Interviewee: Sabrina Rich

Interviewers: Christina Huang

Date: July 28, 2024

Location: Denver, Colorado

Transcriber: Christina Huang

Length: 38:03

Christina Huang [00:00:04]
Hello Everyone! My name is Christina Huang. Today's date is July 28th, 2024 and I'm reporting from New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Today, I'm here with Sabrina Rich. She is an alumni at Hunter College and was a coalition member of the Coalition for Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter, also known as CRAASH. Sabrina, thank you so much for being here today. Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling in from today?

Sabrina Rich [00:00:29]
Sure. My name is Sabrina Rich. I am calling in from Denver, Colorado today. I'm an alum of Hunter College, where I was involved with CRAASH. I am now a law student at Columbia.

Christina Huang [00:00:48]
Yeah. I wanted to start off and ask a little bit about your identity based experiences. Could you tell me a little bit about your upbringing and how that might influence your identity?

Sabrina Rich [00:01:01]
Sure. I am mixed, so my mom is from South India. She's Telugu and my dad is white American from New York. My identity was very shaped by my mom being an immigrant from India. But also my dad being from New York. For a long time, Asian American is not an identity that I really claimed or even knew I could claim. Especially in high school when people use the word Asian, they were not referring to South Asians. Then there was like the added layer of me being only half Asian, half Indian. So it wasn't really until college when I started learning more about Asian American identity and Asian Americans in general. Which was, I would say, largely through CRAASH and through Asian American Studies, that I really began to claim that identity. And that became like a big part of what motivated me to minor in Asian American studies and work with CRAASH, and I do some other organizing outside of school as well.

Christina Huang [00:02:35]
Yeah. Thank you for diving into that earlier than me. I feel like as Asian Americans, we often focus on the American part and, tackling the perpetual foreigner. But we have a completely tackled Asianness. What that means, since it's such a broad term. How would you define what it means to be Asian and Asian American?

Sabrina Rich [00:02:56]
I would say. It's hard to define what it means to be Asian. I think it's a very flux identity because of the way that we define race in the United States being so wrong a lot of the time. Like, these arbitrary lines seem to have been drawn between South Asia and the Middle East, even though a lot of these countries are neighboring countries and like people in Afghanistan, have a lot in common with people in Pakistan, culturally and linguistically and all these things. And so I think that it's a very hard to define category and I think it depends where you are. Like in America, when we're talking about Asian identity, it tends to be East, Southeast and South Asian. But there are other parts of Asia that we're not really including in that. And I'm sure that that varies depending on where you are in the world. So that being said, I don't really know how I would define it exactly. Asian American, to me, more just feels like. If you immigrated from Asia or your ancestors or parents immigrated from Asia and you're living in the United States, and that's an identity that you claim and identify with and that's what it is like. I don't think that every Asian, especially Asian immigrants, necessarily identify with being American, but some do. So it's like hard also to define that.

Christina Huang [00:04:29]
Yeah, totally. It's such a complex identity and very fluid. So it's difficult to have one definition. With your identity, you talk about being mixed and being a South Asian woman in the United States. Can you tell me a little bit about, the visibility and invisibility of your identity and during your education, during your activism throughout your life?

Sabrina Rich [00:04:52]
Sure. I definitely have a very privileged background, and I would say I'm white passing, and for most of my life I haven't had to deal with a lot of the overt racism that most South Asians probably do have to deal with. And because of that, even though I knew that I was ethnically different from my peers, and particularly in elementary school, where I went to a majority white elementary school. I feel like I felt it more then, because even though I'm white passing in general, I was still darker and people knew my mom, obviously, because I was in elementary school. So my mom obviously was around, and that felt a little bit different. I wouldn't necessarily I felt like my identity was not visible. But after that, from middle school on, I went to mixed and then an Asian majority high school. And there I felt I started to feel more like I couldn't claim being South Asian as much because I wasn't like South Asian enough, or I didn't grow up within that culture as much as my peers did. And I would say it felt like I wasn't as visible or my identity wasn't very visible then because I felt like I really wasn't allowed to claim it. But that, like I said, really changed in college when I started educating myself more. Obviously I would say Asian and Asian American identities as a whole in American society are not very visible. They're obviously becoming more visible in the past few years. But definitely when I was younger, it didn't feel like there was much visibility around issues that Asian Americans were dealing with, which are plentiful.

