Interviewee: Mohit Mehta

Interviewer(s): Christina Huang

Date: July 23, 2024

Location: Austin, Texas

Transcriber: Christina Huang

Length: 0:52:26

Christina Huang [00:00:00]
Hello everyone. My name is Christina Huang. Today's date is July 23rd, 2024 and I'm recording from New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Today. I am here with Mohit Mehta, who is Assistant Director and Academic Advisor of the Center of Asian Studies at UT Austin. He is an advocate for more inclusive curriculums and is a phenomenal scholar and teaches courses in Asian American Studies, ethnic studies, bi /multilingual education. Thank you so much for being here today. Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling in from today?

Mohit Mehta [00:00:32]
Sure. Christina, thank you so much for that lovely introduction. My name is Mohit Mehta. I grew up in Texas in San Antonio to be specific, and I currently live in Austin, Texas, which is the original ancestral lands, the unceded territories of the Comecrudo, Coahuiltecan, Lipan-Apache and a number of other Indigenous groups. I currently work at the University of Texas at Austin, at the Center for Asian American Studies, which is the only Asian American Studies program in Texas and the oldest one in the US South.

Christina Huang [00:01:05]
Thank you so much. I wanted to start off about…I am really curious about your own identity based experiences, especially…you immigrated here in the United States and grew up in Texas. Could you tell me a little bit about your upbringing and how it might influence your identity?

Mohit Mehta [00:01:20]
Great question. I consider myself on my father's side, third generation, from Gujarat, India, and my mom's side, of course, first generation. So my father's side of the family was part of the Indian diaspora to East Africa. And my grandfather on my father's side immigrated as part of the movement of Indian peoples under the British Empire. So my dad's side of the family ended up in Mombasa, which is a coastal town in Kenya. But of course, they grew up when Kenya was still a British territory. And my mother's side is from Gujarat. Both of them are from Gujarat. But of course, my mother was born, raised and grew up there. After she got married to my dad, they both moved back to Kenya, to Mombasa and Kenya but before that of course many, many generations back in Gujarat and in India.

So I moved to the United States with my family in 1981, and we moved for a few years to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which is a really small town in western Pennsylvania, maybe three hours outside of Pittsburgh, but a rural community, part of the steel belt right in between Pennsylvania and Ohio and West Virginia. So my father got a job there at a hospital as part of the recruitment of doctors to serve in rural communities and in urban settings, where there was a shortage of doctors, so many other physicians from South Asia or South Asian origin, as well as other folks from Asian nations, came as a result of the immigration restructuring of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. So that's how my family ended up for a few years in western Pennsylvania. And then my dad after that got a job in Texas. So we moved to San Antonio in 1984, and that's where I grew up. I went to elementary school, middle school, high school, and then I lived for the most part in Texas ever since I spent, two years as an adult in India, as a teacher. I decided to move there right after I graduated college. So I worked there as a teacher for two years. And then I also spent a few years in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and working as a teacher, also in Guatemala. So aside from those international experiences, I've remained here in Texas.

Christina Huang [00:03:49]
Oh, wow. So you are rooted in Texas but you have a global experience, which is amazing. So what was it that made you become invested in this work you're doing now?

Mohit Mehta [00:04:02]
Good. Good question, I think that…So I worked for…as an elementary educator for seven years in Texas. Four years after, I moved back from India. And then I took a break and I did Peace Corps. Then I moved back to Texas, and I continued to teach elementary education for three years. I had a colleague who was a doctoral student at the University of Texas in the same institution I am now, but I wasn't at UT then, and she was doing a dissertation research project on Asian American elementary teachers teaching Asian American history through the social studies classroom. And her work was really pioneering and groundbreaking in the sense that there was virtually no research. Just a few people were paying attention to Asian American histories in the social studies classroom. But hers was a contribution to that work. So she introduced me to Asian American history for the first time, something I had never paid attention to before. This was about 2015, 2016. And I taught about the experience of Chinese coolies being brought to the Americas. And I taught about Japanese American incarceration. And that sort of really opened my door to all of this Asian American history that I had no awareness about, because it was never taught to me in schools. I'd never taken any Asian American histories or studies classes as an undergraduate student. I had just taken one class, Asian American Literature, as an undergrad. But that was it. I had no framing of history or understanding of the legal precedents that had happened before. So that really opened the door for me in learning and inquiring more.

