Asian-American prof's departure troubles students

JULIA TIERNAN/YH Students and faculty gathered on Wed., Mar. 3, to honor departing ER&M DUS and Asian-American specialist Brian Hayashi.

By Melissa Barton

Tensions lurked beneath the festive surface on Wed., Mar. 2, when students and faculty gathered at a reception for Brian Hayashi, Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (ER&M) Director of Undergraduate Studies and Yale's first and only non-adjunct Asian Americanist. Hayashi will leave Yale midterm for a position at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan. He cited personal reasons for leaving.

"I think it's a terrible loss," American Studies Chair Bryan Wolf said. "[Hayashi] has been instrumental in putting together the ER&M program, bringing an enormous amount of energy, humor, and intellectual rigor with him."

Wolf and ER&M chair Michael Denning spoke highly of Hayashi, who has taught all three Asian-American studies classes Yale offers since he arrived four years ago. "The ER&M program is a legacy that [Hayashi] has left for all of us," Denning said. "He set the agenda intellectually. He really did the work of assembly and thinking through other ethnic studies programs across the country" to help create and develop Yale's own relatively new ethnic studies program.

Hayashi's departure has intensified the Asian American Students Association's (AASA) campaign for the development of an Asian-American Studies curriculum at Yale. The University's three classes are on par with the selection at most of the other Ivies, including Harvard and Cornell, although dismal compared to Penn, which offers 21 such courses, or the University of California at Berkeley, which has 32.

These numbers were prominently displayed in pamphlets handed out by AASA members last week in Commons as part of an exhibit relating the history of Asian-American and other ethnic studies offerings at Yale. "The University has been very slow in its effort to give us Asian-American classes," AASA moderator Eugenia Chen, DC '01, said of the group's increased efforts. "We are working toward making the Administration aware that students want Asian-American classes by writing letters to administrative officials, talking
to department heads that coordinate hires, and having exhibitions such as the one that took place in Commons last week."

AASA has also been working with the Student Coalition for Diversity (SCD) to establish ER&M as a department, which would give ER&M the power to oversee its own hiring and have its own professors. Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, cautioned against hasty progress. "ER&M has only been a program for a short time," he said. "It's a classic example of an interdisciplinary field, so being located at the juncture of several departments is a good thing. But it's clear that parts of it need strengthening."

Still, the history and American studies departments have been authorized to search for an Asian-Americanist to replace Hayashi. They have mentioned a joint appointment in ER&M as part of the position in the advertisements they have placed. "We are definitely also looking for someone who will take an active role in ER&M," Wolf said. The departments hope to appoint a senior faculty member but will accept a junior member if they cannot find a senior one.

Wolf explained that the short-term goal is to find a replacement for Hayashi and ensure that the courses he offered at Yale are back in the curriculum soon. As for the more distant future, "The long-term goal is to increase courses available on ethnicity in general, not just Asian-Americans but also Chicano and Native American studies," Wolf said. "It's a slow process. It requires the faculty in place to do the teaching before the courses can be created."

"The situation is pretty stagnant," SCD moderator Lee Wang, BK '99, said. "People have been fighting for these things for a long time and it's getting pretty frustrating." Brodhead disagreed. "Over the last several years we've made a number of appointments that will make major contributions [to ER&M]," he said. Listing more than half a dozen appointments, Brodhead pointed out that many have been made in the last week and will soon become public.

"The Asian-American part has been frustrating," Brodhead admitted. "The news of Hayashi's departure came quite suddenly. There is no question, however, that we will replace him."

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