Asian Groups Unite in Debate

A heated debate on the e-mail list of the Harvard-Radcliffe Chinese Students Association (CSA) regarding the current Japanese prime minister’s unwillingness to apologize for sex crimes against the Chinese during World War II prompted a discussion yesterday about tensions within Harvard’s Asian community.

About a dozen people from the CSA, the Korean Association (KA) and the Asian American Association gathered in Ticknor Lounge for the talk, titled “Our Generation’s Perceptions of Different Asian Ethnicities.”

CSA President Lydia N. Lo ’09 said before the forum there would not be “a focus on the China-Japan issue” at the event, even though it was prompted by the CSA e-mail discussion thread. She stressed instead an emphasis on the greater East Asian community.

The bulk of the early discussion, however, still centered around recent comments by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who refuses to acknowledge that women were forced to work in military brothels during the war.

“I think when one group of people’s past has inflicted a lot of damage on another group of people, it’s always kind of strange to talk about it,” said Daniel C. Suo ’10, the CSA’s associate finance chair.

After the discussion about the e-mail debate, the conversation shifted to a broader discussion about the role of different East Asian groups on campus.

Potential for more collaboration among East Asian student organizations at Harvard was a main focus.

“The KA board has been actively discussing how other organizations on campus view us as exclusive,” said William Cho ’08, the organization’s educational/political chair. “We’re self-conscious of that fact, but there’s a lack of action taken.”

Cho proposed the idea of an e-mail list for multiple cultural organization board members to remedy that segregation, generating an overwhelmingly positive response from the attendees.

“If we’re really trying to help along this process of understanding each other better, something as simple as board lists can bring us so much utility,” Suo said.

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.