Interviewee: Sumun Pendakur

Interviewer(s): Divya Aikat

Date: August 13, 2024

Location: Burbank, CA

Transcriber: Divya Aikat

Length: 1:15:11

Divya Aikat [00:02]
Hello, my name is Divya Aikat. Today's date is August 15, 2024. I'm located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, and I'm here today with Dr. Sumun Pendakur. She's a former member and then Chair of the Asian American Advisory Board at Northwestern and a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategist, consultant and speaker, as well as the founder of Sumun Pendakur Consulting. Sumi, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling in from today?

Sumun Pendakur [00:34]
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Divya, for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Hi everyone. My name is Sumun Pendukur. Everyone calls me Sumi, and I'm dialing in to you from Los Angeles, specifically Burbank, California today. Did you also want me to do a little bit of an intro too, Divya?

Divya Aikat [00:52]
Yes, that would be great.

Sumun Pendakur [00:54]
So, Divya did a great job already, but I have spent about 25 years in the field of social justice and racial equity work, originally coming up through cultural centers in universities and eventually becoming a Chief Diversity Officer and then a Chief Learning Officer. I am a mom of two, an 11-year-old and a 5-year-old, and I'm married to an actor who is also Asian American, specifically South Asian American. And that is a tiny bit about me in a nutshell. I'm looking forward to talking about more.

Divya Aikat [01:25]
Wonderful, so am I. So to begin, I wanted to talk a little bit about your identity-based experiences and the ways that it might inform your advocacy work. So anything that you would like to share about your upbringing, your values, any transformative experiences you may have had, would be welcomed as we're interested in how background can inform interest in Asian American Studies and your current passions.

Sumun Pendakur [01:55]
Yeah, I think that's such a great question to kick us off with, right? Because life history, there's no way it can't, in some way, impact world view, right? [Divya: Right.] And the creation of, how do you think about the world and how it operates. So, I'm the daughter of immigrants. My parents immigrated back in 1969 from Karnataka, South India. And I would say that that's, you know, in terms of formative, foundational experiences, that's definitely one of them. I think many children of immigrants can agree with that. The idea of holding differing perspectives of crossing borders and boundaries from a very, very young age, both literally and figuratively, and holding the complexity of transnational identities. So, I grew up also in a professor's home. My dad is a Marxist political economist of mass communications. And so for his research, we would often go back and forth to India, back to our very, very rural part of India in Karnataka. And being intensely enmeshed with family, family politics, family dialogues, all of those kinds of things was really, really informative to me. So, I had a very strong sense of an upbringing as Indian and American, both really strongly rooted in being a Kannadiga, a lot of joy and love and pride in our language and stories and mythology, etc., etc. I mentioned my dad is a Marxist political economist. My mom was a stay at home mom for many years, and then became a preschool teacher. So we've got educators at both ends of that spectrum. [Divya: Mhm] And of course, you grew up in a household of educators, well, you're going to be exposed to all of that, right? From reading and critical thinking to more political world views, my dad's politics are deeply influential to me and also to my brother. I'm a big sister. I should have mentioned that. That's a big one, big part of our identities, right?

And so growing up as sort of what I would call a campus brat: going to campus, growing up on campus, eating ice cream on campus, going to film festivals, and political talks. You know, one of my earliest memories on campus was when my dad participated in bringing Who Killed Vincent Chin?, the documentary, to campus when it was newly released, and seeing that, right, not so long after Vincent Chin was murdered. So these kinds of formative experiences. And, of course, campus life, transnational life, and then growing up in the household of a Marxist political economist, and having the sort of world view which was really questioning of the very nature of power and structures. So, some of my earliest formative dinner table conversations I can vividly remember were about Nicaragua and the Contras and Sandinistas and US intervention. So, thinking about the US not as a benevolent force, but as an imperialist force, even if I didn't always have that language, was sort of always in the water from really, really early childhood and onwards.

The other thing I'd add, Divya, is that I also grew up in Chicago, right outside of Chicago in fact, in Evanston, Illinois, which is the first suburb to have integrated outside of the city of Chicago. And you can really feel that growing up in Evanston. It's very heavily Black and white, very few others, back when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. And also, you could see the economic segregation, which of course, led to racial segregation. So much more White in the North side of Evanston, much more Black on the South side of Evanston. Then, right. Dynamics have changed a little bit now, but even then, not so much. So that has fundamentally shaped me, as well, is growing up, going to school. We moved to the South side of Evanston when I was 10, and so all of my schooling was with heavily dominant Black and White communities. I mean, nearly 50/50, right? So Blackness, Whiteness, racial dynamics, racialized economics were sort of always present. And then talking through that, how did it show up in hierarchies of power, in school, bullying, all kinds of things, in the social structures? That was also dinner table conversations, and I was really grateful to have a place to be able to talk about some of those things when I didn't always understand it, right. [Divya: Right.] So those, I'd say, were some of the formative pieces. Was around really big, big picture, imperialism, racism, economics, transnationalism. But all in a skinny, Brown, glasses-wearing, braces-wearing, Indian American body.

Divya Aikat [06:45]
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for talking about that kind of positionality in the various places and spaces that have shaped your perspectives today. I also grew up a campus brat, and I think that there's a certain mindset and that analytic that comes with that. And kind of elaborating, I was wondering if you could explain a little bit about growing up, or in your current work, the visibility or invisibility of your South Asian identity?

Sumun Pendakur [7:20]
Absolutely. Oh, that's a great question. So, you know, I said earlier that I very strongly, growing up, identified as Indian, Indian American. And I'll tell you two very specific stories about this. You know, of course, I knew India is in Asia, and therefore I was of Asian descent. I was involved in, for example, the Asian Club in our high school. We had 2800 students in my high school. All 35 Asians were in Asian Club. So out of 2800 students, literally anybody, we were like, "Are you from Iran? You're in Asian Club. Let's go." We had expansive notions: West Asia to Southeast Asia and everything in between, right? But coming to understand myself as an Asian American, that process really came to life for me in college. Not just through struggle and through the movement for Asian American Studies, but also through reading and studying and debating and all those kinds of things. So being Indian American fully informs my understanding of being Asian American as a sociopolitical identity rooted in solidarity and struggle. But it's not been without its own conflicts, right? So, for example, in college, there were definitely other Desi students, South Asian American students, who could not understand why I was so heavily involved in the struggle for Asian American Studies. I was also involved in the Indian Students Association. I performed in every culture show. I was also the head of the South Asian sociopolitical organization on campus at the time called Lotus, Leading Opportunities Towards Understanding and Solutions. And we did conferences on the diaspora, on South Asian sexualities. So, it was really rooted in in a very strong South Asian and South Asian American cultural and political identity. But there always seemed to be this barrier around, both Desis as well as East Asian Americans, sometimes not fully understanding what the power perspective and positionality is of a South Asian American in the broader struggle for Asian American Studies. And that kept showing up, right? So it's not a one-time thing.

