Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund

SPRING and SUMMER INTERNSHIPS 2009

Undergraduate and Law School

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), founded in 1974, protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans through litigation, advocacy, and community education. For more information about AALDEF, visit our website at http://www.aaldef.org/. Internships are available for the following:

• Anti-Trafficking Project, legal research on the Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA), as well as outreach, community education, and advocacy on the rights of women and youth trafficking survivors;
• Community Health Care Initiative, research, as well as community education and outreach in the areas of immigration, government benefits, language rights, and health care access; Economic Justice for Workers, litigation on behalf of garment, restaurant, and other low wage workers;
• Educational Equity and Youth Rights, legal services, policy work, community education, research and litigation concerning educational equity, juvenile justice, affirmative action and post 9-11 hate violence and racial targeting;
• Housing Justice Project, direct legal services, community outreach/education, and litigation on housing and land use issues affecting low-income Asian immigrant communities;
• Immigrant Access to Justice, litigation, legal services, and organizing/outreach with communities impacted by 9-11, including special interest detainees, special registration, voluntary interviews by the government, the 9-11 absconder initiative, and local and state enforcement of immigration laws;
• New Jersey Asian American Legal Project, community outreach, education, and legal services to Asian Americans in NJ, as well as community organizing and litigation on employment-related claims for Asian immigrant workers in NJ;
• South Asian Workers Project, direct legal services on employment-related claims to South Asian immigrant workers, as well as community education and advocacy; and
• Voting Rights, legal research and fact development under the Voting Rights Act and Equal Protection challenging anti-Asian voter discrimination, advocacy on bilingual ballots, and state and local election reform; produce reports and organize public forums.

Description of Internships
Interns are supervised by staff in specific program areas. Legal interns work primarily on legal research and writing, legal and policy advocacy, community outreach and education, and client intakes. Undergraduate interns work on policy advocacy, community outreach and organizing, and some client intakes. Each program area differs in emphasis. These internships are not paid positions, but academic credit can be arranged. Spring interns work anywhere between 8 to 25 hours per week and usually commences with the start of classes. Summer interns work full time for 10 weeks.

To Apply
Any bilingual ability should be stated in the resume. Bilingual ability is helpful but not required. Spring applicants should also state the number of hours they can work per week and a possible schedule. Send a resume and cover letter to:

Spring/Summer Intern Search
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)
99 Hudson St., 12th Floor
New York, NY 10013-2815

Fax: 212-966-4303
E-mail: info@aaldef.org

For more information, contact Jennifer Weng at 212-966-5932, ext. 212 or jweng@aaldef.org.

AAS Career Opportunity @ Wellesley

The American Studies Program at Wellesley College invites applications for a one-time appointment as a lecturer for the following course in Asian American Studies for the spring semester 2009.

Course: “Identity & Community Formation: Asian American Perspectives”

This course offers a set of analytic tools for grappling with the historical and contemporary complexities of Asian American identification and community formation. The course introduces students to different theoretical frames for exploring and interrogating the meaningful contours of the terms “Asian American” in relation to other racialized and ethnic groups in the U.S. By taking an interdisciplinary and comparative cultural studies approach, we will pay particular attention to the historical conditions and ongoing processes for the social formation of persons and collectivities under the rubric “Asian American” and its variants (e.g., Asian-American, Asian-Pacific-American, etc.) as well as examine multiplicities, contradictions, and gaps of Asian American identifications and politics. The goal of this course is to provide students with useful theoretical tools for critically thinking about the ever-shifting terrain of Asian American identification in the wider contexts of Orientalism, U.S. imperialism and nationalism, racialization and racism, economic restructuring, transnationalism and other social processes and transformations.

Applicants should have PhD in hand or be ABD with teaching experience and/or research background in Asian American Studies. Submit letter of application, curriculum vitae, names/e-mail address of two references electronically through our online application system at: https://career.wellesley.edu/. If circumstances make it impossible to submit any materials through our application site, you may send them to: Elena Tajima Creef, Women’s Studies Department, Wellesley College at the following e-mail address: ecreef@wellesley.edu.

