Inscrutable Questions: Caring About ‘Ethnicity’

There is a brotherhood of man
A benevolent brotherhood of man
A noble tie that binds
All human hearts and minds
Into one brotherhood of man

Your life-long membership is free…

—Frank Loesser, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, 1961

As you, the Accomplished Historian, survey the past for its many available lessons, accessible to those of us who might wish to apply them to current circumstances, comparisons arise inevitably and instructively. While this can happen at almost any moment (the Nothing New Under the Sun school of Santayana loyalists), there are particular situations that seem to cry out for such appeals to history even more than others. Pandemics, say. How many of us knew bupkis about the Spanish Flu prior to COVID? The present period of entrenched division in American politics, without proper grounding in historical precedent, would probably seem pretty scary. But with the resources and perspective of you, the Accomplished Historian, we can hold it up to the light of day, dispassionately examine the threats one by one, then knowledgeably, calmly aver that it’s time to head for the bunker.

The appropriate historical examples don’t necessarily provide comfort. The Know-Nothing Party. Jim Crow. Sen. Joe McCarthy. The Immigration Acts of the 1920s. The tariffs of the 1890s. Woodrow Wilson 1879’s resegregation of the federal government. The expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban. The Electoral College. The Confederacy. The Internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. In a masochistic sense, reexamining these lessons is educational, but it certainly wears on the soul. And if you happen to be a self-identified member of a group which has turned up on the downside of any of these (consider, that’s a huge proportion of the current U.S. population), it may well reflexively lead to the all-too-human impulse to retreat to your favorite affinity group and circle the wagons. Which is precisely how some of these instructive examples got started in the first place. In this circumstance, last spring’s highly informative exhibit in Frist regarding the history of Asians and Asian Americans at Princeton was beyond timely (especially in the light of brainless racist phobias surrounding COVID); its afterlife as an excellent and expanding exhibit in the Princetoniana Museum online is a welcome outpost in the seemingly endless battle to ensure Tigers everywhere understand where we came from and why seemingly trivial, dated aspects of the Princeton experience remain crucial ingredients of its ethos and way of life, even today.

It is a fact far beyond intriguing that, beginning after the Meiji restoration in Japan in 1868 and the Empire’s choice to face the West on the West’s own terms, Asians — mainly well-to-do and even better connected — began to appear at Princeton and seemingly blend in well on campus. Hikoichi Orita 1876, one of the last samurai, was a respected member of his class and returned home (as virtually all 19^th-century Asian students did) to found Kyoto University. Henry Goloknath 1882 was the first undergrad from India, and a time-honored example of a college alum continuing at the Princeton Seminary, then going out as a Presbyterian missionary, in his case back to India. (Fifty years later, the son of two American Presbyterian medical missionaries would leave India for the Lawrenceville School, then on to Princeton; his name was Bob Goheen ’40 *48.) Dong Seung 1905 from China returned to teach in Canton (now Guangzhou), Korean Syngman Rhee *1910 became South Korea’s first president and eventually dictator. Thai Supachai Vanij-Vadhana 1929 returned home to run Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.

This ran parallel to efforts driven by American missionaries and the YMCA movement to train Americans in Asian cultures, leading to the creation in 1898 of Princeton-in-Asia, supplying fellowships for students to spend time working with organizations overseas. Beginning in China and eventually expanding through East and South Asia to Kazakhstan to Mongolia to the Middle East, it has given many hundreds of Tigers a priceless view on international affairs, and it continues today after 125 years with 54 fellows currently overseas. Unbelievably, all this took place in an era where the actual immigration of people from Asia to the United States was not so much difficult as unimaginable. Beginning with Chinese exclusion in the 19^th century and getting progressively worse over time, then shutting off completely with the xenophobic National Origins Act of 1924, immigration from just about anywhere beyond northern Europe became a novelty. This continued unabated until the American Civil Rights Era caught up with it, and one of Lyndon Johnson’s signature accomplishments, the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, set up a rational, race-blind set of rules for aspirants to become Americans.

