Defining Our Roots/Routes - Episode 1: Histories and Legacies of Asian Americans in Higher Education
The LCLO Group is excited to launch our inaugural podcast series, Defining Our Roots/Routes: Asian Americans in Higher Education.
This podcast series provides unique insights into the lived experiences of Asian American students and scholars in higher education spaces and highlights what is at stake for the larger Asian American community in the wake of Supreme Court cases and recent anti-Asian hate incidents. We aim to amplify the often-overlooked voices of Asian American students and faculty in higher education as a form of resistance and consciousness-raising by exploring interrelated themes—histories and legacies of Asian America, pan-Asian American identities, and Asian American transnationalism & diaspora.
The first episode, Histories and Legacies of Asian Americans in Higher Education, explores how Asian American faculty, students, and scholars are actively mobilizing and giving voice to their past and current struggles on campus and beyond. Through candid and thought-provoking discussions, our guests provide an insightful analysis of the impacts of pervasive stereotypes such as the model minority myth and articulate their thoughts on what are at stake for Asian America today, in the context of the current legal challenges facing affirmative action policies in education.
Defining Our Roots/Routes is also readily available at major podcast providers.
Podcast Editor: Clare Boyle
Our Hosts
Dr. Jennifer Nazareno, PhD | Extended Bio
Barrett Hazeltine Assistant Professor of the Practice of Entrepreneurship at the School of Public Health and the Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship at Brown University. Inaugural Associate Director of the online MPH program and Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Innovation at Brown University’s School of Professional Studies.
Dr. Liza Cariaga-Lo, PhD | Extended Bio
Founder & CEO of the LCLO Group. Formerly Vice President for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Brown University, Assistant Provost for Faculty Development & Diversity at Harvard University, and Assistant Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Yale University.
Our Special Guests
Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy, PhD
Professor of Asian American & Asian Diaspora Studies and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, & Justice in UC Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, & Society. Choy received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA and her B.A. in History from Pomona College. The daughter of Filipino immigrants, Choy was born and raised in New York City.
She is the author of Asian American Histories of the United States (2022), published by Beacon Press. The book explores the themes of anti-Asian hate and violence, erasure of Asian American history, and Asian American resistance to what has been omitted in a nearly 200 year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US.
Joseph Tsuboi
Joseph Tsuboi (he/they) is a queer, mixed race Japanese American based on Tongva land. Joseph is a recent Master’s graduate of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Department where his research looked at progressive Asian American organizing spaces in the greater Los Angeles area and their specific techniques towards cross-community solidarity.
Joseph is currently the Solidarity Arts Fellowship Alumni Relations Leader at Vigilant Love, a Los Angeles-based grassroots organization that challenges Islamophobia and white supremacy through systems change organizing, arts & political education, and narrative & culture change.
Claire Nakamura
Claire Nakamura was born and raised in San Francisco as a fourth generation Nikkei and Chinese American. She completed her undergraduate at UC Davis, with a degree in History and Psychology and a minor in Asian American Studies (2019). Her senior thesis reexamined the history of Japanese American WWII incarceration through her grandfather’s lens as a Kibei Nisei under the theoretical framework of family separation.
After graduation, she became a HR professional in the healthcare space and most recently joined the LCLO Group as a research intern to write and support the production of the Asian Americans in Higher Education podcast series.