Christina Huang [00:07:00]
Yeah, totally. Thank you so much for sharing and being vulnerable with that. Could you walk me through that process of like going to college and getting involved with CRAASH and how that was able to get you more engaged with your Asian identity? And what got you invested in the work that you did?

Sabrina Rich [00:07:17]
Yeah. I don't really know when exactly I would say the switch of me identifying with being Asian really happened. It definitely happened before I joined CRAASH, because I don't think I would have joined it otherwise, but it was definitely amplified after I joined CRAASH and started taking Asian-American studies classes. And I think that learning, especially about the history of Black and Asian solidarity movements and the power that people have when they come together and organize around identities and organize around their marginalization really empowered me to get more involved in that work.

Christina Huang [00:08:05]
Yeah, totally. You were at Hunter from 2015 to 2019, and that was really when the Black Lives Matter movement was taking off. I'm sure that influenced your organizing work there. A lot of Asian American studies, Asian American organizing has been inspired, supported by Black, Latino, Indigenous scholars and activists. From your experience, what has solidarity looked like and community building look like for you?

Sabrina Rich [00:08:32]
Yeah. I would say that there was a lot of solidarity at Hunter. During that time, I think that really began my political education in 2014 when Michael Brown was murdered by police. And that kind of woke me up a little bit to like, what's going on in the world. I was in high school at the time and so I was already learning about Black Lives Matter and learning about the history of racial injustice in this country. More so. Before I started college and really going into colleges, like when I was more actively trying to learn more. And I would say 2015, 2016, Black Lives Matter was still really prominent. And at Hunter, specifically in the Cuny system, Black and Puerto Rican studies had been organized around in the 90s. And so it was a much more established program at Cuny by 2015. And I think that we definitely took a lot of inspiration from the tactics that Black and Puerto Rican studies organizers used back then, but also we worked with other groups on campus as much as we could around events, and we always would reach out to other organizations whenever we were planning protests or events and things. There was a point where we tried to start a CUNY for Ethnic Studies program, like across Cuny, for all the various ethnic studies programs that every CUNY doesn't have. And I think it sort of fizzled out because it was just kind of hard to organize across campuses when people were in different boroughs and kind of far apart from each other. But we were trying to build solidarity where we could. We also did some stuff with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). So, yeah, we were we were trying to build community wherever we could.

Christina Huang [00:10:45]
Yeah, totally. And that's so powerful, trying to build large coalitions and building student/people power. So I believe the Asian American Studies program was founded in 1993 thanks to student activism, community support and faculty measures to support. Could you walk me through like this process of that? And what led to the development of CRAASH in 2006?

Sabrina Rich [00:11:09]
Yeah. To be honest, I'm not super well-versed in what organizing happened in the 90s. I know that the Asian American studies program was formed in 93, like you said, but I'm not exactly super informed on what that organizing looked like. But in 2006, CRAASH was formed, by a group of students because the Asian American studies program was threatened with being cut completely. And so the students organize around that. I wish I had more information on what exactly the organizing then looked like. I don't really have too much information. But I do know that it was threatened with being cut into the students organize around that. And were successful, so.

Christina Huang [00:12:06]
Yeah. So, yeah, there's a lot of history. What does your engagement look like when you came in 2015? CRAASH has been existing for roughly ten years. What did your engagement look like and what roles did you take up?

Sabrina Rich [00:12:19]
Yeah. So CRAASH definitely existed. I guess maybe I wouldn't say the CRAASH existed for ten years, but it had been formed ten years ago and it was kind of dormant for a while in between. And then in 2014. It was again like be reactivated in 2014. So it was formed in 2006. There was a little bit of a lull. I don't know exactly what year. And then 2014, it was started up again. And when I joined CRAASH in 2016, because I don't think I joined my first semester, I think I joined my second semester. So as 2016, I started out just going to meetings and learning about what was going on. At that point, the campaign had already begun. The campaign for Asian American Studies major had begun, in my sophomore year of college so 2016, 2017. Again, I was a pretty active member. I was going to all the meetings and helping with organizing any protests or on campus events that were going on. And then I was president in my junior year, and then VP in my senior year. But yeah, that the titles didn't really mean much, to be honest. We just kind of had to do it for the sake of being an on campus organization. We tried to have like a more horizontal structure, but I would say that my role -- we were a pretty small group, so we all kind of did everything. So, my role was not a very defined thing, but I helped with planning protests, planning events, advertising. We would table a lot in the lobby of Hunter, where we would try and get signatures on our petition for an Asian American studies major. We also worked a lot with the adjunct faculty. At some point. Let me see. Sorry. I have some materials open to referring to. At some point the HCAP program was founded, which is the Hunter College AANAPISI Project, which was a scholarship or a grant for the school to offer Asian American Studies programing, not classes, but just programing for Asian American students. And so we worked with them a lot as well around events, outreach and stuff.