Applications received by November 15 will be given full consideration.

Wellesley College is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. For more information about being a faculty member at Wellesley College, please see
http://www.wellesley.edu/DeanCollege/Diversity/Open_pos/prospectfac.pdf.

Asian American Get Out the Vote Party

This coming Wed., Oct. 8, WAA is hosting Asian American Get Out the Vote Party from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM at Rm. 415 in the student center, co-sponsoring with ASU (Asian Student Union), GA (GenerAsians), and CPLA (Committee for Political and Legislative Action) to promote more voting turnout within Wellesley's Asian American community in order to address the concern that Asian Americans have the least voting turnout amongst all ethnic minorities. In the 2004 elections, 44% of the Asian American population voted, as opposed to the nearly 64% of Americans who voted. 37.7% of Asian Americans who did not vote cited their reasons as "not interested or involved in politics." Don't know who to vote for because you don't know each candidate's stance on issues that concern you? We'll provide them. Don't know where to get the forms? We'll have them with us. Don't know what the deadlines are? We'll tell you. Confused by the voting rules and restrictions? Just ask us. Don't wanna pay for mailing? Guess what? We're paying them for you. Why? So you can join us in our fight to help shape our country by registering to vote. YOUR VOTE MATTERS.

Spam by Mina Kang '09

Congratulations to Jennifer Chou and Nan Chen!

On May 30, 2008, Jennifer Chou '08 (Political Science) and Nan Chen '08 (English and Neuroscience), our beloved co-coordinators for 2007-08, graduated from Wellesley College. Both actively participated in WAA ever since they were first-years and led the organization to make some significant achievements while they were in leadership, such as pushing the Psychology Department to offer an Asian American Psychology course this academic year and being heavily involved in American Studies Program's recent hire for tenure-track positions. In recognition of her involvement with WAA, Jennnifer received the Excellence in Leadership Award last year, which is annually awarded to an exceptionally talented student leader by the Office of Student Activities. Apart from WAA, Nan twice served as a co-coordinator for the Asian Awareness Month Committee, which organizes all the events for the Asian Awareness Month (March), and has been much praised for her charisma. According to their mutual friend, these two are rooming together after graduation in an apartment in Chinatown, NY as they start their life, for the first time, as "working women." Currently, Jennifer works as a paralegal for Planned Parenthood's NY office, and Nan is doing research for the NYU Cancer Institute. WAA (and I'm sure the rest of Wellesley's Asian American community) will certainly miss this duo's kick-ass energy and wish them luck wherever they go. And to all WAAers (past or present) in NYC, please congratulate them when you see them on the streets!

From left to right: Jennifer Chou, Jennifer Chun, Nan Chen

Prof. Julie Chu

Professor Julie Chu of the Anthropology Department will be leaving Wellesley College at the end of this school year to go to the University of Chicago. While Professor Chu was here, she taught numerous classes including ANTH220: Identity and Community Formation: Asian American Perspectives. Beginning with Edward Said's Orientalism, this class explored racial theory through processes of "othering" abroad and within America through the eyes of the Asian-American community. Professor Chu was very helpful in working with WAA in their fight for Asian American Studies. The fund through which her position is offered, the Freeman Fund, dictates its use in the fields of East Asian and East Asian American studies. Currently, WAA is working with the chair of the anthropology department and the deans to determine the future of her position, a course of action, and places of student involvement. Hopefully, next year there will be a search for her replacement.

Asian American Film Festival

This year, WAA decided to hold its annual Asian American Film Festival (AAFF) in Spring Semester, from February 25-28. A total of four films (two features and two documentaries) were screened: Shanghai Kiss directed by Kern Konwiser and David Ren, Never Perfect directed by Regina Park, Slanted Screen directed by Jeff Adachi, and Eve and the Fire Horse directed by Julia Kwan.