Chinese refugee Chang-Lin Tien *59 was indicative of the first wave of Asian Americans to study at Princeton; with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, he went on to be the first Asian American head of a major research university at the University of California, Berkeley, and the first to be awarded the Madison Medal. The first woman to earn a Princeton Ph.D., Tsai Ying Cheng *63 *64, became a noted genomics and cancer researcher. Owing in part to the national reputation of Princeton’s Critical Languages program, five of the first nine undergraduate alumnae (who transferred in as seniors) were Asian American — Sue-Jean Lee ’70, Lynn Nagasako ’70, Agneta Riber ’70, Mary Yee ’70, and Mae Wong ’70.

While Asian alumni made a deep imprint back at campus, including generous trustees and donors Sir Gordon Wu ’58 (Wu Hall) and William Fung ’70 (the Princeton-Fung Global Forums), Asian Americans then also integrated rapidly through alumni and University life. Eva Lerner-Lam ’76 was elected term trustee and Timothy Wu ’84 a young alumni trustee of the University. Christopher Lu ’88, former deputy secretary of labor, was the first Asian American Baccalaureate speaker, and Raj Vinnakota ’93 the first Asian American Wilson Award winner in 2009 after co-founding the first American urban boarding school for disadvantaged students, serving as a University trustee, and chairing Annual Giving. And A4P — the Asian American Alumni Association of Princeton — is itself highly active in promoting information and understanding, including the Frist exhibit now migrated to the web.

Since admission of minority students began in earnest in the 1960s, the consistent increase in international students, plus immigration from Asia along with the incorporation of second and third generation families throughout America, has led to the dramatic increase in Asian and Asian American students on campus, from fewer than 200 undergrads in 1980 to more than 1,300 today, and an additional 900 or so in the graduate school, a fourfold increase over 25 years.

And given Princeton’s tradition of service and accomplishment among its alums, the track record of the AAPI (that’s the current label for Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islanders as an identity group) contingent won’t surprise anyone. From Yoshio Osawa 1925, who founded the great film studio Toho in Japan; to Wen Fong ’51 *58, Princeton’s great teacher of art history who dramatically improved the Metropolitan’s Asian art collection; to Hisashi Kobayashi *67, first Asian dean of the Engineering School; to Gordon Chang ’70, Asian American historian and associate vice provost at Stanford; to Denny Chin ’75, sitting as a U.S. Circuit Court appeals judge, trustee, and Wilson Award winner; to Y.S. Chi ’83, chair of Elsevier and a University trustee; to Maria Ressa ’86, Philippine journalist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Wilson Award; to James Yeh ’87, donor of Yeh College and charter trustee; to Sumir Chadha ’93, managing director of WestBridge Capital and founding donor of the Chadha Center for Global India at Princeton; to David Lee *99, director of the Industrial Relations Section and Princeton’s first Asian-heritage provost; and to Fei-Fei Li ’99, computer scientist and winner of the Wilson Award, co-director of the Human-Centered AI Institute at Stanford — Asian-heritage Princetonians have served, led, and innovated precisely as we would expect all Princetonians to do.

Of course Princeton has changed — come to think of it, I would be a better person today if we’d had Thai cuisine available in Commons — but as we’ve noted many times, it’s the primary job of Princeton, and places that aspire to be like it, to change and improve what it does and how it’s done. So take a look at the Princetoniana Museum exhibit, consider what’s happened, and also think of the parallel efforts of so many young people who, despite a dizzying variation in backgrounds, hope for a chance at the cornucopia of resources and opportunity that we can offer them as stewards of the best damn place of all. Just as we hoped once. And for which we should all give thanks, on the fourth Thursday of November, and probably every day beyond that.

And so we’ll start next month’s annual holiday thoughts right there…