Asian American Inclusion in Legal Academia
INTRODUCTION
We began writing this essay in the summer of 2021, following the killing of six women of Asian descent in Atlanta on March 16, 2021 and an exponential rise in anti-Asian violence in the U.S. fueled by racist fearmongering related to COVID-19. During the same time period, we—both women law professors of Asian heritage—also witnessed the most sustained and prominent recognitions of the need to prevent and stop anti-Asian violence that we have seen in our lifetimes, including prevalent use of the hashtags #StopAAPIHate and #StopAsianHate. Asian Americans coalesced and became more vocal than ever before. Asian American women shared powerfully about experiences, feelings, and history in first-person essays.[1]
Before 2021, supportive spaces to share about the experiences and challenges Asian Americans—and in particular Asian American women—face in legal academia were nearly nonexistent. Recent events and experiences made even starker the need for Asian Americans in legal academia to speak and be heard. In this essay, we call on the legal academy to engage in the heavy lift of acknowledging and addressing the challenges faced by Asian American faculty—including Asian American women faculty[2] —and amplifying their voices, work, and presence. Doing so will benefit all law school colleagues and students and our national and local communities.
We admire and do not seek to recreate previous scholarship on Asian Americans in legal academia, including the pioneering work of Professor Pat K. Chew.[3] We hope to advance and enrich the conversation by providing a current perspective. We first offer a summary background on the history of Asians in the U.S., one marked by exclusion and othering. We briefly review some of the harmful stereotypes and myths that impact Asian Americans broadly and in legal academia specifically. We then transition to a discussion of the experiences and underrepresentation of Asian Americans among faculty and leadership in legal academia. Finally, we issue a challenge for legal academia to support, understand, and amplify the voices of Asian American professors. We offer concrete suggestions for how to start this work and propose a 12-question self-assessment for law schools. Heeding this call is critical to achieving equity, inclusion, and belonging within legal academia.
I. A HISTORY OF OTHERING
The story of Asians in America is complex and one of rich diversity. Prior to World War II, Chinese and Japanese people made up the largest Asian American communities, with South Asian, Korean, and Filipinos also comprising a sizable population.[4] Today more than 20 million people who identify as Asian American live in the U.S. and Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group. [5] The term Asian American encompasses at least 24 distinct groups.[6] In 2019, people who identify as Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese accounted for 85% of Asian Americans.[7]
Asian Americans are vastly diverse economically. The disparities in income across Asian American households are among the widest in the country. While Asian American households in the U.S. had a median annual income of $85,800 in 2019—higher than the $61,800 among all U.S. households—most groups of Asian Americans report household incomes well below the national median for Asian Americans.[8] For instance, Burmese American households have a median income of $44,400, and Nepalese American households a median income of $55,000.[9]
Although deeply diverse, Asian Americans have often been viewed as a single, homogenous, “despised” group.[10] Asian Americans have been challenged by discrimination from early on in their time in the U.S.[11] The law and policy concerning Asian Americans have been marked by exclusion and othering. Here are a few examples among many: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S.[12] The Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) then set a discriminatory national origins quota.[13] Immigration of each nationality group was limited to a number equal to 2 percent of each nationality group living in the U.S. as of the 1890 census.[14] Also, the Act explicitly excluded “aliens ineligible to citizenship.”[15] By the 1930s, all Asian immigrants were largely excluded.[16]During World War II, the U.S. government rounded up Japanese Americans from their homes and incarcerated them in internment camps.[17] Asian immigration nearly shut down until the immigration reform reflected in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.[18]
In the U.S., the societal pattern of othering Asians continues to present day, with traumatic and sometimes fatal consequences. Many Asian Americans can recall, in very personal terms, fearing for their lives growing up in the U.S. after two white men beat and killed Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man, in 1982.[19] The white men saw Chin as a Japanese person they blamed for stealing their jobs.[20] After the events of September 11, 2001, hate violence against Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Americans increased by 1600%.[21] For example, just a few days after, on September 15, in Mesa, Arizona, a Sikh gas station owner was murdered by someone who blamed the station owner for the terrorist attacks.[22]
In a familiar pattern, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, some government officials employed anti-Asian rhetoric.[23] Meanwhile, the streets of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities across America saw a rise in anti-Asian violence. Unprovoked violent attacks on Asian Americans are too numerous to list here and include physical assaults on Asian American elderly people in daylight.[24] In 2020, anti-Asian hate crimes rose by 76% in Los Angeles.[25] The Stop AAPI Hate reporting center received reports of 3,795 hate incidents between March 19, 2020, and February 28, 2021, including verbal harassment, shunning, physical assault, being coughed or spit upon, civil rights violations, and online harassment.[26] Even so, the reporting center cautioned that the incidents reported to them represented only a fraction of hate incidents that occurred.[27]
From March 2021 to March 2022, the anti-Asian violence continued. Asian American women were killed and assaulted on the streets and at their workplaces and even in their homes. In March 2021, a white man shot and killed eight people in Atlanta.[28] Six of the eight people killed were women of Asian descent.[29] During the first quarter of 2022 alone, a pattern emerged of Asian American women being attacked in New York City—including the stabbing and killing of a Korean-American woman in her own apartment by a man who followed her into the lower Manhattan building where she lived.[30]
Against this backdrop of rising violence and a history of exclusion and discriminatory treatment of Asian Americans spanning more than 150 years—not surprisingly—many Asian Americans feel fear and apprehension. Thirty-two percent of Asian American adults say they have feared someone might threaten or physically attack them—a higher percentage than for other racial or ethnic groups.[31]
With this shared experience of discriminatory and othering treatment, Asian Americans have an urgent need to effect change at the local and national levels. But, as an extraordinarily diverse group culturally and economically, Asian Americans and those advocating for policies to support them encounter a complicated bind. Their diversity poses challenges to effective community education, coalescing, and advocacy. Meanwhile, Asian Americans have often been targeted together under a single blanket of stereotypes, biases, and discrimination.
II. STEREOTYPES AND MYTHS = DISCOUNTED AND OVERLOOKED
The history recounted above can be traced largely to prevalent harmful stereotypes and myths. These stereotypes and biases interact and overlap, with significant pernicious consequences for Asian Americans, both in society at large and in legal academia.
First, Asians Americans are often treated and viewed as a monolithic, homogenous group. But, as described in Part I., Asian Americans are incredibly diverse, consisting of at least twenty-four distinct groups and having the largest disparities in income in the U.S.
Second, the “model minority” stereotype—that all Asians are great students and workers and achieve financial success without being disruptive despite being minorities—is perhaps the most discussed stereotype facing Asian Americans.[32] This stereotype masquerades as a compliment.[33] It denies discrimination against Asian Americans and the ongoing effects of past discrimination.[34] It also can serve to legitimize the oppression of racial minorities, including Asian Americans, who live in poverty.[35] It can be used as a “racial wedge” with other minority groups by minimizing the role racism plays in their persistent challenges.[36] The model minority myth creates false questions like: If Asian Americans work hard and achieve excellence despite alleged societal barriers, why can’t others do the same? Doesn’t the Asian American experience prove that racism is no longer a problem?
The model minority stereotype disregards and discounts the lived experiences of Asian Americans. No model minority status, even if true, can shield Asian Americans from the reality of being othered and marginalized. People of Asian heritage living in the U.S. are often seen as “perpetual foreigners” and as not American or American enough, even when they were born in the U.S. or their family has lived in the U.S. for generations and no matter the level of their educational or financial success.[37] Stories of the macro and micro aggressions Asian Americans have experienced abound.[38]
Third, Asian Americans can also be subject to the stereotype of being competent and “cold”—efficient, hard-working robots lacking emotion and the potential to lead.[39] From this perspective, their competence is tied only to technical skills and work ethic, rather than managerial, leadership, or people skills.[40]
These stereotypes about Asian Americans affect legal professionals. In response to the Portraits of Asian Americans in the Law survey, many reported “being perceived as hardworking, responsible, logical, careful, quiet, introverted, passive, and awkward.”[41] The same survey had few respondents reporting “being perceived as creative, assertive, extroverted, aggressive, or loud.”[42] One respondent cited two common stereotypes in a written comment, “Asians work hard and do not say no to their superiors. With that, somehow I was the only one staying back to cover the team assignments when the others went out for yoga and wine.”[43]
For Asian American women, other problematic stereotypes persist. Asian American women have reported being exoticized and stereotyped as quiet, submissive, “cute and small,” invisible, and lacking leadership qualities.[44] Asian American women legal professionals have reported being subject to problematic stereotypes. In response to an ABA survey in 2021, an Asian-American woman lawyer “said that there is ‘a lot’ of discrimination against Asian women. In the way of example, she said that she has seen people criticize Asian women for being ‘too soft spoken.’”[45] An assistant general counsel who is an Asian American woman noted: "There is this perception that a lot of people still have that we [Asian American women] are quiet and that we are going to follow orders. We are treated differently than the male associates . . . We are also treated differently than the white and black females. When you don't act like people expect, people don't know how to deal with you, and sometimes get upset.”[46] More research is needed on the impact of stereotypes about Asian Americans on Asian American legal professionals.
These troubling, harmful stereotypes and myths combine to create a narrative of Asian Americans that seldom, if ever, comports with their lived experiences. The narrative often masks the history of being othered and marginalized and results in a failure to examine the impact of these stereotypes and resulting treatment of Asian Americans on their mental health.[47] In the context of academia, these stereotypes operate insidiously to render Asian American faculty invisible and not viewed as needing support, mentoring, or celebration. At the same time, Asians are counted as minorities for diversity statistics.
III. A CONVENIENT MINORITY IN ACADEMIA
In many ways, the trajectory of Asian Americans in academia and specifically legal academia has mirrored the history of Asian Americans in the U.S. Asian Americans have been marginalized, misunderstood, and often overlooked as a minority group. This unfortunate treatment can be traced to the misguided notion that Asian Americans, as the reputed “model minority,” comprise a successful, high-achieving demographic that is well-represented in higher education. This misperception belies the reality of Asian Americans’ complicated and layered relationship with academic institutions in the U.S., including legal academia.[48]
Whether Asian Americans “count” as minorities in the context of U.S. academia broadly seems to be an open question at times, depending on convenience and utility. Asian Americans in academia can face a frustrating paradoxical phenomenon. While generally not the beneficiaries of diversity and inclusiveness programs aimed at recruiting and supporting people from marginalized backgrounds, Asian Americans are featured in diversity statistics and are challenged by stigmatization as individuals perceived to have received preferential treatment.[49] Selectively characterizing Asian Americans to an institution’s situational advantage has a harmful impact and disregards their experience of being systematically othered. (While we focus on Asian American faculty in this essay, we recognize the dire situations of underrepresentation of faculty from other marginalized groups, including Native American faculty, Black faculty, and Latinx faculty, and urge legal academia to do more to address them as well.)
Legal academia has been slow in advancing Asian American professors. Professor Pat K. Chew, one of the first, if not the first, tenured Asian American female law professor at a U.S. law school, received tenure at the University of Pittsburgh’s law school in 1989.[50] Asian American presence in legal academia, both among faculty and leadership, remains underwhelming. While the numbers reflect an overall growth among tenure-track faculty and deans since the 1980s, Asian Americans are still underrepresented relative to other minority groups.[51]There are very few Asian American law administrators, including Deans and Associate Deans, as compared to other minority groups: In 2019, Asian Americans made up just 3% of law deans, compared to 15% African American and 7% Hispanic.[52] Asian American women law school deans, until recently, were nonexistent. In 2017, L. Song Richardson was named the dean of UC Irvine law school and Sudha Setty became the dean of Western New England law school. In 2021, Rose Cuison-Villazor was named the dean of Rutgers Law School. In March 2022, Leah Chan Grinvald was announced as the new dean of the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV.
The underrepresentation of Asian Americans in legal academia mirrors a disproportionately low number of Asian American lawyers in leadership positions in government—for example, Article III judges and elected prosecutors.[53] It was only in 1998 that Susan Oki Mollway became the first Asian woman to get a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.[54] As of July 2021, only 2.8% of federal judges were of Asian heritage.[55]
With more research and attention to Asian American faculty’s experiences and challenges, perhaps legal academia can more fully understand the reasons for disproportionate underrepresentation of Asian Americans in faculty and leadership positions in legal academia.
IV. THE PATH AHEAD FOR GREATER INCLUSION
For true inclusion and equity in legal academia to be achieved, the broader community of law school administrations, faculty, and students must proceed with intention and resolve. This section highlights a couple of promising developments and closes with a self-assessment for law schools seeking to take concrete steps to support Asian American faculty.
Legal academia experienced an inflection point when anti-Asian violence and fearmongering soared in 2020-2021. The unprecedented convergence of events during this period—the pandemic, movement for racial justice, and surge in anti-Asian sentiment—led many Asian American legal academics to come together, seek support, and raise their voices against discrimination in their lived experiences. Asian American groups within the legal academy and legal profession became active and vocal, while new initiatives emerged.
Historically, within legal academia, Asian American professors, and in particular Asian American women professors, have largely lacked a community or professional organizations dedicated to them for mentorship, support, and guidance. A notable exception is the Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty (CAPALF), https://www.capalf.org, established in 1994. CAPALF has served an important role in providing scholarship support, as well as networking and professional development opportunities to Asian American law faculty through conferences and active communication through the listserv. Also, Asian American attorneys and legal academics can join the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), https://www.napaba.org. NAPABA, among other activities and services, holds a Lobby Day each year when members lobby U.S. leaders on issues of importance to the AAPI community. NAPABA also provides resources for combating anti-Asian hate.
Since 2021, signs of a possible transformation have surfaced to create a stronger sense of alliance for Asian American academics. In legal academia, two prominent initiatives arose from a need for community and support. First, a group of Asian American women law professors organized the Inaugural Workshop for Asian American Women in the Legal Academy.[56] The virtual Workshop took place across two days in August 2021 and featured supportive discussions on professional development and scholarship workshop breakouts. Also, in June 2021, the authors organized a Zoom meeting of Asian American legal writing professors during the Association of Legal Writing Directors Biennial Conference. Until 2021, no formal group existed to support and advance legal writing faculty of Asian descent. From that Zoom meeting in June 2021, the Asian Pacific American Legal Writing Professors Collective was born. The Collective holds regular meetings and provides support and a space for sharing about scholarship and teaching and supporting Asian American and other students from marginalized groups. Participating in both initiatives and witnessing the emotional responses from other Asian American academics in attendance have been incredibly meaningful and affirming experiences for the authors.
While finding and building communities across institutions is powerful and necessary for Asian American academics to thrive, the system of support within a law school community is also critical. At present, the Asian American experience is nearly absent from law school curricula, and law schools are largely ill-equipped to address challenges facing Asian Americans. In policies, curriculum, activities, and initiatives of law schools, Asian Americans are hardly ever specified. Asian Americans are commonly not acknowledged as whole humans and professionals who need support and community or as whole citizens who have a history and experience that require recognition and addressing.
Law schools can take a number of steps to support Asian American faculty and set policies that foster a greater understanding of the Asian American experience. While law schools differ in terms of how much work has already been done in this regard, here are 12 self-assessment questions in three key areas—faculty support, curricular offerings, and DEI efforts—that every law school can start with:
Faculty Support
1. Does the law school have any Asian American faculty in dean or associate dean positions?
2. Do Asian American faculty feel supported by the administration in their scholarship, teaching, and service?
3. Do Asian American faculty have mentors within and outside of the institution?
4. Are Asian American faculty members encouraged to actively engage in faculty decision-making and governance and supported when they do actively engage?
5. Are Asian American faculty receiving mentorship for leadership and being suggested for and advanced to leadership positions?
6. Is providing student support to Asian American students valued and does the institution acknowledge and account for this additional faculty work?
Curricular Offerings
7. Does the curriculum include any Asian American law courses?
8. Is Korematsu v. U.S. taught in a mandatory course at the law school?[57]
9. Does the law school offer co-curricular activities, like journals, competition teams, or study-away programs, related to Asian American law?
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts
10. Has the impact of current events and law school policies on Asian American faculty specifically been discussed and included as part of the work of the DEI committee or staff?
11. Does the law school include Asian American employees on its DEI committees or DEI staff?
12. Are faculty members and students educated on the biases and discriminatory systems that affect Asian Americans in legal academia?
Working to achieve affirmative answers to all of these essential questions should be part of a law school’s efforts to be inclusive and equitable. Getting answers to some of the Faculty Support questions will first require addressing the need to create a safe, confidential way for Asian American faculty to have an opportunity to share experiences and perspectives. Taking this initial step would meaningfully signal that the administration cares and is willing to do the work to support and elevate Asian Americans in its law school community.
While the authors have focused on Asian American law faculty, the need for improved support for Asian American law students could easily occupy an entire article and should be the subject of future research. Law schools must explore how they can better support Asian American students. For example, are Asian American students encouraged in their job pursuits? Is there clarity about their eligibility for job and internship opportunities designed for minority students? Do they receive reach-outs from faculty and career development professionals to apply to big law firms, seek judicial clerkships, pursue a path to academia, and/or to be litigators and law firm partners?
Finally, the authors urge law schools to revisit the self-assessment questions above with a particular focus on Asian American women faculty.
CONCLUSION
The latest chapter of the unrelenting history of racism, othering, and harmful stereotypes Asian Americans have experienced in the U.S. offers an opportunity. We urge law schools to seize this opening to advance efforts to achieve greater equity, inclusion, and belonging for Asian American faculty. Law school faculty enjoy the awesome privilege of teaching the next generation of lawyers and influencing legal discourse. We call on legal academia to take the initiative to better understand and support Asian American faculty, and in particular Asian American women faculty. As with any meaningful change, the effort must be intentional, sustained, and multi-faceted.
Rosa Kim is a Professor of Legal Writing at Suffolk University Law School. Professor Kim teaches courses related to legal practice skills, and advocacy in an international context. Her scholarship has focused on Korean legal reform and global legal education, including a 2018 article in the Journal of Legal Education titled Globalizing the Law Curriculum for Twenty-First-Century-Lawyering. She served as Chair of the AALS Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research Section in 2021, and has been named a Fulbright Scholar. Professor Kim practiced as a civil litigator in law firms and at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office before entering legal academia.
Katrina Lee is a Clinical Professor and the Director of the Program on Dispute Resolution at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She teaches the business of law, legal negotiation, and legal writing. Her research focuses on the business of law, dispute resolution, equity and inclusion, and legal ethics. She is the author of several scholarly articles; a business of law course book, The Legal Career: Knowing the Business, Thriving in Practice (2d 2020); and a legal writing course book, The Guide to U.S. Legal Analysis and Writing (3d ed. 2022)(with Deborah McGregor and Cynthia Adams).Professor Lee serves on the Executive Board of the AALS Alternative Dispute Resolution Section. She served as President of the Association of Legal Writing Directors in 2020-2021. Before joining legal academia, Professor Lee was a law firm equity partner and litigation attorney and served on the board of the Bar Association of San Francisco.
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Professors Kim and Lee are grateful to their respective institutions for the summer research stipend support. Many thanks to Suffolk research assistant Ariana Campos and Moritz research assistant Trina Thomas. Professors Kim and Lee also thank Alexa Chew, Bruce Ching, Ederlina Co, Shailini George, Eun Hee Han, Margaret Hahn-Dupont, Stephanie Hartung, Louis Jim, Joy Kanwar, and Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia for their thoughtful comments. The authors are also grateful to the members of the Asian American Legal Writing Professors Collective, the participants in the 2021 Writing as Resistance workshop, and the Inaugural Workshop for Asian American Women in the Legal Academy for their critical support and feedback.
The authors identify as Asian American women. Professor Kim is Korean American. Professor Lee is Chinese American.
[1]See, e.g., R.O. Kwon, A Letter to My Fellow Asian Women Whose Hearts Are Still Breaking, Vanity Fair (Mar. 19, 2021), https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/03/ro-kwon-letter-to-asian-women; Jiayang Fan, The Atlanta Shooting and the Dehumanizing of Asian Women, The New Yorker (Mar. 19, 2021), https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-atlanta-shooting-and-the-dehumanizing-of-asian-women.
[2] The authors hope that this article inspires further work on the intersectional challenges, biases, and discrimination faced by Asian American women in legal academia. See generally Meera E. Deo, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia (2019) (research showing women of color in legal academia face disparate treatment).
[3] See, e.g., Pat K. Chew, Asian Americans in the Legal Academy: An Empirical and Narrative Profile, 3 Asian L. J. 7, 31 (1996); Pat K Chew, Asian Americans: The “Reticent” Minority and their Paradoxes, 36 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1 (1994).
[4] See, e.g., Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America (2016) [Kindle version].
[5] See Abby Budiman and Neil Ruiz, Key facts about Asian origin groups in the U.S., Pew Rsch Ctr (Apr. 29, 2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/29/key-facts-about-asian-origin-groups-in-the-u-s/.
[6] See id.
[7] See id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Lee, supra note 4, at 6–7.
[11] Id.
[12] Id. at 7–8.
[13] Immigration Act of 1924 (43 Stat. 153).
[14] Id.; Lee, supra note 4, at 135.
[15] Id.; Lee, supra note 4, at 87.
[16] Lee, supra note 4, at 87.
[17] Id.
[18] Id. at 263.
[19] For example, violinist Jennifer Koh wrote: “I palpably remember being afraid when I was a child in Illinois, in the 1980s . . . The perpetrators (who killed Chin) received a $3,000 fine and probation for killing a man who looked like my father. The message was clear: Asian American lives had little value.” See Jennifer Koh, A Violinist on How to Empower Asian Musicians, N.Y. Times (July 21, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/arts/music/jennifer-koh-asians-classical-music.html.
[20] Karen Grigsby Bates, How Vincent Chin’s Death Gave Others a Voice, NPR (Mar. 27, 2021), https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/03/27/981718272/how-vincent-chins-death-gave-others-a-voice (interviewing Paula Yoo, author of From A Whisper to A Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial That Galvanized the Asian American Movement (2021)). Over the years, many have written about the need to remember Chin’s killing and to advocate for social change and civil rights for Asian Americans. See, e.g., Frank Wu, Why Vincent Chin Matters, N.Y. Times (June 22, 2012), https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/why-vincent-chin-matters.html; Stewart Kwoh & John C. Yang, Op-Ed: 35 Years After Vincent Chin, Echoes of the Past Haunt the Future, NBC News (June 16, 2017), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/op-ed-35-years-after-vincent-chin-echoes-past-haunt-n773471.
[21] Lee, supra note 4, at 386.
[22] Id.
[23] See, e.g., Katie Rogers, Lara Jakes, Ana Swanson, Trump Defends Using “Chinese Virus” Label, Ignoring Growing Criticism, N.Y. Times (Mar. 18, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/us/politics/china-virus.html.
[24] See, e.g., Weiyi Cai et al., Swelling Anti-Asian Violence: Who is Being Attacked Where, N.Y. Times (Apr. 3, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/03/us/anti-asian-attacks.html (identifying more than 110 cases since March 2020 in which “assailants expressed explicit racial hostility with their language, and in which nearly half included a reference to the coronavirus: “You are the virus.” “You are infected.” “Go back to China.” “You’re the one who brought the virus here.”); Eric Westervelt, Anger and Fear As Asian American Seniors Targeted in Bay Area Attacks, NPR (Feb. 12, 2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/02/12/966940217/anger-and-fear-as-asian-american-seniors-targeted-in-bay-area-attacks (“The brazen, mostly daylight assaults have rattled nerves in communities ahead of Friday's Lunar New Year holiday. Just last week in San Jose, a 64-year-old grandmother was assaulted and robbed of cash she'd just withdrawn from an ATM for Lunar New Year gifts. Surveillance cameras have captured many of the attacks, including one against a 91-year-old man in Oakland's Chinatown, who was hospitalized with serious injuries after being shoved to the ground by a man who walked up behind him. In January, a 52-year-old Asian American woman was shot in the head with a flare gun, also in Chinatown.”)
[25] Report: Anti-Asian Hate Crime Rose 76% In LA County (Oct. 20, 2021), CBS Los Angeles, https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/10/20/report-anti-asian-hate-crime-rose-76-in-la-county/.
[26] Russell Jeung et al., STOP AAPI HATE National Report, Stop AAPI Hate, https://secureservercdn.net/104.238.69.231/a1w.90d.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/210312-Stop-ASIAN AMERICANPI-Hate-National-Report-.pdf (last visited May 21, 2021), 1, 3.
[27] Id. See also Cai, supra note 26 (“The tally arrived at by The Times may be only a sliver of the violence and harassment people of Asian descent have faced over the last year, as hate crimes are generally undercounted and underreported and only the most egregious accounts become headlines.”).
[28] See Lenthang, Atlanta Shooting and the Legacy of Misogyny and Racism against Asian American Women, ABC News (Mar. 21, 2021), https://abcnews.go.com/US/atlanta-shooting-legacy-misogyny-racism-asian-women/story?id=76533776.
[29] See id. Several Asian American women writers wrote moving and impactful pieces about their response. See supra note 2.
[30] See, e.g., Karen Zraich, Man Charged With Hate Crimes After 7 Asian Women Are Attacked in 2 Hours. N.Y. Times (Mar. 2, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/nyregion/asian-women-attacked-nypd.html; Ashley Southall, Ali Watkins, Jeffrey E. Singer, Screams That ‘Went Quiet’: Prosecutors’ Account of Chinatown Killing, N.Y. Times, (Feb. 14, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/nyregion/suspect-christina-yuna-lee-murder.html?searchResultPosition=3.
[31] Neil Ruiz et al., One-third of Asian Americans fear threats, physical attacks and most say violence against them is rising, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Apr. 21, 2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/21/one-third-of-asian-americans-fear-threats-physical-attacks-and-most-say-violence-against-them-is-rising/.
[32] See Ellen D. Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (2015); Ngan Nguyen & Euna Kim, Model Minority Myth and the Double-Edged Sword, Ascend, April 2021, at 5, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e8bce29f730fc7358d4bc35/t/6095a0de7ebad6329e0ca468/1620418783826/Model-Minority-Myth-the-Double-Edged-Sword.pdf.
[33] Nguyen & Kim, supra note 34, at 5.
[34] See id.
[35] See id.
[36] See Kat Chow, 'Model Minority' Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks, NPR (Apr. 19, 2017), https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/04/19/524571669/model-minority-myth-again-used-as-a-racial-wedge-between-asians-and-blacks (stating that using Asian-Americans and their perceived collective success as a racial wedge has the effect of “minimizing the role racism plays in the persistent struggles of other racial/ethnic minority groups — especially black Americans”).
[36] See id.
[37] See, e.g., Jean Shin, The Asian American Closet, 11 Asian L. J. 1 (2004); Frank H. Wu, "Where are you really from? Asian Americans and the perpetual foreigner syndrome." 6 Civil Rights Journal 14, (2002). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106647778/AONE?u=mlin_oweb&sid=googleScholar&xid=808cd780.
[38] See, e.g., John Woo & Yousar Hlou, #thisis2016: Asian Americans Respond, N.Y. Times (Oct. 13, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004706646/thisis2016-asian-americans-respond.html; Katrina Lee, An Asian American Mother’s Sadness and Hope, Columbus Monthly (Sept. 2021), https://www.columbusmonthly.com/story/lifestyle/around-town/2021/10/04/anti-asian-violence-harassment-community-katrina-lee-columbus/5914588001/.
[39] Nguyen & Kim, supra note 34, at 5 (including the “narrative that Asian Americans are ‘competent but cold,’ excelling at STEM and fields requiring strong analytical skills but lacking in some of the soft skills that are needed for leadership and advancement, such as interpersonal, communications, and advocacy skills”).
[40] See Buck Gee et al., Hidden in Plain Sight: Asian American Leaders in Silicon Valley Ascend 4 (2015), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e8bce29f730fc7358d4bc35/t/5fdd263839dfa831a4ca3da6/1608328760774/Hidden-In-Plain-Sight.pdf.(discussing “western implicit stereotype that Asians have poor leadership skills”).
[41] Eric Chung et al., A Portrait of Asian Americans in the Law, 31 (2017).
[42] Id.
[43] Id.
[44] See Spotlight on From Exotic to Invisible: Asian American Women’s Experiences of Discrimination, Am. Psych. Ass’n (July 26, 2018), https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-119. See generally Celeste Nguyen, Asian American Women Faculty: Stereotypes and Triumphs, 1 Listening to the Voices: Multi-Ethnic Women in Edu. 129. The related “dragon lady” stereotype can also pose challenges for Asian American women. See Gee, supra note 42, at 6 (“For some Asian women, especially East Asian women, the specter of being called a “dragon lady” can discourage many from being assertive or overtly exercising power and influence. The “dragon lady” label is a negative stereotype of Asian women, generally used to describe a woman who is strong and willful. In contrast, a man with similar behaviors can often be described as powerful and confident.”).