When eventually I went on to become the Director for Asian American and Pacific Islander Student Affairs at the University of Southern California. I held that role for almost eight years, working in that center. And the number of specifically Desi students, Indian American students, other South Asian American students, who would say, "Oh, why are you the Director?" [laughs] East Asian American students would also say, "Why are you the director?" [Divya: Oh my god.] And, even though that's frustrating, I don't blame students for asking those questions. It is the educational structure which is fundamentally white supremacist around us that allows us to not see each other as part and parcel of a larger continuum and a larger community. But is it frustrating as hell? Absolutely! [Divya laughs] To continue to have these same sorts of divide and conquer narratives. Now, you know, I was in college 30 years ago, so that's a long time. And this is nothing new either, right? Because it is so entrenched in US education for people to not understand each other. Where we come from, what our roots are, what our commonalities might be, what our shared struggle and shared solidarity might be. Because then, if we really understood that, we would rip it all down. [Divya: Yeah.] Right?

So, you know those are some ways that my Indianness, my brownness, which is very visible- I know this is an oral interview, but I am a medium- to dark-toned brown woman with dark brown eyes. I wear kajal eyeliner, every day I have for my entire life. Through college, I used to wear bindi, pottu, you know, the red dot on my forehead. So, I have never shied away from being very strongly tied to being Desi, right? [Divya: Yeah.] And I use Indian American, Desi, South Asian American, you know, as overlapping terms, not the same. But they're all really important terms for me. And I think one of the strengths that we have as Desis, as Indian Americans, as South Asian Americans, is storytelling. We all come from incredibly rich oral and theater storytelling traditions, and that's one of our strengths and our skills, and that's been something that's kept me rooted and grounded.

Divya Aikat [12:04]
Yeah, thank you for sharing. I think that's beautiful in the ways that you've been able to embrace that. And then also those perspectives are very important about the various racial understandings outside and then even inside the Asian American community. So yeah, speaking more about your experience in college, can you tell me about how you got involved with the Asian American Advisory Board?

Sumun Pendakur [12:34]
Oh, for sure. So you know, I mentioned to you Divya, that out of the 2800 students in our high school, almost entirely divided between Black and white students, we had 35 students of Asian descent. I got to Northwestern. I went to Northwestern University for my undergrad. That was my alma mater. I started there in the fall of '94, and Northwestern at that time was about 21% Asian and Asian American. So I got onto campus and I was like, [sings] "Aaaah, what is this place?" [both laugh] It was phenomenal! I mean, there were multiple Asian American student orgs, including the Indian Students Association. There was obviously the Asian American Advisory Board, the AAAB, which was the umbrella org for all of those organizations at the time. There were organizations we could create. So, for example, you know, me and a couple of other friends got involved with LOTUS, which was again a much more critical political Desi organization. So, it was just a wealth of opportunities of involvement, of performance, of community, of finding people. And not to be uncritical, right, not that there weren't problems with the community, but it was so exciting. It was really, really exciting. And I lived on campus, even though I lived all of three miles away from my parents. I lived on campus, which was fantastic. Lived in a dorm in the International Studies Residential College. And, you know, I started off college as many Asian Americans, South Asian Americans do, as pre-med. And then by the end of the first week of college, I was no longer pre-med [both laugh], because I was like, "What is happening?" Dropped out of calculus and organic chemistry, and I'm so grateful I did, because then I started taking courses I was interested in. History classes, South Asian Studies classes, Middle East Studies classes, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Women's Studies classes, right? Anything that was interesting to me.

And then as I was starting to explore some more of that and getting involved and finding my place and all those things, this was already spring of 1995. And I was walking across campus one day, and there's a place at Northwestern called The Rock. It's sort of a central meeting spot. There's a huge boulder there, and people can paint it and color it and put flyers on it and do all kinds of stuff. But if you're at Northwestern, everyone knows The Rock. And there were students tabling at The Rock, and there was a table of Asian Americans handing out free t-shirts. So of course, as a college freshman, I was like, "I would like a free t-shirt. Thank you very much." Well, the student who was hosting the table that day was named Rob Yap. And at that time, spring of ‘95, he was the president of the Asian American Advisory Board. We struck up a conversation, and we got into just a confab about being Asian American and the value of Asian American Studies. And why is it that Northwestern with 21% Asian American students, was willing to take Asian American money, but not have Asian American Studies as a full rich field of study? All of those conversations, right? So, I was immediately, I mean, almost literally immediately involved, because it all made sense to me. What it did is it brought together all the different strands, of the ways I was thinking about the world, about what my nascent political identity as an Asian American was, building, again, not separate from my identity as a South Asian American, but fully inclusive of that identity into the question of institutional power, [Divya: Right.] which is who decides what the curriculum is and what students learn and how they learn it.

And of course, they're brilliant people, faculty members for example, on multiple committees who work on that year-round. And I have so much respect for them, and we can talk about this a little bit later, we also know how sometimes institutions are slow to change, right? That all, almost all, of the major changes in American universities have come about because of student agitation and student protest. Doesn't matter what issue it is, look at it. It's students. So that spring also launched the 23-day hunger strike for Asian American Studies at Northwestern. And I really want to be clear about this, Divya, that hunger strike didn't just come out of nowhere. Because sometimes people would be like, "Oh yeah, and then there were students, and then they had a hunger strike." And I'm like, oh no, there was quite a bit of organizing prior to that. Organizing is different from activism. Organizing is getting people involved, informing people, letting them know how they can be part of a broader process of change-making, trying to work with the administration, sending letters, getting petitions signed, doing research studies that Rob and other Asian Americans prior to him had submitted to the administration. They kept on getting rejected. And so, the hunger strike came out of a sense of like "We have to do something," a sense of desperation almost, of we've got to make people pay attention.