And eventually I went back to grad school. So during my time at UT Austin, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and I was in the College of Education as a graduate student, and I immediately started to organize, with other folks across the nation as part of a bigger movement that's happened since 2020, which is curricular inclusion of Asian American histories in different states. Of course, we have Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York City, Connecticut, Florida. Michigan, Minnesota as well. California has an ethnic studies requirement for high school students. So since 2020, I've been working on more directly on different projects of curricular inclusion here in Texas. And last year, after a year and a half of organizing, we were able to teach a class at the high school level here in the central Texas area. A full year course to high school students, juniors and seniors in Asian American history. And that hadn't been done before in Texas. So that's a remarkable feat. And the teacher that I supported, her name is Miss Annie Nguyen. When she is also like me, from a teaching background, she teaches high school English, and she was brave enough to sort of be the teacher to take on this big project of teaching an Asian American ethnic studies course for the first time.

Christina Huang [00:07:17]
It's amazing. It's great to hear that, especially recently, the expanding curriculum and inclusion I wanted to ask about when it comes to Asian American curriculum, we often talk a lot about what does it mean to be American and things like that. But I feel like as a group, we haven't really define what Asian means. And so for you, what does Asianness is mean? And I also wanted to ask about like that and on top of while you're doing this work, what visibility and invisibility of your South Asian identity do you see happening around your life or advocacy?

Mohit Mehta [00:07:51]
That's another fantastic question, Christina. I think like any other identity marker, Asian American or Asian is rife with contentions and complexities. Right? And I think identity is not something that's fixed. Of course, many social scientists think about identity this way, and being fluid and dynamic and flexible in terms of at different geographic locations or different times of our life, according to both internal and external influences. We sort of shape our identity in different ways. This can be about gender. It can be about a race. It can be about ethnicity, it could be about religion. So Asian American is not fixed and it's changed. It changes both externally about how Asian-American is defined, but also internally. What I drawback always is to Asian American as a political identity. So there's a really powerful essay that the Pulitzer Prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote in 2021. I forgot the name of the article. It's "The Beautiful, Flawed Fiction of ‘Asian American’". And in this article, he makes the case, of course Viet Thanh Nguyen studied Asian American Studies as a as an undergraduate student, I don't remember if he went to UC Berkeley or University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), but he learned about the Asian American movement, the Asian American struggle, all of these pieces of history that came for two centuries before us and even longer that sort of defines our positioning, racially gendered religious space within the United States. And he makes the claim that a political identity is one that's chosen. So based on a common struggle against oppressive forces, both in the "homeland" against imperialism and colonization, but also here for justice and equality within the United States that sort of unifies Asian Americans of 60 different ethnic groups and religious ethnic identities as well in sort of a common cause. So that's how I think about Asian American identity.

And within that there's additional complexities of being South Asian. Again, South Asian is also another identity marker that's complex and has contentions in that most South Asians in the United States are of Indian origin. And in many states, Indian Americans are the largest population. So even using the term South Asian can be deeply problematic. In the case that it traces the identities of other more marginalized identities within the South Asian diaspora. So it's a pet peeve of mine when Indian and South Asian become synonymous. I think it's very important to be aware of those power dimensions and use language very carefully. You know, there just again, I could go on and on about the complexities of identity. And we don't have time for that. But something important to think about is that, again, in summary, that identity is not fixed. We choose it selectively. And when it's when it's an identity based on an awareness, a conscious awareness of power and historic power dimensions, I think it can become very empowering. And that's been great solace for me. And great, just like consciousness raising of why I choose to continue this work.

Christina Huang [00:11:15]
Yeah. That's powerful. Thank you for bringing up such an amazing, powerful piece alongside, like, how do we understand ourselves in the United States as Asian Americans and being specific in our identities and diving into these complexities. Talking about Asian American being a political identity, I feel like the way we see ourselves is often marked by resistance. And we see that at UT Austin, when the Center for Asian American Studies was established as a result of student resistance, engaging in mass sit in, there was many arrests, the UT 10 arrests. And it sparked this pipeline to Asian American Studies program at UT Austin. It's now 25 years later and UT Austin has a major and minor degree program. It's amazing. Can you walk me through this massive achievement and your role within the center and this movement?

