Professors Elaine Chiu and Phil Lee were selected to present on a panel together this past October at the 25th Anniversary Symposium and Celebration of the Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA School of Law.
The symposium was an extraordinary gathering of scholars, students, advocates, and practitioners to reflect on the past, present, and future of Critical Race Studies. And as Professor Lee puts it, the opportunity to present was a big “bucket list” item as a critical race scholar.
The theme of their panel was Race, Space and Law: Perspectives from Asian American Critical Race Theory. Professor Chiu discussed how anti-Asian hate crimes often occur in spaces where Asian people are predictably present: Chinatowns, take out restaurants, laundromats, and massage parlors. She suggested that we pay more attention to these spaces as possible evidence of motive as we broaden mainstream conceptions of hate crimes to include anti-Asian hate and bias.
Professor Lee shared an illuminating legal history demonstrating how courts have conceived of certain types of spaces along a White/non-White binary, which constructed Asian Americans as non-White. He analyzed judicial opinions such as Justice Harlan’s oft-cited dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson as well as the opinions in People v. Hall and Lum v. Rice.
Also on the panel were Professor Vivian Louie, a sociologist by training and Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, and Chris Kwok, a community organizer and Adjunct Professor at Hunter College.
The panel was an incredible experience. Professors Chiu and Lee were in conversation with groundbreaking icons in Asian American Critical Race Theory such as Professors Bob Chang, Jerry Kang, and Jack Chin, who were in the audience, as well as other scholars and students. With not just one, but two, law faculty members featured, St. John’s Law made its mark at this historic event.