The hunger strike was complicated and difficult. It was cold because April in Chicago, sadly, is still cold. And students camped out at The Rock for 23 days. One student, Charles Chung, hunger struck for almost all of that time. Many students, hundreds of students, did solidarity strikes. You could sign up for one, two, or three days, more days if you wanted. And watching student passion and dedication and activism was really transformative for me. I did not hunger strike for 23 days, I did it for three days in a solidarity strike. I was still a freshman, still learning. But I also saw a lot of other things there too. So when you and I were chatting earlier, I told you that one day the Conservative Council showed up with boxes of pizzas to eat in front of the hunger strikers. And of course, it infuriated us as students, because you don't have to agree with everything everybody does. Obviously, no one would ever ask that. But to show up with pizzas in front of hungry students was such a slap in the face, and such a sad political stunt, right? [Divya: So cruel.] It's cruel, right? It's designed to inflame, and it's designed to almost like rage bait. We didn't have that language back then of rage baiting. What it was, of course, was white supremacist power in action. So we were witnessing that from ground. We were also witnessing institutional ignorance. We were witnessing the administration ignoring our demands. So we got to the end of the hunger strike, and at that point, Northwestern under the leadership of then President Bienin, agreed to a few courses, but not a full program of study, which is what we were articulating and advocating for, and what the student leaders like Frida Lin and Rob Yap and Grace Liu and Susan Wu had all been working towards. So what's funny, of course, is that you learn a lot in a moment like that. You hope that once you do something like that, the institution's like, [sings] "Here you go! Here's Asian American Studies. Let's go!" It's not like that, right? It is continued struggle and organizing and learning and pushing and pushing and pushing. So that's how I got involved in that complicated, messy, beautiful spring of 1995, through a t-shirt, a conversation, and then watching activism and organizing in action.

Divya Aikat [20:36]
Yeah, wow, that's a really incredible history of how Asian American Studies came to Northwestern. I wanted to ask during the hunger strike, what was your experience being involved in that, and what did it mean to you to do that, to take that stance and work towards that?

Sumun Pendakur [21:02]
So as a hunger striker, I only did it for three days. And, you know, by the time I was a senior, I was the last hunger striker left there, because it was more of the older students who had done it. Like when I was a freshman, it was the juniors and seniors doing that. But I think it's like anything, whether you're younger or older, when you witness people taking action in concert, in solidarity, across differences. It's not like every single person in the movement for Asian American Studies agreed about everything, but we knew that getting this program was critically important for not just our community, but for the educational experiences of all students. Watching students strategize was incredible, Divya. So, you know, there were, remember this was- we had basic email and some Listservs, but there were no cell phones, no texting, you know, nothing, right? No apps that could help in the communication. So it was phone trees and flyers and chalking, things like that. So, you're trying to organize a campus and a movement in the face of an administration that was not necessarily swayed. And so students were constantly meeting, constantly writing. They were working to alert news media locally and nationally and internationally. We got letters of support. The Asian American Advisory Board got letters of support from Yale, from institutions in the Philippines, because all of those struggles are connected, right? So watching them leverage every tool they could to try to get the word out that this was happening, to bring those letters of support forward. Both to give to the administration, but also to keep on mobilizing the students who were involved. We were students at a demanding, rigorous institution who were putting a lot of things on hold to be involved. And by the way, remember, this 23-day hunger strike was one of many actions over a seven-year period to finally get Asian American Studies. Many of us got our grades dinged, our GPAs dinged. And of course, we'd all argue that that was completely worth it to do that over a long period of time. But I mean, witnessing that in action from the older students was really transformational. You know, I really respected them so much and seeing their ethic of care in action, was pretty wild.

Divya Aikat [23:37]
That's very cool. Yeah, I think that's so inspirational, and kind of speaks to a lot of the reasons why this work is done, is for community and to build community and understand the people around you. So, thinking also about the Asian American Advisory Board, could you tell me a little bit more about the missions and goals of this group? And the ways that it developed, the interactions that you had with the organization, and that space on campus?

Sumun Pendakur [24:16]
Absolutely. So, the Asian American Advisory Board was designed as the umbrella organization for the approximately 10 to 12 Asian American organizations at the time: Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Korean, etc., etc., right? And AAAB really took the stance that we would help advance the political considerations for Asian Americans on the campus, that we would leave quite a bit of the cultural programming to the individual cultural Asian American organizations that we would support every single year when organizations had to go up for funding renewal. That we would show up in force, en masse, to present a united front, so that the almost entirely white Associated Student Government body wouldn't vote only for the organizations that their friends were in. Right? There was a reproductive quality there. In the same way when we look at tech in Silicon Valley and you think, "Hmm, why is it all dude bros? They keep hiring dude bros." [Divya laughs] This function of reproduction works everywhere. So, you know, we really took that very, very seriously. You know, by sophomore or junior year, I was the secretary of the org, and then by my senior year, I was the Chair, the head of the AAAB.

And one of the things that we did that I was really proud of is, in addition to serving as the umbrella, the sort of intra-communication source for multiple organizations, we also designed a really, really powerful Asian American History Month and Asian American Heritage Month. So, History Month in October of every year, and Heritage Month in May of every year, because Northwestern being on the quarter system could actually do Heritage Month in May, since the quarter didn't end till, you know, nearly the end of June. So, what we did is we'd coordinate with every single Asian American org, right, all of the cultural orgs, so that they were all required to program multiple events throughout the month. And then we would also put in sort of bigger ticket, higher profile speakers, political talks, all kinds of things. You know, we brought in one of the actors, for example, from the movie The Killing Fields. We brought in Denise Uyehara, who had this wonderful one-woman show called “Hello Sex Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels.” We brought in all kinds of things that were sort of trying to be cutting-edge, exploratory, explanatory, but to try to elevate the discourse around the complexity of what it is to be Asian American on campus or Asian American in the world, and then to pull together the cultural as well as the sociopolitical, right? So that we can have Tinikling and samosa night and, you know, Vietnamese Movie Night. And we can also have Mina Alexander, the award-winning poet, come to campus to read her poetries about transnationalism. So we could do all of that.

So, a lot of facilitating, designing, guiding, organizing, and then always with the thrust of trying to move Asian American Studies forward, that was always underneath everything that we did. So constantly meeting, getting more petitions signed, encouraging people to take student-taught courses. Whenever courses were approved by the administration, they were almost always taught by graduate students. So encouraging people to sign up for them, because we had to demonstrate demand, right? The administration said, "Well, we don't know if people are going to want to take these classes." And every class was full, Divya, every single one of them. And I was so grateful to these graduate students for giving of themselves. I mean, that's how I took “Asian American Feminisms.” That's how I took “South Asians in America,” right? Because graduate students created these courses that we could take.