Mohit Mehta [00:12:03]
Sure. So my involvement directly with the center for Asian American Studies was not until 2020 like I specified, right? I started first as a graduate teaching assistant in a course on Asian American History. And that sort of evolved over time into teaching courses, then Intro to Asian American Studies and Intro to Asian American History. And eventually when a job opening came up and I applied for it as the assistant director. So part of my role was learning all of these histories of why we exist, in particular, why we exist is important for us to re-narrativize or remember, for many reasons. One is that Texas is one of a number of states that has so-called anti Critical Race Theory (CRT) bills and ethnic studies is born out of a movement of looking at critical conceptualizations of race. Right. So understanding why Asian American Studies as a field is important is even more critical in this time period when there's political attacks against wanting to shut down centers like ours-the Center for Asian American Studies. Right? I think that's one piece. And then second is that we're in an intense period that was shortened, right, because at the end of the academic year in May, but really from March to May of this year, 2024, we saw several student protests across major universities, both public and private, in many of the 50 states. Right? In solidarity with Gaza and in solidarity with Palestinians. So understanding student movements, whether it is the 1968-1969 Asian American movement as part of the Third World Liberation Front, or the anti-Vietnam War protests, all the way up until the "Stop Asian Hate" protest that happened in 2021, Black Lives Matter in 2021 and 2020 and earlier, and then all the way to this contemporary period. Right? So this narrative thread of understanding that place of student voice and agency in this longer movement and the historical precedent that came before and how everything is interconnected, is sort of it can be a class on itself, right, about student movements. And a great point about, Christina, is that it's transnational, too, in terms of student struggles across the world and fighting against oppressive governments and oppressive systems. That's become even more accelerated because we get information and use it in real time. So we're able to see exactly forms of oppression and squashing student activism in different campuses across the world. And it just creates a more sense of resolve amongst students.

So in summary, again, understanding our histories, the Center for Asian American Studies as part of this bigger student movement in terms of, like you said, ten undergraduate students who were really vocal and adamant in establishing Asian American studies. They continue to get no or a delay by the institution, by the president's office at UT, to the extent where they finally decided to go camp out overnight and say, you know, we're not leaving this building until we get a definitive decision of establishing Asian American Studies as a program in the center. And they got arrested and eventually, right, the university capitulated, in providing the center. And…and it's just a reminder that nothing, no good change happens unless people exercise their voice. And in many times in very clear forms of that can be very damaging, right? Emotionally, physically, to a great cost. But students have always made this sacrifice. And it's important again, to always remember and reflect on that history.

Christina Huang [00:16:04]
Yeah, totally. It's been very powerful to see students time and time again put their lives at risk, their safety on the line. And being very adamant that we are going to work towards justice. And I think keeping that in the back of our minds is so important. And it from our work from like the '68-'69 movement, we kind of learned that like all this work especially as Asian Americans have been inspired and supported by Black, Latino, Indigenous Studies programs, scholars, activists. And from your experience, what has solidarity and community building look like for you?

Mohit Mehta [00:16:43]
I think the clearest example is more recently, since 2021, we have been working on trying to institutionalize here in Texas an Asian American Studies course for high school students. And so our precedents have been a Mexican American studies course that was established in Texas in 2018 and an African American studies course that was established in 2020. So those are our movement elders. Folks in both of those movements have been working for more than a decade in their struggle, and it's so important for us to not sidestep or try to make political moves that delegitimize or ignore their historical struggles because they faced a lot of political opposition. And it's so important for us, as the Asian American Studies movement here in Texas, to always honor our elders, our movement elders, and our brothers and sisters also in the Native American indigenous community, who since 2018 also have been organizing for a Native American Indian--It's called AINS. It's called American Indian Native Studies course. So we've seen in other states, for example, in Florida, where the very right-wing Republican governor, vilified African American studies, said a lot of horrendous things about it. But at the same time, there was a movement of Asians to sort of pass legislation there to mandate the teaching of Asian American history.

We don't want that same mistake to happen here in our state. We want to be very aware and cognizant about historical and contemporary forms of solidarities and what it means to be the model minority and how that shows up racially in the United States. And so for a lot of people in power, other Asian Americans are seen as non-threatening. Asian American history is seen as apolitical. And so let's go ahead and include a law or a mandate in our state to mandate this, to appease, sort of, the masses or appease a certain voting group, because Asian American history is seen as apolitical, unproblematic, whereas African American history is seen as deeply political and deeply racialized. So it's so important to have an awareness of those power dynamics to make sure that we, as Asian Americans, are not replicating historical divisions between the Asian American and Black community.

Christina Huang [00:19:12]
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a brilliant point. It was very jarring to see negotiations happening to get Asian American Studies Programs (in K-12 schools) implemented, especially with the anti-Blackness going on in Florida in negotiations, alleged negotiations with anti-LGBTQ bills being passed. And right, as you said, like, as Americans, we should be standing in solidarity and understand that American history is very political. So how would you with your expertise and experience, how do we combat this with getting the resources that we need for community, but also resisting this institutionalization of Asian American Studies that want to dilute our history.

Mohit Mehta [00:19:55]
I think this is a really good point. And on this point, I disagree with other approaches. And in some of my colleagues nationwide, I personally don't believe a mandate is the right approach because also working as a classroom teacher, we need to appreciate how much classroom teachers are asked to do. And many of times it's unfunded and it's under-resourced. So in many places, a mandate is, hey, go ahead and teach this, but we're not going to provide any direction or resources or money or any other directions. And so it sort of builds resentment. Right? “This is just another thing that I have to do, and I'm forced to do it because I have to comply by the law.” I personally believe that the opposite, working from the bottom up. So working at the grassroots level, starting with one school, one classroom, showing how it can be done successfully, and then using that model to sort of cross-pollinate and build a network of teachers in that regard. A lot of people don't like that approach because it's slow and it's deliberate. But for me, that's my approach. I think that centering students, teachers, the human experience is so important that things can't just be legislated as a solution. That's one thing. And I think Asian American Studies historians also make that same claim. They remind us continuously that the Asian American movement was a deeply political movement that was aligned with anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist stances, and that over time, Asian American Studies programs, even in universities, have just become in not all places, but in many places, just multicultural education. So it's not aligned with the origins of Asian American Studies as a political project. And so we can sort of predict that same thing happening in K-12 schools as well, is the initial intention is to develop critical literacy and critical knowledge about the experiences of Asian Americans that goes beyond just representations, or just looking at figures who have been made a lot of money, to be honest, or have been the first to do something that shouldn't be the only reason for studying the Asian American experience. There's so much richness and complexities and histories of resistance, but also very clear examples of how Asian-Americans have been racialized as, forever foreigners or as model minorities. And sort of understanding all those racial dynamics is super important to understand why things continue to happen. For example, blaming Asian bodies for a global epidemic or a global pandemic that happens, right? Or blaming South Asian or Arab bodies for a geopolitical event that's happening halfway across the world. When we dig back and look at these historical events that happened before, it sort of helps us understand why things today in 2024 are happening the way they are.

Christina Huang [00:23:06]
Totally. Yeah I completely agree. Like we often hyper focus on multiculturalism and identity politics. And talking about the history of resistance and racialization is so so important. How do you find yourself incorporating that in the classroom and your pedagogy?

Mohit Mehta [00:23:23]
Yeah, I think so. When at the university level, again, we are working in a state where there's a lot of scrutiny from the right, especially certain organizations like Moms for Liberty and Texas Values. They're just these far-right organizations that sort of scour the internet, scour social media profiles, scour curriculum, and sort of want to do this gotcha moment, right, that these curricula are anti-American, they're communist or radical. All of these sorts of buzzwords that then sends shockwaves through the system and basically shuts things down and cancels them. Right. I think it's difficult working within that system. But part of what we have learned is that it doesn't have to be the educator who brings these topics up. Students, whether they're in high school classrooms or at the university level, are naturally eager to make sense of the world around them, and they're tuned into everything. They're tuned in to news from social media. They're tuned in to news stories. They're deeply curious and attuned to wanting to live in alignment with their values of justice and intersectional solidarity in ways that it emanates with them. And so our role as educators is then to facilitate dialog and conversation in ways that if we tried to censor would be completely against the premises of academic freedom, right? Versus is that if it comes from us as educators, then it could easily be seen as indoctrination or this is a radical professor or a radical teacher who has an agenda, and that's going to be perceived in a certain way. But if it emanates from the students itself, then we can be scholarly facilitators who point back to evidence and hold students to reasoning and questioning and using evidence from historical and contemporary sources to make their claims right. And so I think that's what we've learned here in Texas is that you have to and that's just good teaching. Right? Is not to b “a sage on this stage:, but rather be a facilitator and a conduit of saying like, hey, let's look at this resource together. Let's look at this body of evidence together. How do you make sense of it? Why is this pattern continuing to happen? Right. Why is it that the United States has a double standard when it comes to foreign policy? Why is it that Black bodies continue to be disposable? Why can we see this pattern and how can we make historical sense of this? I think that's something that's worked well for us. I don't think that it is a remedy. I mean, it's no fun to be in a state of censorship and vigilance. But unfortunately, in some places like the US South is just our reality.

Christina Huang [00:26:16]
Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think in a time of heightened surveillance, censorship, and growing aggressive efforts against justice and equity, it's very important to build these partnerships between professors or teachers and students to collaborate. When you mentioned, like, the US South, I think it's really interesting because since UT Austin was the first institution to have a major minor program, and then William and Mary back in 2016 and more schools like Duke and Vanderbilt. There seems to be a growing presence of Asian American wanting to learn about Asian Americans in the US South specifically. Could you talk a little more about the significance of these programs spreading in this region? And what does it mean to be Asian American in the South?

Mohit Mehta [00:27:00]
Yeah, I think and again, we might take a moment just to identify the parameters of the South. I think the South is both an idea, but also geographically as exists. Like anything else, it's fluid. And who defines the South is very different. So a lot of people don't include Texas as as the South. It's included sort of as its own entity. But the way I think about it is from Texas to North Carolina. As you probably know, Christina, this is one of the regions in the nation that has the fastest growing Asian American population, but it also has a historic presence, right? For example, New Orleans was one of the important port cities in the expansion of the United States, sort of as a settler colonial nation. And so there was an importation of labor. There were, there were Chinese merchants and sailors coming into the New Orleans port. There were Filipino sailors and merchants coming into Louisiana. There were South Asians, Bengalis, right from the Bengal region, as Vivek Bald's work shows us in Bengali Harlem. So in Mississippi, we had historic Chinese communities in Mississippi that sort of challenge the Black-white racial divide. So both to look back at marginalized histories within Asian America that take place in the South, but also recognize that the demographic shift in the South is a lot of new Latino communities and a lot of new Asian American communities that then fit within this historical Black white binary. And so there's all of these complexities here to analyze that are specific very much to this region, and that also define the experience of Asian Americans growing up in these states. And Texas has huge metropolitan areas like Houston, Dallas, San Antonio that have very big Asian American populations. But we also need to recognize that within the South, there are even more marginalized stories. And very red. Christian states like Arkansas or Kentucky, right? And of course, there's Asian American communities there. So what does it mean to be an Asian American growing up in Kentucky or Arkansas? And that's very different from my urban experience and growing up in big cities. So I think movies like Minari, for example, start to visiblize a little bit about other Asian American stories. And of course my favorite, Mississippi Masala, which was really groundbreaking in multiple ways but continues to be such a historical artifact of South Asian Black dynamics to begin with, but also a story that takes place geographically in a place where you wouldn't expect, which is Mississippi. So I think it's just fantastic. And there hasn't been anything like it since, since it came out in the early 90s.

Christina Huang [00:29:53]
Yeah, yeah. I think that's such a fascinating field and I'm glad it's growing. There's more literature films coming out because it is so much to talk about. It's interesting because I don't think many people, especially like when Asian American comedians have like Southern accent, people are taken back. You don't really see this in any sort of media. So I think it's so fascinating.

Mohit Mehta [00:30:15]
Yeah, I think I even came across an Asian American country singer too. Right. So these are, these are all part of our experiences or Asian Americans who are MAGA. This is still part of the Asian-American experience. And invites us to understand why certain phenomena happen in the context that they do.

Christina Huang [00:30:35]
Yeah, totally. Shifting gears a little bit. You do so much work, and so it's uplifting for your community. Your inspiration to so many of your students, how do you strike a balance of keeping the ball rolling, but setting boundaries and making sure that you take care of yourself and rest?

Mohit Mehta [00:30:53]
Yeah, that's a really good, really, really good question. And one that I haven't done so well, to be honest with you. I think that when many times when there is a pivotal moment that's happening, let's say this exacerbated period of "anti-Asian hate", right? And I include always when I talk about anti-Asian hate in quotation marks, because we need to problematize a little bit that phraseology of why anti-Asian hate is problematic. But I'm not going to go there now. We can have that conversation later. But during that time period, it felt like we really had to do something, especially when you were, let's say, just a handful of people within a school or an institution or within a university who was actually doing something, and if you didn't do something, literally nobody else would. Right? So that was the case, during the Covid 19 pandemic, sort of carrying forward this work of going to the State Board of Education, testifying, writing the curriculum for an Asian American Studies course. Building connections with school districts and teachers to try to pilot it. I felt that work. If it wasn't done, then it would have been a long time for it to be done. And the reason why is there--was this window of opportunity because all of a sudden and a lot more people were paying attention to Asian American issues in education and that door was just barely open. And if you didn't put your foot in then the door would be shut, right? Because the interest in Asian Americans education is all pivoted on the fact of this period of "anti-Asian hate". So a lot of people saw education as a remedy. Hey, if you learn more about our histories or the reasons that we came to the United States, then there would be less hate projected at us, right? That's the argument of a lot of people. I don't buy into that argument. You know, because again, it's about representation and identity politics and rather about learning, deep learning and deep unlearning. So I don't buy that argument. But, I gave a lot of weekends and nights to doing that work, and I got burnt out. I really did, and I had to. Take a step back. You know, I was also working on my dissertation at this time, I was at a full-time job, so I was doing multiple other things aside from my daily responsibilities. And as of the last couple of weeks, I finally had a chance to start resting. And it just reminded me that we cannot sustain a type of activist momentum without rest, right? And many activists and many people who do critical work in multiple areas continue to share that message of rest is radical. Rest is important. Who gets to rest in our racialized capitalist system, right? Who doesn't get to rest? And I think still rest for me as a privilege, as a South Asian American man. Right? I have privileges that others are not afforded. So again, I see everything with the critical lens of power. And so I can't even when it comes to rest, sort of not acknowledge that. Black women in our society don't get to rest. They're expected to labor all the time. But again, thinking about these complexities, rest is important, but it's also important to address who gets to rest in our system.

Christina Huang [00:34:32]
That's you pose a brilliant question. Like who gets to rest? I've never thought about it that way, And I hope you get some rest. Yeah, well, it's really well deserved. And it's so important that we take care of one another. And take care of yourselves.

Mohit Mehta [00:34:48]
And I wish the same back for you, too. You've done a lot of, amazing work, too. I hope you get to carve out those times of rest for yourself as well.

Christina Huang [00:34:56]
Yes. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I think bringing in community and community work too that's a place of fulfilling cups, or glass or teaspoon.

Mohit Mehta [00:35:07]
Yeah. Yeah. Amazing analogy. You're right. It can be a teaspoon. And sometimes it can be a big chai cup. So.

Christina Huang [00:35:17]
Yeah. Totally. Totally right. So I wanted to circle back about, you mentioned briefly about the "anti-Asian hate" and how sometimes that is not sufficient in doing our community justice when talking, especially when we center these movements around interpersonal violence, or always having to wait for bodies to be harmed to enact change. Right. Could you go a little more into that about?

Mohit Mehta [00:35:48]
Yeah, I know, I think you, I think you summarized it so well, Christina. That's exactly it. Is that any of these heightened moments of physical violence against Asian bodies sort of brings this national awareness all of a sudden? We see it repeated again and again, different Asian bodies depending on political context. So we see it stopping in many fashions after 9/11 to Arab, American, South Asians, those racialized to be Muslim or Arab, we see it all the way back with the Chinese Exclusion Act to East Asian bodies. There's just a long history and there's so many points of historical evidence that points to this fact of seeing Asian bodies as dispensable and not fully American. And I think that “Asian Hate,” the terminology, and I'm not the first to say this right? There's many scholars who push back against this concept of “Stop AAPI Hate” and that it's just hate as an interpersonal dimension. “I don't understand you and I hate you versus understanding racial, racism in its institutional, structural forms.” And again, it's seeing how Asian Americans were not allowed to be citizens for many decades, seeing how Asian Americans were desired for their labor but were not given full citizenship rights. And of course, seeing the intersections of different Asian identities, too, you know, when it comes to gender, sexuality, etc. So the experiences of Asian American women, also fitting into certain categories of dispensable labor as well. Right? And we see that, we saw that the reasons behind the Atlanta spa shootings in 2021, as well as a direct product of the way that Asian-American women have been racialized in our society. And so I think that "anti-Asian hate" doesn't encapsulate all the complexities. It's hard to think of a phrase to be honest. You know, I think that people who came up with that phrase had the best intentions in mind. But if we don't, again, dig deep and unpack, it can just stay there. Like hate is just an interpersonal thing rather than a structural thing. And so we need to invite people into the work and say, like, hey, it's not just about hating somebody, it's about how these things have been conditioned in a larger system over a long period of time.

Christina Huang [00:38:23]
Yeah, totally. And there's so many conversations that need to be had in terms of that. And I think you're right. It's so hard, like, to boil down such a complex issue into a couple words, is yeah, you can't. Yeah, you can't boil those words down. And especially when you start using, like the language of non-profits and things like that, it gets really difficult. And especially drawing in like other brilliant scholars, like Dylan Rodriguez and his work bringing in talking about Critical Zionist Studies with the Stop Asian Hate and how these things are intertwined. You also spent some time co-directing, a ESL program in Palestine. And I wanted to ask if you wanted to talk about the parallels between Asian American Studies and Palestine.

Mohit Mehta [00:39:11]
Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for referencing that Critical Piece by Dylan Rodriguez. I'm so glad that you read it and you're referencing it and sort of invites us into having this larger conversation. And so yes, I had the chance to visit the West Bank Palestine in 2016 for the very first time. I participated with a group of teachers that are from different places within the United States and also from different places in the world. There's teachers who have joined us from Honduras, from Germany, from New Zealand, and we were able to run a program for six weeks in the summer in Ramallah, which is the biggest city in the West Bank for Palestinian youth right? All the way from third grade. Actually, all the way from kindergarten, all the way to 12th grade. So it's a program for 120 students teaching English, but also teaching other things like critical literacy and sports, etc. During that program, I had the chance to visit different places, speak to activists, make different visits to different places like Bethlehem, Al-Quds, Jerusalem. And before 2016, I hadn't done the hard work of unpacking the system of oppression and apartheid that Palestinians live in, right? I just believe there are mainstream narratives. We are fed that this is a historical conflict that's unresolvable because it's two sets of people vying for the same group of land. I saw, in firsthand how that's not the case. It's more a history of systemic dispossession of a group of people, and an entire group of peoples. Millions of Palestinians living in Gaza within “48”, which is historic Palestine and within the West Bank as second-class citizens right across the border, not having the freedom to travel and not having the freedom to access or marry who they want to, not having the freedom to go to school where they want to. The list goes on. Right? Point after point after point of systematic abuse. Now, how does this relate to Asian American Studies? Well, a lot of people enter the argument and say, well, Palestine is in Asia. I think that's one point of entry into having that argument. But a bigger point and a lot of scholars have made this like Sunaina Maira and Shihade, right? A lot of scholars who have made the connections explicit, connections between the Palestinian struggle for liberation and the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial stance of Asian American Studies as it was originally conceived in the 1960s. And ignoring just selectively stating that, hey, this group of people is allowed to engage in liberation and struggle, but other groups of people are not is ideologically inconsistent. Right? So I think that that's a much stronger argument. As long as your positioning within Asian American Studies is through the lens of criticality that all humans deserve the right to live freely and with equal access to basic humanity, and not allowing one group of people to have that because saying history is too complex is just ideologically inconsistent.

So I think that's an invitation for all of us to make the connections between the Palestinian struggle for liberation and Asian American Studies. And unfortunately, I've seen a lot of my colleagues not wanting to go there. I don't blame them because it does have a big risk professionally in order to outwardly state that Palestinians deserve freedom, right. And I can go into why that, that ideology circulates in our society, but I don't go there. It's just important for us to recognize. And I had a chance then to go back to Palestine, the West Bank, for every year before the pandemic started. So 2017, 2018, 2019. I was for three years, right, the co-director of the program for the elementary students. And each year I had the chance to talk to the same activists, you know, four years is not a big time, but each year the condition was the same or getting worse. So there are more settlements being built in the West Bank. There was lack of access to water. There was, there was a maze of what territories you could go into in the West Bank and not. Right? I mean, if you look at the map of the West Bank, it's very clear that it's an apartheid state. So since then it's been a personal responsibility of mine to share that message with as many people who are willing to listen. And it feels now more people are listening, but not enough to be truthful and not enough people in as well.

Christina Huang [00:44:07]
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for your work and spreading the message. I did oral history with Sunaina Maira and as you brought up it does hurt you professionally in your career when you talk about it you get doxed on these website. And so the work that you're doing is brilliant. And speaking out is like incredible. And it's just inspiration to me as a student and future students. So we'll keep amplifying those and keep having these conversations about the parallels of the Asian American community, the Palestine community and all communities in the fight for liberation. Based on all your experience globally, right on top of your many years of teaching, what is your recommendation for future and current students in institutions? How do we get involved in this Asian American Studies movement or flight from liberation for all people? And how do we start? How do we get involved and sustain ourselves?

