of the department was laden with hostility and discrimination. Colleagues and even department leaders were in contempt of her and excluded her intentionally instead of helping her through the hard time and with her tenure. Even ever such an unhealthy environment, she didn’t lose hope. Instead, she is still such a person who is passionate about the Asian American Studies  she always focuses on. She stands tall, not only as the professor an individual, but also as the epitome of the Asian America women. Grief because to be honest, I haven’t really paid attention to the tragic situation of Asian America women before. I couldn’t imagine how much Asian American women scholars must have sacrificed to be successful in academia. According to the statements in the part “A. Entering a Hostile Tower”, “Even though Asian American women in 2007 earned 3.2 percent of the masters degrees and 3.1 percent of the doctoral degrees, they held only 1.8 percent of tenured positions at colleges and universities and only 1.3 percent of full professorships.” It’s so heartbreaking. In reality, the percentage is such low that there are just very subtle opportunities for the Asian American women to carry on their dreams in the academia just because they are Asian Americans, and they have different skin color.

    I realized one important thing that Asian American women should do to make changes, which is also mentioned in the article, “We are quite literally dying in the academe, and the urgency to speak up and fight is now.” The Asian American women should unite together as a single united entity, fighting for equal rights to speak for themselves, and mustn’t endure the bullying from others anymore.

    They have to prove that they are not weaker than others, and they never shouldn’t be looked down on, either.

Question: Should Asian students consider discrimination when they apply to American universities in the future? Will the discrimination be alleviated or aggravate as time goes on? If the situation continues, will the students still be confident and willing to attend American universities? 

References:

Valverde, K., (2013) “Fight the Tower”: A Call to Action for Women in Academia, 12(2), 367-419. Retrieved October 1, 2017.

The Economist.(2015, October 3). “The model minority is losing patience.” Retrieved October 1, 2017 from

https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever