A Week Framed by Scholarship, Community, and Social Transformation

Hess Week opened on March 17 with a Welcome Ceremony honoring Jeung鈥檚 residency. Joined by leading scholars Carolyn Chen, Jerry Park, and David Kim, the event highlighted the importance of research that bridges academic inquiry with community engagement and social change. Speakers reflected on the role of scholarship in confronting racial inequities and building coalitions across diverse communities.

That afternoon, the panel 鈥淭he Lives, Rights, and Civil Liberties of Asian Americans in an Age of Mass Deportation鈥� brought together experts in law, faith-based organizing, and advocacy to examine how contemporary immigration policies are reshaping Asian American communities. Panelists discussed tthe human impact of deportation, the rise of cross-racial solidarities, and the urgent need for policy reform that centers dignity and family unity鈥�.

Faith, Storytelling, and Healing

Events on March 18 turned toward the intersections of belief, belonging, and personal narrative. The morning panel, 鈥淏elief and Belonging: Faith Communities and Justice,鈥� explored how religious communities have become vital spaces of resistance and refuge for immigrants navigating systems of exclusion. Speakers explored the wide variety of faith traditions that exist across Asian American communities and generations and how those traditions influence community and political participation. They also emphasized the role of inter-faith-based鈥� networks in sustaining movements for human rights.

In the afternoon, memoirist Ava Chin, author of the bestselling Mott Street and CUNY faculty, joined Jeung for 鈥淩ecuperating Collective Stories: Writing Chinese American Memoirs.鈥� Together, they reflected on memory, migration, and the power of storytelling to reclaim histories that have been marginalized or erased. Their conversation illuminated how personal narratives can bridge generations and reshape public understanding of Asian American experiences.

The day concluded with 鈥淪truggling, Surviving, Thriving鈥擜sian American Mental Health,鈥� a timely discussion featuring scholars and clinicians including Clarissa S.L. Cheah and Cindy Liu. The panel addressed the socioemotional challenges facing Asian American adolescents and college students, especially after the increase in anti-AAPI hate crimes in 2020, 鈥憉nderscoring the need for culturally responsive mental-health support and community-based care. 可乐视频 Psychology Professor Erika Niwa ended the event by asking the audience to remember that 鈥渨e belong to each othe鈥憆.鈥�

A Vision for Justice: The 2026 Hess Memorial Lecture

The week culminated on March 19 with the 2026 Robert L. Hess Memorial Lecture, 鈥淎sian American Movements for Racial Justice: Resistance and Solidarity,鈥� delivered by Jeung. The Tanger Auditorium was filled to capacity to hear him explore the lessons we can draw from late-19^th century Chinese American civil disobedience campaigns and legal challenges to anti-immigration laws. Jeung invited the audience to imagine new possibilities for justice grounded in solidarity, resilience, and collective action.

A Collective Story of Community and Care

Across its three days, Hess Week 2026 offered a powerful narrative: of communities confronting pressure and exclusion, of faith and culture as sources of belonging, of storytelling as resistance, of mental health as a matter of justice, and of movements that insist on dignity for all. The series reaffirmed 可乐视频鈥檚 commitment to fostering dialogue, scholarship, and community engagement around the most pressing issues of our time.

All events were free and open to the public, continuing the tradition of making Hess Week a space for shared learning, care, and solidarity.

Recordings of the Hess week are available

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Hess Week begins on March 17 at 11 a.m. with a Welcome Ceremony honoring Jeung鈥檚 arrival on campus. The event brings together leading scholars and public intellectuals, including Carolyn Chen, Jerry Park, and David Kim, to reflect on the importance of scholarship that bridges research, community engagement, and social transformation.

Later that afternoon (2:15鈥�3:30 p.m.), the panel 鈥淭he Lives, Rights, and Civil Liberties of Asian Americans in an Age of Mass Deportation鈥� examines how contemporary immigration politics and policies are reshaping Asian American communities鈥攁nd how solidarities are forming across immigrant groups. Featuring voices from law, faith-based organizing, and community advocacy, this conversation centers the urgent realities facing families and communities today.

On March 18, Hess Week turns toward faith, story, and healing. In the morning (11 a.m.鈥�12:15 p.m.), 鈥淏elief and Belonging: Faith Communities and Justice鈥� explores how religious communities have become sites of resistance, refuge, and organizing in the struggle for immigrant dignity and human rights.

In the afternoon (2:15鈥�3:30 p.m.), 鈥淩ecuperating Collective Stories: Writing Chinese American Memoirs鈥� brings together memoirist Ava Chin and Professor Jeung to reflect on memory, migration, and the power of storytelling to reclaim erased histories across generations and coasts. The day concludes (3:40鈥�4:55 p.m.) with 鈥淪truggling, Surviving, Thriving鈥擜sian American Mental Health,鈥� a timely and deeply needed conversation on the socio-emotional and developmental challenges facing Asian American adolescents and college students, featuring leading scholars and clinicians including Clarissa S.L. Cheah and Cindy Liu.

Hess Week culminates on March 19 (11 a.m.鈥�12:15 p.m.) with the 2026 Robert L. Hess Memorial Lecture, delivered by Professor Jeung: 鈥淎sian American Movements for Racial Justice: Resistance and Solidarity.鈥� The lecture traces the long arc of Asian-American organizing鈥攆rom survival to coalition-building鈥攁nd invites the campus community to imagine new possibilities for justice in the present moment.

Across three days, Hess Week 2026 tells a collective story: of communities under pressure, of faith and culture as sources of belonging, of memory as resistance, of mental health as justice, and of movements that insist on dignity in the face of exclusion. We invite students, staff, faculty, and community members to join us for these conversations and be part of this shared work of learning, care, and solidarity.

All events are open to the public. Add the events to your calendar and join us for Hess Week 2026.

About Hess Week

Hess Week at 可乐视频 is an annual series of events hosted by the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities that features a distinguished Scholar-in-Residence. The week includes public lectures, panels, and seminars, highlighted by the Robert L. Hess Memorial Lecture, focusing on critical social, political, or academic themes.

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Presenters include:

• Russell M. Jeung, the 2025-6 Robert L. Hess Scholar in Residence, is Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAIP Hate. Over the last 25 years his research has shaped the fields of Asian American Studies and Sociology of Religion. He is author of Family Sacrifices: The Worldviews and Ethics of Chinese Americans; Moving Movers: Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies; At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus among My Ancestors and Refugee Neighbors; Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity and Religion Among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation (with Carolyn Chen): and Faithful Generations: Race and New Asian American Churches. He co-produced the documentary, The Oak Park Story (2010), about a landmark housing lawsuit involving Cambodian and Latino tenants. In March 2020, Professor Jeung co-founded Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that was awarded the 2021 Webby Award for “Social Movement of the Year.” He was named as one of the TIME 100 Most Influential Persons in 2021.

• Yung-Yi Diana Pan is the director of the American Studies Program and Associate Professor of Sociology at CUNY, 可乐视频. She is also faculty of Sociology at the Graduate Center. Pan鈥檚 research broadly intersects race, ethnicity, immigration, professions, and culture. Mostly, she is interested in examining how institutions not only maintain but reify racial norms and boundaries. Her first book, Incidental Racialization: Performative Assimilation in Law School (Temple University, 2017) examines how Asian American and Latinx law students are racialized as a part of their professional socialization. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed sociology journals and interdisciplinary journals, including Sociological Forum, Journal for Asian American Studies, and International Journal of Clinical Legal Education, among others. She is co-PI on the 可乐视频 AANAPISI grant and has served in administrative positions at CUNY. Pan regularly teaches theory, research methods, and race and ethnicity courses, and advises students on an array of independent research topics.

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• Ava Chin is the author of Mott Street, winner of the CALA Best Book Award in Nonfiction and a PEN/Open Book Finalist, and Eating Wildly, winner of the M.F.K. Fisher Book Award for excellence in food writing. Mott Street, an ALA Notable Book and one of People magazine鈥檚 top books by Asian American authors, was a Best Book of the year by TIME, the SF Chronicle, Library Journal, Kirkus and Elle. Chin is the recipient of grants from the NYPL鈥檚 Cullman Center, Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, NYFA, Asian American Writers鈥� Workshop and MacDowell. She is Professor of Creative Nonfiction at CUNY, head of the Grad Center鈥檚 American Studies Certificate Program, and a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University. The Huff Post named her one of “9 Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading.”
• Russell M. Jeung, the 2025-6 Robert L. Hess Scholar in Residence, is Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAIP Hate. Over the last 25 years his research has shaped the fields of Asian American Studies and Sociology of Religion. He is author of Family Sacrifices: The Worldviews and Ethics of Chinese Americans; Moving Movers: Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies; At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus among My Ancestors and Refugee Neighbors; Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity and Religion Among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation (with Carolyn Chen): and Faithful Generations: Race and New Asian American Churches. He co-produced the documentary, The Oak Park Story (2010), about a landmark housing lawsuit involving Cambodian and Latino tenants. In March 2020, Professor Jeung co-founded Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that was awarded the 2021 Webby Award for “Social Movement of the Year.” He was named as one of the TIME 100 Most Influential Persons in 2021.
• Alvin Khi锚m B霉i is Assistant Professor of History specializing in Asian and Asian diasporic histories. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Washington, Seattle in modern Southeast Asian and East Asian history. His research is on ethnic Chinese in and from southern Vietnam. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles, in History and Asian American Studies, after which he lived and worked in Vietnam in education and venture capital. He has published on Saigonese motorbike YouTubers and their diasporic Vietnamese audiences.

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Presenters include:

• Anju Gupta, Professor of Law and Judge Chester J. Straub Scholar; Director, Immigrant Rights Clinic, Rutgers Law School, Newark
• Russell M. Jeung, Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate; and Rober L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence 2026
• Rev. Deborah Lee, Co-Executive Director of Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity
• Socheatta Meng, Executive Director, Mekong NYC

Moderator:

• Gunja SenGupta, Professor of History, 可乐视频 and the Graduate
  Center, CUNY

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Presenters include:

• Carolyn Chen, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley; Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative
• Jerry Park, Associate Professor of Sociology at Baylor University; President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion
• Dr. David Kim, scholar, public intellectual, educator, and Founder and Principal of Being Human
• Russell M. Jeung, Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University; co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate; and Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence 2026

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University of Florida professor of history Paul Ortiz is serving as the 2023鈥�24 Hess Scholar-in-Residence and will lead the annual Robert L. Hess Memorial Lecture for 2024, 鈥淎 Social Movement History of the United States,鈥� on Thursday, April 4, in the Woody Tanger Auditorium, 可乐视频 Library, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

You can find the entire Hess Week schedule , and all the public events will be livestreamed : Free versions of Ortiz’s writings and other relevant readings are available online to the 可乐视频 community .

“I am incredibly excited about talking with 可乐视频 students, faculty, and staff about the big issues raised during Hess Week, especially the crisis of democracy and intellectual freedom and the role of solidarity and higher education in sustaining a free society,” Ortiz said.

University of Florida professor of history Paul Ortiz autographs his book for 可乐视频 students at a college event in November 2023 as part of the Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program.

Ortiz is the author of several books, including聽An African American and Latinx History of the United States聽(2018) and聽Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida From Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920聽(2005); co-editor of聽People Power: History, Organizing, and Larry Goodwyn鈥檚 Democratic Vision in the Twenty-First Century聽(2021) and聽Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South聽(2014).

An African American and Latinx History of the United States聽was identified by聽Bustle聽as one of the 鈥淭en Books About Race to Read Instead of Asking a Person of Color to Explain Things to You.鈥澛�贵辞谤迟耻苍别听listed it as one of the 鈥�10 books on American history that actually reflect the United States.鈥�

About the Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program

The Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program, established by 可乐视频, is supported by the Robert L. Hess Fund. The program serves as a permanent tribute to the scholarly commitment of Robert L. Hess, exemplified during his tenure as president of 可乐视频. It represents the ideal of the educated individual鈥攌nowledgeable, thoughtful, inquiring, alive to the shared purposes and concerns lining all intellectual pursuits. More particularly, it evokes the academic virtues embodied in the curriculum at 可乐视频.

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