{"id":164885,"date":"2026-02-05T08:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T08:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/164885\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T08:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T08:26:10","slug":"despite-budget-threats-uc-berkeley-invests-in-six-new-tenure-track-asian-american-and-pacific-islands-specialists-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/164885\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite budget threats, UC Berkeley invests in six new tenure-track Asian American and Pacific Islands specialists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twlf.berkeley.edu\/history\/timeline\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">50 years ago<\/a>, students went on strike at UC Berkeley\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/revolution.berkeley.edu\/assets\/demands.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">demanding<\/a>\u00a0formal research and teaching of Asian American, Black, Chicano and Native American experiences; they also called for more representation among campus\u2019 faculty and staff. And they prevailed. After 37 contentious days of strikes, the university created the Department of Ethnic Studies, one of the nation\u2019s first.<\/p>\n<p>Half a century later, the campus has kept up that spirit by investing millions of dollars in these areas of study to meet student demand, even in times of mounting budget pressure. By this spring, Berkeley will have welcomed six new professors specializing in Asian American and Pacific Islands studies, including one of Berkeley\u2019s first Pacific Islander faculty members. It\u2019s the culmination of more than a decade of advocacy and required remarkable coordination across departments, schools and colleges.<\/p>\n<p>Hiring an interdisciplinary group of academics to bolster an area of study is a relatively new practice known as a \u201ccluster hire.\u201d Some\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ofew.berkeley.edu\/academic-recruitment\/cluster-hire-initiatives\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">previous clusters<\/a>\u00a0have recruited scholars focused on the ethics of artificial intelligence and environmental equity. The new Asian American and Pacific Islander Transpacific Futures cluster will bring experts in ethnic studies, geography, education, public health and environmental sciences to several different Berkeley schools and colleges.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu\/people\/long-le-khac\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Long Le-Khac<\/a>, an assistant professor of ethnic studies and the first member of the cluster, put the rationale behind the cohort\u2019s hiring plainly: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/opa.berkeley.edu\/campus-data\/uc-berkeley-quick-facts\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Forty percent<\/a>\u00a0of the undergraduate student body at Berkeley is Asian American. We [had] maybe 10 scholars across campus who are specifically trained in Asian American studies and can offer those classes. That\u2019s ridiculous. The need for Pacific Islander studies was even more stark.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over\u00a050 years ago, students went on strike at UC Berkeley\u00a0demanding\u00a0formal research and teaching of Asian American, Black, Chicano&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-164885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}