Divya Aikat [28:19]
Yeah, I think that's very interesting to me. Especially with a lot of different institutions that we speak to, we see that there's a very strong distinction between cultural organizations and that organizing and then an academic organization or a more politicized push. And so that's really, really inspiring and unique, that you all were able to bring this together, not only as one of the parts, but as the root of all of these branches of Asian American Studies. So that's very cool.

Sumun Pendakur [29:00]
It was a really exciting time, you know.

Divya Aikat [29:02]
Yeah. Can you tell me more about the timeline of this Asian American Studies push? When did it begin? When was it actualized? And so on.

Sumun Pendakur [29:17]
Yeah, great question. So, let me think. Hunger strike was spring '95, and I want to say, almost two to three years prior, is when Asian American students at NU had begun the conversation and the initial pushes to the administration, right. They had put together a huge report benchmarking against other institutions around the validity and value of Asian American Studies. They'd gotten petitions signed. They'd met with the administration, so there had already been work in progress prior to spring '95 and then, of course, we had this partial success after the hunger strike. But over the next couple of years, we continue to demonstrate demand. We continue to meet with the administration, with, you know, Provost Larry Dumas, with President Bienen, with Vice President for Student Affairs, Peggy Barr, all of these folks.

And by the time we got to around '97, '98- Let me back up for a second. Before that, I really do also want to mention that a lot of this work was in coalition too. So, every single public action we had, every protest, every march, we would always mobilize with our partners. Particularly our partners in Casa Hispana, which was the Latino student organization at the time; BGALA, the Bisexual, Gay, And Lesbian Association, the queer student organization at the time; and FMO, For Members Only, the Black student organization. And with those partners, with the leaders of those organizations, with members. So, when you look at photos from all of our rallies, all of our protests, you'll actually see folks from lots of other communities, in the same way we showed up for them, right? That we were invested. Again, I don't want to glamorize or idealize it. There's plenty of people who didn't give two craps about any of this, but the folks who did came from multiple communities, and were invested in not just the success, but in breaking down really narrow constructs of teaching about what it means to be in the US, right? And US history, political science, sociology, everything, through the lens of Ethnic Studies.

Northwestern had a really, really strong Africana Studies program, and African American Studies program. And one of the things we were told is, "Well, we already have African American Studies, so we're probably not going to add another arena of study." And we're like, "That's great that you have African American Studies! And African American Studies is not Asian American Studies." So it's just, you know, funny things like that, where they would say things like, "Well, we've added Korean to the Chinese and Japanese languages," and we're like, "That's very nice. And the study of language is not Asian American Studies." Actually, eventually, we did get Hindi language added as a course of study because that was an interest to students. But again, language study, area studies, when they would say things like, "Well, we have East Asia area studies or Japan and China and South Asia Studies." Again, none of those are the same thing as Asian American Studies. And this is the sort of picture that kept on getting missed.

So that working coalition, the sustained work, the sustained communication, we kept on writing in the Daily Northwestern, which was the student newspaper. We also mobilized in multiple ways. And you know, maybe a little bit later on, we could talk about the Minority Election Forum and group power. Finally, by 1997, '98, Northwestern hired the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest college on campus. Now it's called Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and that dean, Dean Eric Sundquist, came from UCLA. UCLA has the oldest Asian American Studies program in the country. So for him, he was like, "No brainer, Asian American Studies is part of the curriculum." [Divya: Yeah.] And I can't tell you, Divya, having Dean Sundquist there, turned the knob, turned the needle for us, right? He was an ally in the administration, in the largest college, who understood deeply the value of Asian American Studies. And partnering with him is what, I mean, moved this into sort of like warp speed.

And so by '98 Northwestern had said, "Okay, we're willing to think about hiring a Program Director for Asian American Studies." It still had not been approved as a full program, but they wanted to see who they could get. And the original person that they were going to get was Dr. Lisa Lowe, phenomenal Asian Americanist. She came to campus; it was very exciting. Unfortunately, she backed out from the role for a variety of reasons. And so, by '99, when I graduated in June of '98, and we finally got Asian American Studies in 1999, and I remember people calling, saying, "It's done, Sumi. We got it, right?" Even friends of my parents calling and saying, "It's in the Daily Northwestern, it happened!" It was really, really exciting. Again, seven years that it took. And a lot of credit to a lot of folks along the way, and I will happily say, through sheer student persistence, not taking our eyes off the prize, of what we felt was the ultimate goal. And the first Program Director we got was, in fact, a sociologist at Northwestern, because Dr. Lisa Lowe had walked away from it. Dr. Aldon Morris, phenomenal African American sociologist. So funny to think that, in fact, our first Program Director was a Black man, and he did a phenomenal job. And it's gone on from there. So, if you can believe it, now it's 2024, this is the 25th anniversary of the founding of Asian American Studies at Northwestern. [Divya: Wow.] With amazing faculty, program directors, folks like Shalini Shankar, Nitasha Sharma, Ji-Yeon Yuh, Jinah Kim, wonderful, wonderful faculty who have given so much to students, to the advancement of Asian American Studies at Northwestern. And I feel very blessed to still be in relationship with them, right? I never got to learn from them, but I'm so grateful to them.

Divya Aikat [35:31]
Yeah, one thing that really has stood out to me about what you've been speaking about are these various coalition building efforts, and the fact that none of this is happening in isolation, not even within institutions. This is a national movement, but then also within various groups, people have multiple vested interests and calls to help others. And even what you're talking about, where your first program director was a Black sociologist within Asian American Studies. And so thinking about that kind of interracial, multiple-identity solidarity, could you tell me a little bit about what that organizing or community building has looked like, along with your experiences with the Minority Election Forum?