[45] Joyce Sterling & Linda Chanow, In Their Own Words, Am. Bar Ass’n, 2021, at 23, https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/women/intheirownwords-f-4-19-21-final.pdf. ("We are disappointed that we captured limited information in this study about the experiences of Asian American women and Native American women in the legal profession and recommend additional research in this area.”).
[46] Elizabeth Frater, Asian American Attorneys: Shattering Conventional Norms, MCCA, https://www.mcca.com/mcca-article/asian-american-attorneys/ (last visited Jan. 30, 2022). See also, e.g., Gee, supra note 42 (“While both race and gender are factors in the Asian glass ceiling, our analysis shows that the impact of race is 3.7X the impact of gender. For Asian women, this translates into a double whammy race-plus-gender problem.”); Tracey Lien, Asian American Face Glass Ceiling at Tech Firms, L.A. Times (May 6, 2015), https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tech-diversity-asians-20150507-story.html (“The [Ascend] study found that on top of the biases women already face in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, Asian women experience the double whammy of being negatively stereotyped and facing workplace pressures to fulfill traditionally feminine roles.”).
[47] See Jacqueline H. J. Kim et al., Overcoming Constraints of the Model Minority Stereotype to Advance Asian American Health, 76 Am. Psych. Ass’n 611–26 (2021). This article is part of the special issue “Rendered Invisible: Are Asian Americans a Model or a Marginalized Minority?” published in the May–June 2021 issue of American Psychologist. The problem identified in this special issue--that Asian Americans are understudied and under-researched as a demographic—warrants a separate discussion beyond the scope of this essay.
[48] While this essay focuses on Asian American faculty, the authors note that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon be hearing Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 308 F.R.D. 39 (D. Mass. 2015), aff'd, 807 F.3d 472 (1st Cir. 2015), a suit brought by an anti-affirmative-action group on behalf of Asian American students denied admission to Harvard. Discussion of that case and the issues it raises falls outside the scope of this essay. The authors however urge law schools to work on understanding and inquiring about the potential impact of the Court’s decision, and related discussion and media coverage, on Asian Americans in legal academia, and creating truly welcoming spaces to share perspectives and insights.
[49] See Pat K. Chew, Asian Americans in the Legal Academy: An Empirical and Narrative Profile, 3 Asian L. J. 7, 31 (1996).
[50] Verification of Professor Chew’s year of tenure is on file with the authors.
[51] See Chung, supra note 41, at fig. 16. On the student side, Asian American students made up 6.3% of all JD enrollment in 2019. See Miranda Li et al., Who’s Going to Law School? Trends in Law School Enrollment Since the Great Recession, 54 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 613, 626 (2020).
[52] See Paul Caron, Law School Dean Demographics, TaxProf (Sept. 4, 2019), https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/09/law-school-dean-demographics.html (citing a Law.com report by Karen Sloan titled Ahead of the Curve: Tracking Law Deans).
[53] See Chung, supra note 41, at 24–25. In very recent years, some progress has been made. In January 2021, Kamala Harris became the first person of Asian descent to serve as Vice President of the U.S. On December 13, 2021, when the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Judge Lucy H. Koh to the Ninth Circuit, she became the first Korean American women confirmed to serve on a federal circuit court of appeal. On December 15, the U.S. Senate confirmed Judge Jennifer Sung, another Asian American female judge, to the Ninth Circuit.
[54] Susan Oki Mollway, The First Fifteen: How Asian American Women Became Federal Judges, 1 (2021).
[55] Profile of the Legal Profession 2021, Am. Bar Ass’n, 2021, at 68, https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/news/2021/0721/polp.pdf.
[56] Inaugural Workshop for Asian American Women in the Legal Academy, Penn St. L.,
https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/events/asian-american-women-workshop (last visited Feb. 23, 2022).
[57] See Korematsu v. U.S., 584 F. Supp. 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984); Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214, 65 S. Ct. 193 (1944). The authors encourage law schools to investigate beyond immigration law classes, which would typically include discussion of cases on exclusion of Chinese immigrants, travel ban cases, and the Korematsu case.
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