Addressing Anti-Asian Racism

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian racism has been on the rise. The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society is committed to the goal of social justice through education and critical scholarship. Here are some relevant readings from our online journal Synapsis:

Travis Chi Wing Lau, “On Virality, Corona, and Otherwise.” Synapsis Journal May 2020. 

Salvador Herrara, “Already Quarantined: Yes the ‘Spanish Flu’ was Racist Too.”  Synapsis Journal July 2020. 

“…many in Europe and America had initially been led to believe that the novel coronavirus might be one of those isolated, regional affairs, not unlike SARS (2003), MERS (2012), and Ebola (2014) or what gets reported from those remote, disease-prone countries of Asia and Africa.  Therefore, US travel restrictions on flights from China on 2 February and from Iran on 29 February should have taken care of the matter, but they didn’t. Recent genomic analyses suggest that the vast majority of coronavirus cases in New York came from Europe, not from Asia. Blindsided by its own racism, the political calculus of the US biosecurity regime has misfired. It forgets to reckon with the incalculable.”

Professor Liu is teaching this newly created cross-listed course between ICLS and EALAC this semester: CLEA GR 6120. Race and Empire in the Asia Pacific.

To address the urgent need to combat racism in our times, we introduced a new 2020-2021 conversation/lecture series called “Understanding Systemic Racism” to reflect on the roots of racial discrimination, class oppression, colonial injustice, and other institutionalized oppression and sanction for violence against Black people and peoples of color. We stress the importance of opening the U.S. centered conversations surrounding race and identity toward a broad and comparative reckoning with racism and its violent histories around the world. This webinar series is programmed in conjunction with our Ambedkar Initiative that links Columbia University with the anti-caste legacy of B. R. Ambedkar to reflect on his continued relevance to discussions about social justice, affirmative action, and democratic thinking in a global frame. Our Ambedkar student podcast series can be found here. 

Also in March 2021, Ari Larissa Heinrich will give a keynote lecture to help launch the new Medical Humanities undergraduate major. Heinrich has done extensive historical work on medical/scientific racism (smallpox, etc.) relating to China and Chinese diaspora with a deep historical perspective on Covid-19. The lecture will be part of a series entitled “Medical Humanities and Pandemic Urbanisms.”