Sumun Pendakur [36:26]
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it was great. I have really vivid memories of us hosting planning meetings in various spaces. And FMO had the Black house, so we would go over there for meetings sometimes, right? Because they had their own space. Again, hard fought, hard won, nobody gave it to them. They had to get it from the administration from 1968 onwards. You know, the students, 1966 or '68, had to take over of the Bursars office at Northwestern, and they have a long and storied history of African American student participation and resistance there. So, lots of spaces to organize in, people to draw ideas from, and not just that, people to party with. We went to each other's dance parties. We went to each other's formals and socials and things like that. Right? Because there has to be life and joy and laughter and silliness in between all the organizing. But I did want to share, you know, when we talk about movement building and coalitions, one of the things we want to be thinking about is not just what do we get right now, but what are we trying to mobilize an entire organization toward? So, this is actually an idea that I came up with, maybe in '96 or '97 on campus, which was to bring together the leaders of these primary racial umbrella organizations: FMO, Casa Hispana, and us, AAAB -- Asian American Advisory Board.

In order to get the Associated Student Government, again, which was an almost entirely white decision-making body that had access to a huge amount of money at Northwestern, to pay attention to our community members' needs, and to treat us as an interest group and a voting block and somebody that they'd have to respect and respond to. So, we decided to host a series of forums, and we informed all the ASG candidates, Associated Student Government candidates, that they would need to come and present their platforms and answer questions from members from our coalition group, the Minority Election Forum, and that based on their responses, we would be writing a public endorsement in the daily Northwestern. And I'm not saying everybody cared how we decided we wanted to vote, and I'm not saying everyone even liked what our recommendations were, but it was an opportunity to use our leverage, our positionality, our roles as the leaders of these three primary racial umbrella organizations. To say, if you're going to have access to that much money and you're an almost entirely white decision-making body, what are you doing that's of benefit to our communities? How can we better partner together? How do you use your money equitably, fairly? How do you make sure it's not just the same stuff? “Oh, we gave money for Dillo Day (annual music festival at Northwestern).” Okay, great. [Divya laughs] What else? Right?

So we did that for two years, '97 and '98 where we wrote full endorsements in the Daily Northwestern. I'll see if I have any of those clippings for you too, to basically say, "These are the candidates we're endorsing and why." And by the way, it wasn't like we always agreed -- those of us who were the leaders in this coalition. We had to sit there, debate it out, figure out who we thought were going to be the candidates who would best advance our needs. And some could argue, "Well, what's the big deal? It's just Student Government." Student Government has access to a ton of power and a ton of money, and if they were going to make decisions, we wanted them to make decisions that could serve us as well.

Divya Aikat [40:02]
Yeah, I think that's so important and such a wonderful way to show that multiracial mobilizing and that power in fighting against a primarily white voting body. So yeah, continuing along those same lines, in talking about the various strategies that you all were using within the Asian American Advisory Board to push these messages through campus. In our pre-interview, we talked a little bit about ideas of reform versus revolution. Do we work within the institution? Do we vote people that we would like? Do we have these meetings and sit with these meetings peacefully, or take more extreme measures, such as, say, the hunger strike. And so thinking about both of these ideas, how have you seen them play out, and what times was one more effective or the other? What are your opinions about how reform and revolution tie together or balance each other out?

Sumun Pendakur [41:09]
I don't think you can talk to anyone in any kind of organizing group and not find the constant tension of the dialectic or possibilities around both reform and revolution within any organizing right? So if I think about, if you think about any groups you're in who are trying to make change, there's always going to be folks who are like everything from, "Well, here's how we're going to work within and these kinds of meetings we're going to have, and this how we're going to structure it," all the way to "Burn it down," right? [Divya: Yes. [laughs]] The entire spectrum exists and so much of it is situational, so much of it is contextual, so much of it is about timing, so much of it is about what risks people are willing to bear, right? Because some of this is riskier than others of it. I will say that all of us took risks in our own way. I do remember that by my junior year, I got called into the Dean's office, at that time. This is before Dean Sundquist had come. To ask me about my involvement, to so-called check on my grades, those kinds of things. Which felt really, really intrusive and odd. I'd never been called into the Dean's office before. It didn't make sense. [Divya: Yeah.] I was a good student, you know. So it seemed like a little bit of a hot breath down my neck, kind of feeling, right. So I think that if there's any kind of organizing work that contravenes the sort of institutional ethos- and I would say not even contravenes. If you look at most universities, their mission statements should be guiding documents, but we don't always see those mission statements brought to life. And I would argue that the work of student organizers, like those of us involved in organizing for Asian American Studies, is all about bringing mission statements to life, right? But that doesn't always feel that way on a campus.

So going back to your question about reform versus revolution, I think those tensions agree in every group. Doesn't matter if it's a group of 10, a group of 500. And so, few things here, both are needed. I wouldn't say only incremental change is needed, and I wouldn't say only revolutionary change is needed. For me, I would prefer full revolution and dismantling of all supremacist structures, [Divya laughs] and I know that if we're going to bring people along, we need to be able to meet them where they are, so they can take on the pieces that they feel they can take on, right? And that's okay. That is okay. At least that's my opinion on it, right? So, teaching people the skills and tools to ask critical questions, to have the knowledge to be able to see the structures around them that create the sources of oppression or the discomfort, that's part and parcel. Some would call that reform. Part of me calls that revolutionary, right, to be able to sort of expose the matrix – to use an older movie as a reference point – to expose it for what it is, [Divya: Yeah] is tough. And then to be able to build the space for people to go through their own processing. Because, you know, I'm sure all of us have talked to folks who, even if it's been exposed, they choose to go back to the comfort of their old paradigm, because it's easier. It's simply easier. So, this is where I'm at on this, Divya. If we want to get to revolution, we've got to make space for people to meet us on that journey. And we also have to very clearly define what revolution actually means. If we're gonna also talk about revolution, then we also need to be able to clearly define what that revolution entails, what sacrifices it takes, what we think is going to be different on the other side of revolution, right? Because I've also certainly worked with students and others in my own experience, where there's not a clear vision of what happens on the other side of "Burn it down." And if we don't have that, then, you know, out of that wreckage can come all kinds of sort of ugly, transmogrified things. So I think this clarity, the ability to bring people along the journey, figure out what risks people are willing to bear, how hard they're willing to push, and to meet them where they are.

And this is why organizing is so hard, because that's a lot, and that's a lot if this was our full-time jobs. But for us as students, we were kids, we were 18- to 22-year-olds, almost all of us. Basically, young adults growing into adults with almost no technology, trying to move a giant ship through our little pickaxes. And it wasn't always pretty. There were definitely tensions, and some of those tensions, again, not only came from the pushback from the administration, the pushback from other students, pushback from white supremacist students, whatever it is. Pushback from our own Asian American students always hurt the most. Students saying things like, "Well, I don't care about this, so what are you doing? This doesn't matter to me." And we'd say, "It's okay if it doesn't matter to you. This, on some levels, isn't even about you as the individual. If you don't want to learn it about it's okay. But why wouldn't you want this to be available for other people to learn, Asian American or non-Asian American?" So really trying to push against that really narrow frame of transactionalism, individualism. Those are the things that rip apart all movements, right?

