Conference gives S. Asian educators forum
to exchange ideas, experiences By
CHAMPA BILWAKESH
CAMBRIDGE,
Mass. - The seed for the Diasporic Torches Ablaze conference was born from the
desire of three educators during a Memorial Day weekend road trip to
Toronto.
Vijay Prashad at the conference, Nov 2003
Masum Momaya was one of the core people in the team that
organized the Nov. 8 conference. Its mission was to draw upon the "insightful
and innovative work that many South Asian educators in the U.S. do," she
said.
"South Asian educators are often isolated in terms of support and
lack of a forum to exchange ideas about the challenges and opportunities,"
Momaya said. "We wanted to create this space and provide platforms for people to
talk about their experiences, both formally through presentations and informally
through discussions and activities."
The conference - the first of its
kind locally - was held under the auspices of Harvard University's Graduate
School of Education at the Gutman Conference Center in Cambridge. It drew 120
attendees from all over the country.
"We had substantial representation
from both K-12 educators and those in higher education," Momaya said.
Presenters talked about how they have used their knowledge, background
and tools when faced with an education system that can be rigid and a student
body that often has little or no awareness of Asia, and a lack of adequate
resources.
Speakers included:
*Alis Sandosharaja, who grew up in
Washington, D.C., and found that the privilege of being Indian gave her a leg-up
to succeed in ways that would not have been accessible to her as a child of
working-class parents;
*Maya Tyagarajan, who brings the story of India's
partition to her students at the Windsor School in Boston in a course that
straddles history, politics and literature; and
*Sonia Arora, who read
Arabic poetry and Arundati Roy's essay "Algebra of Infinite Justice" to her
students at a private Jewish School in upstate New York in the days following
9/11.
*Arati Shastry, who talked about her experience at the Maya Angelou
Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., where she has used social justice and
advocacy in her curriculum to empower urban, African-American
students.
Shastry spoke of her desire to give back to her students what
she has been privileged to receive as a child of South Asian
immigrants.
The afternoon of the conference was devoted to workshops on
topics that ranged from developing a course on critical issues confronting
Asian-Pacific American youth, to running for educational political
office.
"The conference was a great way to network with other South Asian
educators and I found that there are many other people like me out there,
dealing with the same issues," said Vidya Shivan, who teaches at the Academy of
the Pacific Rim in Hyde Park. "I really would like to see this conference
continue as an annual thing."
The conference keynote address was
delivered by Vijay Prashad, associate professor of international studies at
Trinity College. Focusing on the passing of Edward Said, the author of several
books on Orientalism, Prashad opended his remarks by remembering the noted
professor's distrust of the ways in which Western imperialism celebrates South
Asians' traditions as long as they remain "collaborators."
Prashad said
evangelical imperialism in the United States is trying to recruit academics to
be at the service of the U.S. government. He pointed to the push to make Title
VI funds (fellowships granted in foreign language and area studies such as
African-American, post-colonial and gender studies) be put to a more "practical"
use, such as translations that would provide intelligence for national security.
Similarly, Indian organizations that promote ethnic parochialism mask
class dynamics among South Asians and use Indian culture as a tool to exclude
minorities within the community, he said. Prashad singled out the Hinduja
Foundation, which he characterized as being mired in scandals, and the Infinity
Foundation in the United States, which funds research of Indic studies, mainly
those on Hinduism.
Lastly, he said, by essentializing South Asians and
calling them a model minority, the system limits their expertise to their
culture and creates "ghettos of knowledge."
"Racism," he maintains, "has
morphed into the condescension of multiculturalism."
