Gary Okihiro

In the late 1960s, Asian American students protested on college campuses for the establishment of Asian American studies (AAS). 1 At the 1979 annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Los Angeles, Doug Lee, a new doctorate in the history of modern China, 2 proposed a professional organization for "Asian/Pacific American Studies."Though many of the Asian / Asian American scholars present were skeptical of the need for such an organization, Lee held a conference on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in November 1980 at the University of Washington, where he was teaching.That gathering became the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) in 1982. 3 Also in Seattle, forty-four years after the initial conference, AAAS held its largest meeting ever, with 1,421 attendees, in April 2024, while turning down a record number of submissions for lack of space.The association's development, programs, and activities are the result of the concerted effort, sacrifice, and vision of many.In this essay, I acknowledge Gary Okihiro for advancing AAAS in its formative years through his actions to support research and scholarship.The association got off to a slow start as there was no plan after the first conference.Doug Lee took boxes of materials to Sucheng Chan at UC Berkeley, where a second conference was held in 1982. 4Don Nakanishi held the third conference, at UCLA, in October 1984, where I first met Gary Okihiro.It had been fifteen years since AAS began.If the association was to develop, it needed to be more than an occasional conference

Association (psychology · Psychotherapist · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Medicine · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Gerontology

• Bearing Dreams, Shaping Visions

  Chris Friday, Linda A Revilla•Western Historical Quarterly•1995

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