Divya Aikat [46:56]
Yeah, I think those are such great points, and I think it's so important to highlight, even within a group, even within an activist group that has a more radical ideology and framework, there are still all of these tensions and all of these things to work through within ourselves. Before we're meeting with the institutions, what are we planning? These various group dynamics as well. Kind of along those lines, thinking about all the work that you've done at Northwestern in your time with the Asian American Advisory Board, what were the most rewarding moments and what were the most challenging?

Sumun Pendakur [47:43]
Okay, let me start with challenge first, so that we can go to joy. Challenging was probably what a lot of students experience in longer-term organizing work, is that there's lots of moments of defeat or feeling of setback or exhaustion. I mean, the sheer number of 1 AM and 2 AM meetings, the long-term planning, the feeling of, "Is this ever going to change, and can we get more people involved?" It's not always easy to get folks involved, particularly at institutions like Northwestern, where a lot of people are like, "I don't have time for that. I have to go work on getting my A. I'm still pre-med," [laughs]. So that feeling of consistently trying to mobilize. And so, we tried lots of creative things. You know, when we hosted the Midwest Asian American Student Union Conference on campus, the MAASU conference, I think it was either '96 or '97, we had an extra few hundred Asian American students on campus. Well, we mobilized them into sign-making and doing a march up and down Sheridan Boulevard, you know, the main street in front of Northwestern University. Right again, whatever resources we had, but that sort of constant pull while you're also trying to have a life, and maybe go on dates and find a boyfriend, and also go to a party, and also attempt to do your homework, and keep your grades up, and be involved in multiple clubs and organizations. There were times where it felt really, really tough.

But the joyful part in it was doing it in shared cause, in community, in seeing older students and younger students come together and to keep on strategizing. I mean, Divya, you know, it's like 25 years since the start of the program. That means we're at 32 years since the initial ideas started getting going for the program [Divya: Yeah], and so many students have benefited now from Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. That's a beautiful thing. I mean, that gives me infinite joy. Organizing, building coalitions brought me joy. Having fun with our AAAB team members. We used to have this program at NU called the Sex Olympics. My team won! AAAB for the win! [Both laugh] I think it was like a fake orgasm competition or something. I mean, our team did great, you know, not gonna lie. So doing that kind of stuff. We hosted AAAB formals every year, right? Got beautifully dressed up. Formals are a big thing at Northwestern, you know, people get dressed up and go for a dance party with a DJ and food and all that kind of stuff. So, still in community, but also just fully living across all axes, felt amazing. And then, of course, the fundamental joy, getting that call in '99 saying, "It's on the cover of The Daily Northwestern. Northwestern has Asian American Studies, wow." Yeah, there's nothing like it.

Divya Aikat [50:56]
That's incredible. I think that along the journey, there are obviously ups and downs, but having pushed through and been able to have that, part luck, part pure effort, of getting that and having that available for generations of people to benefit from. And that's just amazing. So, thinking about this work, now that we've talked about how you have kind of seen this through to the end, Northwestern now has an Asian American Studies major.

Sumun Pendakur [51:36]
A minor for all those years and finally became a full major in 2016.

Divya Aikat [51:43]
Oh, wow. Oh, I didn't know that. [Sumi: Yes.] That's incredible, yeah.

Sumun Pendakur [51:46]
And that again came through sustained effort by the faculty and the students over there through those many years to get it to become a full major.

Divya Aikat [51:55]
Yeah, I think in schools, there are these very particular waves that happen, and of this student push. Actually, talking about that, I did want to ask, do you have advice on sustainability for groups? So this can both mean broader sustainability in terms of, we've talked about institutions waiting students out. How do we sustain and move through and create that longevity beyond the four years that we're typically at an institution, and then also self-sustainability, amongst all of these challenges and difficulties, how do you keep going?

Sumun Pendakur [52:37]
So if I think about sustainability of the movement, I'd offer a couple different things. One is around succession planning and organizational memory, which I think unfortunately, many, many student organizations are not that great at. I think what happens when we see so many student orgs is that it's, "Well, they did that last year, let's just do it again. They did it last year, let's just do it again." There's a lot of replication and not a lot of building and growth. And again, I'm empathetic to that. At the end of the day, they're students. I was a student, right? You get tired, you have other things on your plate. But the piece about lack of organizational memory is really detrimental, particularly for organizations that are attempting to move the needle on something in particular, right? So, you know, maintaining great files in whatever way, shape, or form. Back then, our files were massive binders. Thankfully, you can put everything in, you know, some sort of shared drive now and easily pass things on, but then people actually still have to reference those and utilize them, right? That's a big one. It's not just passing on a data file and running. I'd also say, in addition to maintaining that organizational memory and history, I mean, you and I have been talking now, and I've given you dates, times, people's names, right? Those matter, those matter. And when those sort of fade into dust, the edges become blurry, and we lose sight of- What it becomes is the more reified version of the students did this amazing thing, and then Asian American Studies happened. [sing-song] Bum bum bum! And that's not what it is. It's actually much more messy and complicated and sticky and longer than just: Hunger strike. Program. Right? Yeah, and that's what universities often do. "Oh, this happens all across countries. The students took over the building and then they had racial justice." [laughs] And that's not the way things work. So we need that organizational memory and the stories, to go back to one of our pieces of being rooted as South Asian Americans, the oral history and the written history, to be able to say, "This didn't come overnight. This came because of participation, hard work, and solidarity."

The other thing is, I think a lot of student leaders could benefit from learning more about succession planning, right? So when I left the org, I had already been training up folks who would take it on for the next year. Rashmi and Vishal took on some great leadership for the year that followed me, right? So who is going to not just take on the leadership, but who will continue because they've been involved enough to understand which pieces need to continue being worked on? Right. It's not just, oh well, we got these random students are going to lead the org, but who have no connection to what's come before. Again, we miss part of the story there. One of my committee members, His name was Tedd Vanadilok. He went on, eventually, years and years later, to become one of the first Directors for Asian American Student Affairs at Northwestern, because we had no support structures. There was no student support structure for Asian American students, besides what we created and what a few faculty members would give us. It's not like we had Asian American Student Affairs, an Asian American house or center. It was by us, for us, on really every level. It's very, very different than it is on many campuses now.

