The UNC Asian American Center (AAC) is celebrating its opening with a kickoff film screening and virtual panel discussion event on Thursday, September 10.

Since 1994, Asian American student activists have fought for permanent on-campus resources, dedicated staff members, and a physical space on campus for all students to learn about and engage with Asian American identities.

After 25 years, the AAC was approved by the Board of Trustees in January and endorsed by UNC’s Office of the Provost in July.

Now, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the center is getting ready to host their first virtual event this Thursday. The center’s goal is to help cultivate the Asian American community at and around Carolina by helping to “facilitate dialogue, further scholarly exploration and promote interpersonal growth.”

Dr. Heidi Kim is the center’s Director and an associate professor in the English and Comparative Literature Department at UNC.

(Dr. Heidi Kim, AAC Director)

While there may not be a physical building to open or a ribbon to cut right now, Kim said opening a center is a really big and exciting endeavor – even in a virtual world.

“Right now I feel I very heavy responsibility,” Kim said. “I have to build the infrastructure of the center and make sure it’s really on a sound footing for the future. So everything that I do, I think of not just the present needs, but five years out – 10 years out. Likewise, when it comes to the programming and events, I feel a very broad responsibility to the campus and wider community. So I want to make sure this is an extremely inclusive space.”

Kim said Asian America is very diverse – therefore one of her missions is to make sure the AAC has adequate representation and feels like safe space for all peoples.

“This is a center for anyone who is sincerely interested in learning more about Asian America and Asian American issues,” Kim said. “So we certainly hope it will feel like a home for Asian American students, faculty and staff – but likewise we want it to be a place where everyone can come to learn about these things.”

Despite the pandemic, the time is right for establishing a center for Asian Americans at Carolina. Kim said the Asian American population of the state has grown exponentially in recent decades, with an increase of 85 percent between 2000 and 2010 and a nearly 50 percent increase since 2017. At Carolina, 17 percent of all students as of fall 2019 identify as Asian or Asian American.

Lynne Chen is one of those students. Chen is a senior at UNC and one of the center’s student leaders – serving as the Senior Advisor for the Asian American Center Campaign.

UNC’s Asian American Center Campaign Team was formed in May of 2019, when a team of Asian American students and alumni came together with the vision of creating an Asian American Center on campus.

Chen’s role is to provide guidance to other student members and to focus on fundraising enough money to open a physical center by the fall of 2021.

In a drive that began last summer, the student-led Asian American Center Campaign team has raised more than half of its $1.2 million-dollar goal for 2020. The amount needed to fully endow the center is $5 million.

Chen said her personal journey with this campaign stemmed from her own upbringing, growing up in a small town with less than a one percent Asian American population.

“Growing up, I didn’t really get to explore the Asian American part of identity, and when I got to Carolina’s campus, there wasn’t one location that I could go to, to learn more about my identity and to talk to people who could understand the shared struggles of Asian Americans,” Chen said.

During her time at UNC, Chen said she has met many other Asian American students and alumni like herself who are facing or have faced similar struggles with identity and inclusion. She said this long-standing problem will finally begin to be remedied with the creation of the AAC.

“Things that were problems 25 years ago should not still be problems today,” Chen said. “I think that’s what the center means to me – is that students who come after I graduate can come to this center and feel welcomed by the university and feel safe and feel like there’s a place that should have been here for however long students have felt un-included at Carolina.”

The center’s first event will be a live-stream conversation about the documentary “I’m Not Racist … Am I?” at 7 p.m. on September 10. The event kicks off ‘Anti-Blackness and Alliance: A Series on Asian-Black Race Relations,’ co-sponsored by the Carolina Asia Center.

For more information on the Asian American Center and its kickoff event this Thursday, or to donate to the center, click here.

Lead photo courtesy of UNC-Chapel Hill.

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