Christina Huang [00:15:08]
Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work to do. And it must be hard to strike a balance between organizing and school. Could you tell me a little more about the horizontal leadership and why you chose to take that role and how it conflicted with how the university sees how student orgs are run?

Sabrina Rich [00:15:27]
Yeah. I think that we were kind of averse to having any real type of hierarchy. It just didn't seem productive to have hierarchy and we were all really there to work together and toward the same goals. And so it didn't seem a very productive thing to have these defined roles of president, vice president and secretary and treasurer, which is what the college wanted us to have. I really don't know why administrations require those things to be honest. It's something that still happens at law school. I see it, too. It doesn't seem necessary, but it is what they require. I kind of get why they need a treasurer, but the other roles seem arbitrary to me. So we just had these roles on paper, but we didn't have strict definitions for what that meant, except for when it came to the secretary, it would be the person who sent emails. But other than that I would say that these roles were not very distinct. And it's really because we were all there to work toward the goal of getting an Asian American Studies program. And we all put in the amount of work that we were able to. We were obviously understanding with each other about capacity levels, and it seemed like having those types of strict roles was kind of antithetical to that.

Christina Huang [00:17:11]
Yeah. Yeah, totally. It's pulling the goal in front of egos and power dynamics. I think important when it comes to organizing, especially with ethnic studies or Asian American studies. So you had an existing studies program, but it seemed a minor. But it seemed that you guys were organizing for a major. What was like the difference between the two?

Sabrina Rich [00:17:40]
Yeah, yeah. So other than the obvious that a major is a major, you can major in Asian American Studies, and that can be the only thing you study in college. If it was a major, you can't do that with a minor obviously you would still need to have some other major that you're pursuing. So it would require more classes in Asian American studies if there were to be a major. But the biggest thing, I think is that if it's a minor program, the college is not required to hire full time faculty. So all of our Asian American studies faculty were adjuncts. And adjuncts obviously don't have options for tenure. They don't get paid as well. It's just like worse working conditions. And so it was also for the benefit of faculty who were so dedicated to Asian Americans but could never get a full time tenured position because it wasn't a major. And so that was a big thing. And then it's also just funding, you get more funding if you have a major program than if you do a minor program. So it would it would allow for additional classes, more professors and more programing like overall.

Christina Huang [00:18:52]
How did you appeal to administrators about trying to get more faculty lines as well as trying to get a major?

Sabrina Rich [00:19:01]
We tried a lot of things. I would say that our messaging was very geared toward the fact that it would be beneficial to students and faculty, but also that there was a huge demand for it among students. Because obviously these things are financial a lot of the time, and in their mind they're like, well, we don't have to have an Asian American studies program. No one's going to major in it. And then we're going to be like wasting money on paying full time faculty and whatever. I think is like the excuse that they use, but we try to get as much student support as we could to show them that it was not the case, that people wouldn't be taking these courses or engaging in a major program if it existed. We also tried pointing to the fact that there there's such a big Asian population at Hunter, there's such a big Asian population in New York in general, and it's important that we learn our history and learn how to engage in the communities where we're living. We also tried to just draw attention to the fact that we have it's called the APRL at Hunter. The African, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies program, which was a major and it was pretty well -- people took classes in APRL, people majored in it, I took classes in it, and they were really interesting and really great. And we were like, look how successful this is. This one will also be successful. People want to learn about these things, but you know, they didn't listen.

Christina Huang [00:20:50]
Yeah. That must be really frustrating. What kind of support did you guys feel from administration, faculty and the community?

Sabrina Rich [00:21:02]
They were really, really great. We were able to learn a lot from them and talk to them about what we were trying to do. And they were very supportive of the fact that we wanted this. And then, like I said, the HCAP program, once that was established, the faculty in the HCAP program were also really, really supportive of us. And I think, the community as well, we worked with some different organizations in New York from time to time. We would have a fair every year where different Asian organizations came to table to give information about internships and jobs. We had APAHM [Asian Pacific American Heritage Month} celebration every year for Asian American Heritage Month. And we would bring in comedians or performers from the community to come. We were very involved or we tried to be as involved as we could in the Asian American community in New York. And I would say that we were definitely supported generally, which was really nice.