Mohit Mehta [00:45:07]
That's a really fantastic question, Christina. I think that every movement or every field or every area grows and evolves. And Asian American Studies is growing and evolving in many necessary ways. One is the necessary inclusion of Asian American histories and voices that have been historically marginalized because they haven't been present in the archive. And I think South Asian American Digital Archive is a fantastic example of a community-driven initiative to collect from the grassroots level, our multiple communities archives and the work that SAADA has done as of late also to make sure that this broad umbrella of South Asian voices is collected. Right? Nepalese-Nepali voices, Bhutanese voices, Sri Lankan voices and more marginalized identities within the South Asian umbrella, including Dalit voices as well, right? I think that is all critical. Another direction that Asian American Studies is going in is critical and comparative racial studies. So I think that understanding the Asian American experience in constant conversation with other racialized identities. And I understand white to be a racialized identity as well if we understand race to be a social construct, all of these racial categories have been socially constructed over time and maintained through a system of power. Right. So I think that understanding the Asian American identity in terms of race is not enough. We need to understand how Asian American racialization has occurred historically over time in comparison to other groups as well. And I think that's important entry point in intersectional solidarity and struggle across groups here in Texas, so our largest minoritized population are Latinx people, mostly Mexican American. So for me, operating in the state of Texas, I need to know about Mexican American history. I need to know about the struggles of Mexican Americans. It's just so critical in other areas of the nation, it's so important to understand Indigenous histories. That's true for us no matter where we live. But it becomes even more critical. Based on your geographic location. So for me to be in Hawaii and not understand the native Hawaiian story and struggle is not okay in my books. And for me to be a settler here in Texas, it's not okay for me not to know the Indigenous story, the Black story. And most critically, the Mexican American story, because that's the communities that I have grown up in.

Christina Huang [00:47:45]
That's powerful. And I think that's really important to nail in of knowing where you are, context of where you are. And definitely that's a great model to live by. And I hope that you taking on these practices also, inspires other students and people in your circle to do the same. I have one last question. This has been a wonderful conversation, but I wanted to also give you space if there's anything else you felt like was important to discuss or talk about in this oral history before my question.

Mohit Mehta [00:48:20]
I think, Christina, your questions have been fantastic. I see you as a colleague and a scholar. I admire your grounding and understanding all these critical topics because they're not easy to talk about. It's not like people go to get coffee and they're like, let's talk about dismantling system of oppression and racial justice. So just want to say thank you to you for asking these very meaningful questions. And I don't think there's anything else for me to include, but I'm happy to go on as long as you like, and I can answer anything else.

Christina Huang [00:48:58]
Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I think as student developing my tongue and trying to understand the world around me, getting that kind of praise means a lot to me, especially from someone like you who has been doing so much work in the field. So thank you so much, and I really appreciate the time you give me.

Mohit Mehta [00:49:18]
I love that phrase, by the way "developing my tongue" and onto that can become like an essay or a poem or something or a spoken word piece. So hang on to that. That's yours. Don't let anybody take that from you "developing my tongue".

Christina Huang [00:49:31]
Thank you. Thank you so much. It was from a podcast [AirGo by Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger] that I was listening to. So just to give credit where credit is due.

Mohit Mehta [00:49:38]
Yeah. No. Yeah. Give them credit but then you can take that work in a new direction. So it's a really beautiful idea, I like it a lot.

Christina Huang [00:49:45]
Thank you. So what does it mean for you to be part of this larger liberation Asian American Studies movement as a whole?

Mohit Mehta [00:49:54]
I think that we live in such dire times. I think there's no skirting around that, right? There's just political volatility. There's ongoing racial injustice. There is climate change. There's global divisions that are just exacerbated all the time, that we can't live blind to these things. And I think for us, we can look at movement leaders who've come before us, we can look at really courageous voices that are spiritual and ethical leaders in our communities. And there's so many people in that regard that I look up to in saying that this is how we live on purpose, this is how we live. This is our purpose on this earth is to make this an equal and just place for all of us, you know? And race is just one dimension. There's all these interlocking phenomenons. We need to make this a safe space for trans students. We need to make our place a safe place for migrants. I think the list goes on. And so, it's an ongoing struggle, right? And like you said, rest is important. But it's also important to uphold and speak truth to power to everybody, everybody's who come before us and know that different people have different entry points. So some people resist and produce new knowledge through art, through storytelling, through writing, through blogging, through TikTok videos. It doesn't matter. But I think the very necessary work that I invite everybody into is developing critical consciousness about how these things work in our society. I think opening any book in Asian American history sort of is an invitation to do that. Because again, when these things were first introduced to me, it sparked a curiosity that hasn't gone away and so many things started to make sense. And I think that's when you have the vantage of history to look back into, oh, this all makes sense now, right? Understanding where a neoliberal global capitalist system based on race, how that developed it historically makes sense to me now. You know, but I think different people have different entry points. So I've had the privilege of being in an academic space where I have access to all this learning and very real and tangible ways, and not everybody has that privilege. So I think it's whatever your entry point is, though, we all can do something.