So, org memory, oral history, data, data passing down, succession planning, the next generation of leaders being ready to train the following generation of leaders. Those would be some of the things I'd say in terms of the sustainability of a movement, or a struggle, or an organization that's looking to advance a particular cause, right? The other thing I talk about, I would say, is: What are orgs going for? So, we see this happen a lot, where organizations throw a lot of events. And then those events are done. And I'm not saying events aren't important, right? We got to do events. But what is concretized in the institution? And again, I'm specifically talking about organizations that have some sort of social change or social justice orientation or mission. What has altered structurally or physically in the institution that will be the long-term legacy after you go? And again, no shade whatsoever for student orgs that haven't been able to do that. But then what happens, going back to institutions waiting people out is that a year later, all of those events are done and nothing has materially changed for the living and learning conditions of, in this case, Asian American students at the institution. [Divya: Yeah.] Does that make sense?

Divya Aikat [57:47]
That makes a lot of sense.

Sumun Pendakur [57:49]
So the sustainability comes back to the question of, what are we actually trying to accomplish, besides visibility? What is going to be concretized and materially a marked difference, whether it's small or big, that alters the experience of students going forward? That's what I kind of say about sustainability of the org or the movement. Does that sound all right, Divya?

Divya Aikat [58:20]
Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense and is a great set of advice that goes into multiple categories, in terms of, how do we keep it going right now? How do we increase that memory? All of those things I think are so important, and also I really appreciated the way that you spoke about the nitty gritty aspects, thinking about the complexities, making sure that none of it is blurred. It is really this complex. And to organize successfully, you have to be willing to lean into that and juggle all of these at once. And following up on that question, thinking about internal sustainability and balance, how have you been able to keep the ball rolling but set boundaries, navigate burnout, either back during your experience at Northwestern or currently?

Sumun Pendakur [59:14]
That's a wonderful question. And I don't know if I have a great answer for that, Divya, because me, personally, when I'm passionate about something, I go hard, and I do know that I burn myself out, right? So this has been sort of a lifelong journey of mine. I'm 48 years old now, and I wouldn't say that I've truly figured this out. To say, how do you find that kind of balance? Because the balance is not given. We have to construct it. We almost have to take it, because any institution, any org, will keep taking from us. But the thing is, I know myself, right, when I feel very committed and passionate about something, I'm not really great at drawing boundaries. And so that's, again, something I'm working on learning. So if I was to give a sort of response about what I'm working on, whether it was then or now, it would be about setting healthy boundaries, knowing where my talents and resources could shine, so that I didn't sort of burnout on all fronts, being okay to take rest when I needed to take rest. I've never been very, very good at that. And learning how to say no, right? It doesn't always have to be on me. But one of the struggles with, you know, what we were going through back then, is that a lot of it felt like it had to be on us. You know, it's not like we had a huge group of people working on this at all times. It was a relatively small contingent of folks mobilizing year over year. And so, there was a tremendous amount of responsibility on us. That you felt like, "Okay, if we drop the ball here, we're dropping the ball on something much bigger." [Divya: Yeah.] So that's tough, that's tough.

But I'll tell you, one of my sustainability tactics is that I love to have fun, I love to tell dumb jokes, I love to party, I love to dance. So, any place that was having a dance party, I'd be dancing. I performed in all the Indian cultural shows. Again, all the good dorm hangouts till 3 AM, eating cookies and pizza and talking about everything in the world, solving all the world's problems, of course, when you're 19. And doing all the things like that that were really, really, really life giving. We had a program at Northwestern called Dance Marathon, where you would fundraise for a charitable organization, and you'd have to dance for 35 hours straight. No breaks, no breaks, right? So did stuff like that, and of course, kept organizing on multiple fronts. I think finding the piece around what fills your cup, even when your cup is being drained in another place has got to be key.

And you asked me how I grapple with that today, and I'll be real. You know, at this moment, I'm struggling with it because I'm deeply committed to the cause of a free Palestine. I have been for decades, decades and decades. In fact, maybe one of the clippings I'll send you is from when I was leading a rally for Palestine at Northwestern in 1997 right? And you'll see a lot of the same pushback and rhetoric then as you're seeing now, right? And so this, it's a long-term belief for me that occupation and apartheid and genocide should not happen for anyone. And as you can imagine, given the context of this last nearly 11 months now, this has been a source of intense heartbreak and exhaustion. So I'm still an organizer. I'm organizing with a group called Burbank for Palestine. Just a few weeks ago, we actually got a ceasefire resolution passed through our city council, which took months to get accomplished and get across the finish line. And we are again in coalition with very, very different people trying to move this across. And have I hit exhaustion and burnout all over again? Yes I have, yes I have, right. But I do think one of the things that does keep me going is the thought of what that liberation could look like. Whether it is for Palestine, whether it is for all oppressed peoples around the world, or whether it's for us, right, you and me, to be liberated from the structures that make us small, that make us afraid, to be liberated from that.

Divya Aikat [1:03:43]
Yeah, I think that's so inspiring. Just in all facets of your work, it seems that you're really working towards a new vision, a new way of doing things, the reality of the world that you want to see. And I think that's so inspiring. That leads into my next question, thinking about your experience as an award-winning leader, with the many hats you take on as we've talked about. [laughs] And you've championed initiatives of racial and social justice, critical race analyses in higher-ed and more. And I think that in general, your work is a beacon of hope, and you've spread this through so many avenues, especially with consulting and being able to give that advice and that mentorship that I would even say is just a core of ethnic studies, just mentoring others and seeing other people through to the finish line. And so I just wanted to ask how this passion has developed through the years. Where do these inspirations come from? Where do you see them going? I just wanted to learn a little bit more about what you've been doing now, and what does that mean to you?

