The untenured faculty member, who just taught this semester and who will not be here full time until Fall '99, was hired to teach American immigration, not Asian American history. As you fully understand, until she is tenured she does not have the departmental freedom to teach Asian American studies courses on a consistent and regular basis unless another line is allocated to her department to replace her in the subject area she was hired to fill. We feel, along with other minority students, there is a greater need for academic justice. The facts below are not an attempt to pit one minority group against another. They serve to show that in order to diversify the academic curriculum in terms of representing the student's interests, Asian American Studies must be included.
Bulletin can offer thirty-three interdisciplinary courses, as well as having space and a budget.
The issue of the process for the development of an American Studies program is also not relevant to our current needs. Although Asian American Studies would participate in American Studies, that does not mean that we are willing to wait until an American Studies Program or Department exists. Although there may be additional hires for American Studies, for the most part it will be an interdisciplinary amalgam of what currently exists here. It will be a seriously wrongly skewed amalgam if there is no Asian American Studies to include in it. Just as with LASC and Africana Studies, Asian American Studies needs to independently set its own criteria in order to contribute fully to American Studies.