We also invited one of the directors, Regina Park of Never Perfect, to have a Q&A session with the audience after the screening of her documentary, which explores the meaning and the impact of the double-eyelid surgeries on the Asian American community, specifically in regards to the self-image of Asian American women. Regina proved to be a very dynamic speaker, prompting various questions from the audience, and revealed that the auidence response from Wellesley College was quite different from the ones she received from co-ed schools, which were much more reserved. She has written to us that "Your support and enthusiam means so much to a puny little independent filmmaker like me and I'll always remember my experience with great fondness." We wish her luck on her next project and hope to bring her back on campus soon.

If you know any exceptional films directed by Asian Americans and/or featuring Asian American actors that you would like to see at Wellesley during our next year's AAFF, please contact us at our e-mail address.

WAA + AMST

Another WAA update! Today (last Wednesday, actually) was the deadline for all our articles so you can expect at least one more coming up, but this particular post is about our recent work with the American Studies program and a new tenure track hire.

Since 2004, WAA has been working closely with the American Studies Program at Wellesley to see a stronger Asian American representation in their curriculum. Although our ultimate goal is to establish an Asian American Studies major, we’re working with what we have here, so for the time being, the American Studies program is the best starting point since the study of Asians in America falls naturally into that field. However, as is, Wellesley’s American Studies program is in need of an major upgrade (like Windows 95 to Windows XP major). The program is underdeveloped, unfocused, Anglo-centric, and has no theoretical core—problems that need to be remedied before any kind of Asian American foundation can be properly established.

By the end 2004-2005 school year (with super badass coordinator May Yang ’05 at the helm) WAA convinced the American Studies faculty and the Wellesley administration to invite a visiting committee of faculty from outside American Studies programs to evaluate Wellesley’s for weaknesses and to provide recommendations for improvements. When the committee finally came in Spring 2006, WAA and Mezcla gave a joint presentation of our goals and hopes for the American Studies program. At the end of the day, we were able to squeeze out a tenure track hire directly into American Studies, a big step for an interdisciplinary program that is currently comprised entirely of professors from other departments.

Although the position itself was open to any specialization within the field of American Studies, our main criteria was that the hire be someone who believes strongly in the need to incorporate a multicultural component into the curriculum. During the application process last semester, we e-mailed Asian American Studies and American Studies listserves from across the nation asking for potential applicants who would be able to represent.

Over 100 candidates applied for the position, and when we came back from Wintersession, we were given the chance to interview each of the top five candidates—the only student organization to do so. After speaking individually with each candidate and sitting through each of their sample lectures, we presented a letter of recommendation to the American Studies faculty and the Adele Wolfson, Associate Dean of the College.

We’re still waiting to hear back from the committee as to which candidate was finally chosen, but we have it on good authority that it’ll be soon, so stay tuned!

WAA's 1st Teach-In

This past November, WAA held its first annual Asian American Studies Teach-In. For this event, we asked Professors Yoon Sun Lee (English), Linda Charmaraman (Psychology), and Julie Chu (Anthropology) to give a brief lecture on their respective topics. The two purposes of this lecture were to publicize for these courses to increase enrollment and give students a sampling of the breadth and depth of Asian-American Studies as a discipline. Professor Lee gave a sample of her "Mothers and Daughters in Asian American Literature" class, Professor Charmaraman gave a sample of her "Asian American Psychology" course, and Professor Chu gave a sample of her "Identity & Community Formation: Asian American Perspectives" class. Professor Lee spoke about Asian-American migration through a Cathy Song poem, Professor Charmaraman lectured on Asian-American psychology in elementary children, Professor Chu discussed Asian-American processes as a lens for looking at global phenomenon. The lecture was well attended with about 30 students total. We hope to turn this in an annual or biennial event so that students can be kept informed about this changing field.

Professor's Lee


Professor Charmaraman's debut!


Professor Chu