Christina Huang [00:22:15]
Yeah, that seems like a lot of uplifting to a lot of work. Did you guys feel any pushback -- I know the administration did not follow up on your demands, but did you guys get any negative criticism or feedback from administrators or other people in at Hunter College?

Sabrina Rich [00:22:43]
Not that I can really think of, to be honest.

Christina Huang [00:22:45]
That's great. So my other question is that you did a lot of work, right? You're hosting events every year. You're pressuring administrators. You're building structural support for a CRAASH. How did you navigate balancing school work and not getting burnt out and feeling not getting burnt out.

Sabrina Rich [00:23:07]
Yeah. That's a good question. I would say I just had more energy, in college, so I think that helped. A lot of this work was often concentrated in short periods of time, like planning for a home celebration was only toward May that we would do that. So that kind of helped with like balancing. But honestly, I think I just did my schoolwork when I could and focused on organizing like most of my free time. I think I spent a lot of my free time organizing, and that's how I balanced it. I don't know that I would say I necessarily didn't get burnt out, but I tried not to.

Christina Huang [00:24:09]
Yeah, totally. I hear that a lot from students, especially where organizing becomes like a full time job and then the academic stuff is not the forefront and takes the backdrop of things, which is really difficult because students need to be educated. Right you're paying to be there. Yeah. What would your recommendation be for students? What have you noticed has worked when you are navigating with large, faceless institutions? And how can students and individuals in higher education kind of leverage, different currencies and framing strategies to get support to build community change in Asian American Studies program?

Sabrina Rich [00:24:57]
I think that students are really, really powerful, and a lot of times they don't realize that they're really powerful. But academic institutions need students and they need students money. And I think that you can try and leverage that as best you can when you're trying to speak to like a faceless administration. For example, this is not related ethnic studies but at Columbia, I know that undergrad students did a tuition strike this year because obviously Columbia's bullshit around Palestine. Sorry if I can't curse but what Columbia's doing around Palestine. And so, like, a tuition strike is something that's so powerful because the administration relies on your money. That's all they care about, really is money. And I don't know how feasible tuition strike feels for everyone. I know it can feel really scary because people rely on, being in college, and it's a huge privilege to be in college, and I understand that. So,I think that using money however you can is really important, but also just being as difficult as possible, like the president of Hunter knew who CRAASH was, even though we were at times were only like five people. She knew who we were because we made ourselves known to her as much as possible through like emails and petitions and trying to set up meetings with her and doing as much as we can to be a problem. And like, make sure she can not forget about the fact that we were trying to organize for this thing. So I just think that even if an administration feels like a scary, faceless entity, they're not. You can get your like administration's email, like you have access to their email addresses, you can email them, you can show up to their offices. You can try and set up meetings with them. Even if they keep denying meetings, you can still keep trying, and you can show up in person and just demand to speak with them. I think that students have a lot of power and you can use these tactics, and there are no real consequences for you.

Christina Huang [00:27:15]
So a brilliant point. Students don't realize that they have a lot of power over. A lot of times I hear from grad students and faculty members like they're being paid to be there where students are paying tuition. So they have a lot of political power when it comes to like a higher education and administration. And you brought up a great point about Palestine. I wanted to ask about you are at Columbia. You were part of the ethnic studies organizing in undergrad. What is it like for you to be seeing undergrads taking part in encampments and and fighting for liberation for Palestine?

Sabrina Rich [00:27:53]
Yeah, I think it's really, really powerful. The undergrads at Columbia are doing so much. And it's really inspiring. I think that it's really important work that they're doing and they're just doing so much like they're really putting all of their energy into this.

Christina Huang [00:28:21]
Yeah, totally. And I think in the beginning you started talking about the parallels between the Middle East and Asia. Would you be comfortable talking about the parallels between Asian American, Asian American organizing and Palestine?

Sabrina Rich [00:28:34]
Yeah. I think that. As Asian Americans a lot of us and like our familial histories, know colonization and understand what colonization and imperialism looks like and how awful it is. And that's what's happening in Palestine. And it's important to draw those connections. When you see what's happening it's hard not to. First of all, it's hard not to care as a person, but also as Asian Americans. And also, this is why I think Asian American Studies are so important, because a lot of Asian Americans, or people in general, don't know their histories and don't know about the history of organizing in the United States and in their in the countries, where they're from. Asian-Americans have a long history of radical organizing in the United States. And if you don't know that history, and if you don't know the ways in which colonization has affected your people, it's harder to feel a connection to what's happening in Palestine right now. Not that I necessarily think you need to feel a personal connection to care about what's happening, but it's obviously like amplified by that. And if you don't know Asian American history or Asian history, you can't see those connections as clearly. And so I think it's kind of all connected for that reason as well.