Sumun Pendakur [1:04:59]
Beautiful question. Well, you know, I told you earlier that my dad is a professor, and so I think, from really young ages, watched him mentor his own students, right, particularly his PhD students. And so that was a language of care that I understood relatively early on. And then I got mentored by so many over my lifetime, fellow students, older students, faculty members, eventually supervisors, folks in my field, right, in higher education. And so I think that aspect of both giving and receiving and seeing the beauty of that really holistic relationship has been really valuable. And I do believe in up and down mentoring, meaning I don't just have to be a mentor because I'm older or more experienced. That there's so much I can learn from those who are early career or younger or whatever it might be. So, I think that that openness has really, really helped, because then, you know, it sort of keeps you on your toes a little bit. You know, especially when you feel your brain stagnating, you're like, "Oh, that's a perspective I hadn't considered," and to be willing to think about it. And sometimes, of course, your brain shuts down. You're like, "Nah, I am not dealing with that!" [Divya laughs] But with the times where I can be thoughtful about it, I think has been really, really beneficial for me. So I think that there's some real beauty.

I think one of the best parts of being a mentor, and I am a mentor for many, many people, is simply the joy of that particular kind of giving. Of having former students, folks in my life, who can find me to be a place of soft landing, but firm convictions. So I'm happy to hold up a mirror, but also hold people. Hold people in wherever they are, their messiness, who they're trying to be. You know, most of us are trying to become something, I'm not talking about a job. I mean, become the truest and highest version of ourselves. So I really do love this particular aspect of mentoring. And particularly as an South Asian American, Desi, Indian American, Asian American woman of color, the mentoring has been plentiful and also sometimes hard to come by, right? So, I'd say some of my strongest mentors are not other Asian American women, but all kinds of folks: White folks, Asian American men, Latina and Black women. And I think that's also been really, really important, just to find mentoring in all kinds of places, not just in the faces like mine. [Divya: Yeah.] Yeah. And some of those mentors, you know, they put your put your pedal to the metal, right? The boss who hired me, originally into that Asian American and Pacific Islander serving department, at University of Southern California, AAPAS. He is a tough guy, tough cookie, right? But I learned so much from him in terms of, specifically the question of organizational memory and holding the institution accountable for the needs of students. So even though I was not a student organizer, I was a staff member, what did it mean to keep on advancing that goal in that role?

Divya Aikat [1:08:29]
Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing about that. I think mentorship is so critical, and especially for these stories that can get lost or experiences that are not highlighted. I think it's so important to have mentors who can relate and understand. So yeah, before I ask my last question, I wanted to check in. Is there anything else that you wanted to share or that we didn't get a chance to talk about that you wanted to mention in this recording?

Sumun Pendakur [1:09:03]
I'll offer one more thing, which is, you know, you asked how this has continued to evolve over the years. So eventually, I went on to become a Chief Diversity Officer at a STEM higher-ed institution. After that, I was a Chief Learning Officer at a more nationally-focused center. And then almost four years ago now, I launched my own practice, right, Sumun Pendakur Consulting, [Divya: Right] and so now I work all over the country -- and that's been incredible, Divya -- with higher education institutions, corporations, foundations, nonprofits. The thing that I love about my work is that I'm constantly reading, constantly learning, constantly making sure that I have the sharpest honed knives against the sort of barriers of, you know, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, imperialism, colonialism, etc., right? And all of that, all of that, Divya, has been so deeply informed by the struggle for Asian American Studies, and by Asian American Studies as a field itself. Both as an arena of understanding, at the end of the day, fundamentally how power operates. Divide and conquer as the core colonial strategy, and what it takes to affect change. Right? That comes from my time as a student organizer. I've organized in multiple spaces since then, but that is really where those roots were planted, were put into the ground, and they've kept flourishing now for 25+ years. So, I give a lot of thanks to Rob for calling me over to that table to give me that free t-shirt. [Divya laughs] It's completely transformed my life, right?

You know, I'm giving you a thread and an arc through a life. And it's not to say all of it's been pretty, it's not to say that there hasn't been conflict, hard work. Really, really hard times. But if I look at what I love, which is helping people to achieve the fullest of themselves and to work towards a world with more justice, I've been able to do that thus far in every role I've held. And now again, you know, holding my own consulting practice, my own consulting firm, and I hope I get to keep on doing that for as long as I can. It's exciting, particularly when the world seems so- There's days where I feel like the world is so bleak and so stacked against us, and so finding that course of individual action. That I have agency, I can exercise that agency, I can draw from our foremothers and forefathers, right? And I, in my arena of control, my locus of control, can do something, rather than feeling like the world is crushing me. I think that's been a really huge part of my own sustaining myself on the inside to say, "Yeah, it's time to get up for another day. Let's go."

Plus, my kids. I got two beautiful brown, Desi, Asian American babies. I want the world to be so much better for them, and I want them to have the tools to live in the world as it continues to evolve. The world that is hard around them and the world that is beautiful around them, right? So, yeah.

Divya Aikat [1:12:20]
Yeah, I think that's incredible. And I think that your story and your perspectives are just so inspirational. And I'm so glad that we got to sit down and have this conversation. For my last question I wanted to ask, we've talked about all these details and all these various aspects. Zooming out of that all, what does it mean to you to be part of this Asian American Studies movement as a whole?

Sumun Pendakur [1:12:53]
I think it just fills me with such immense gratitude, Divya, to be part of something bigger than me. You know, the struggle for Asian American Studies, again, founded in 1968, 1969 with the Third World Studies Strike at San Francisco State University.We know that history. We know that students have sacrificed to bring this field of study into existence. I'm so happy to be a teeny, tiny part of that incredible tapestry of knowledge, curriculum, theory, praxis, change-making, right? Because if we truly drink in the lessons of Ethnic Studies, Asian American Studies, then we actually have a tremendous amount of tools at our fingertips to transform the world around us. And so that aspect of both being part of creating it on one campus, and at the same time learning from it. That's a really beautiful and joyous sort of feeling full of gratitude that I have. I feel very lucky that I got to do that and to be part of something that was groundbreaking at NU, and continues to shape lives at that campus and to have ripple effects far, far beyond. Because other campuses looked at what Northwestern was doing and moved in their own direction for Asian American Studies as well. And so, right, that ripple effect- As an educator, lifelong educator myself, that is the ripple effect that keeps me going.

Divya Aikat [1:14:32]
Yes, exactly. And thinking about all of the people- just from pushing for Asian American Studies the way it inspired you. All of the people who actually get to take that major, I'm sure it'll be even more incredible. So yeah, thank you so so much Sumi for sitting down and talking with me. This has just been the most incredible oral history, and I'm so excited to include your story in our archives.

Sumun Pendakur [1:14:57]
Thank you so very much, Divya. The preparation you put into this, the questions, the way you framed all of them, and just your warmth and energy have just been really, really delightful. So, thank you for allowing me to be part of this oral history collection.