Christina Huang [00:30:15]
I think that's a brilliant point that our our stories and our liberation are all interconnected. And we have to kind of combat the violent erasure of narratives and histories. So I completely agree. Now that you've graduated from Hunter College, and you're onto law school. What would your advice be for the next incoming class while they're fighting for Asian American studies?

Sabrina Rich [00:30:45]
Yeah, I think. I would say be as disruptive as possible. Definitely learn institutional knowledge of CRAASH and SJP and whatever org you're fighting with. Because there's a lot of history within CRAASH and a lot of things to learn from and a lot of people you can reach out to gain that knowledge and learn different tactics. The thing about student organizing is that administrations know that there's a time limit on how long people will be there, and you are starting. If you're starting now, you're going to be gone in four years. And so the administration thinks they can just wait you out. And so I think it's really, really important to bring in people as often as possible, particularly people who are new. So if you're new now, if you're just starting at Hunter or at your institution, join something. And by the time you're in your second and third and fourth year, start recruiting people who are in their first year. And I think that that's really the main way to keep this organizing going. And you can see with CRAASH, there have been lulls in organizing. And it's because recruitment didn't work out for whatever reason. And so I think it's really, really important that you get as many people as possible so that the administration doesn't think we can just wait a couple of years and then this is going to be over. Do you need to let them know that it's never going to be over until they give in to the demands?

Christina Huang [00:32:30]
Yeah, totally. I think that was in organizations often limited to like the academic calendar with, like you said, you have four years at college on top of like students are gone in the summer. And that's when administration starts to pull the strings and doing shady things when students are not on campus to react and protest. So I think that's so important talking about turnover and strategically planning for the future. Thank you for your advice.

Sabrina Rich [00:32:57]
Yeah.

Christina Huang [00:32:58]
I have one more question, but I also want to give you a chance if you had anything else you want to talk about Hunter College, the Asian American Studies organizing or organizing in general?

Sabrina Rich [00:33:10]
Yeah. I guess just now that I'm thinking to add to what I was saying about Palestine also. I would say that it's not it's not just a historical tie, it's also a current tie. And US imperialism affects everyone, and US imperialism is funding the genocide in Palestine right now. And it's not an isolated thing. The US has ties to imperialism and colonization all over the world. And so it's more than just a historical link. It's also a current link. I just wanted to add that.

Christina Huang [00:33:51]
Yeah, I that's such important, like money and funding it such a long topic that we can talk about for a long time, especially since the Association for Asian American Studies was the first academic organization [in the United States] to endorse the BDS [Boycott, Divest and Sanction] movement. And so there's there's definitely that link right there.

Sabrina Rich [00:34:12]
Oh, I didn't know that.

Christina Huang [00:34:13]
Yeah, yeah. So. There are deep ties between Asian American studies and Palestine. And I think it's a conversation that we need to keep having. And, yeah. So thank you for sharing that. For my last question I had for you was zooming out what does it mean for you to be part of this movement for Asian American studies and talking about liberation for all people?

Sabrina Rich [00:34:44]
It's something that's very important to me. I think that Asian American studies classes really, really influenced my current politics. And so I do I think it's just so important that everyone take ethnic studies courses. As often as they can. I wish that they were offered more than just in colleges. I wish they were offered in high school and even before high school. Like, it's just like there's such a rich history and everything gets so whitewashed in your history classes and liberation is never going to happen if we don't know our own history and the history of organizing from ourselves and from other people of color. It's just like there's so much to learn from that can be implemented now. But if we never learn it, there's there's no way to to act, you know? And I think, it's really easy now to feel like organizing is never going to accomplish anything because I think we've seen these bursts in protests in 2020, there was huge spike in protest after George Floyd's murder. And and then it just kind of died down. And, nothing has really changed in terms of police brutality. I would say things have changed like the public opinion, but systematically nothing has really changed. And I would say like similarly now with the Palestine protests, there were so many and now I feel like they're already dying down, even though the genocide is still ongoing. And so I feel like it's really easy to feel like powerless and protests aren't working and organizing is pointless. And I think that ethnic studies really fights that idea, because you can see how protest movements in this country have actually changed so much. And so I just think it's so important for liberation that ethnic studies is widely taught and people really know this history.