SAPAAC June 2025 Newsletter

IN THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER

Announcements
Upcoming Events
Recent Events
Stories from Asian America
Member Spotlight

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

DEADLINE EXTENDED: 2025 SAPAAC Member Survey

The deadline to take our 2025 SAPAAC Member Survey has been extended to Sunday, June 29 at 11:59 pm. Your input will help guide our work for the coming years and ensure we’re supporting our community in meaningful ways. The survey takes about 15 minutes to complete. We'd love to hear from you! Start the survey here. As a thank you, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win one of these spiffy, limited edition SAPAAC t-shirts!

SAPAAC Mini-Grants

Thanks to everyone who submitted a proposal to host an event in their local area and congratulations to our four grantees! These terrific volunteers will each be awarded up to $200 to help subsidize the costs of their events this summer, dates to come soon.

Kim Chan, '92, MBA '97

Orange County, CA

Mid-Autumn Festival Potsticker Party

Sarah Taylor, '97

Portland, OR

Hands-on Poetry Workshop: Write your first sijo!

Wai Kit Leung, MA '04

Hong Kong

Music Appreciation - from Early Baroque to Modern Times

Jeffery Lee, '05

Houston, TX

Stanford Club of Houston/SAPAAC Cheap Eats and AAPI Networking Mixer

UPCOMING EVENTS

Advanced Screenings of Award Winning Documentary Feature Film Earl

July 19, 6 pm

Santa Clara University Performing Arts Center, 114 Franklin Street, Santa Clara, CA

Cost: Free

AND

July 21, 6 pm

New York Asian Film Festival, the Beatrice Theater in the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street

New York, NY

Cost: $15

Catch one of these two advanced screenings of the award-winning documentary feature film Earl, directed by Ty Kim, ’86, which profiles the American composer Earl Kim (1920-1998). Screenings are being held next month in New York and Santa Clara.

Earl recovers a vital voice from American music's margins. The film centers on Korean American composer Earl Kim, whose radical aesthetic—reducing music to whispers and precise silences—emerged from trauma. From an impoverished California childhood to flying over Nagasaki one day after the atomic bomb, Kim spent decades transforming devastation into sparse, unbearable beauty. An outsider who taught composition through poetry rather than rules at Harvard, Kim persuaded Samuel Beckett, famously resistant to musical settings, to collaborate. Through interviews with students recalling unconventional methods and performers struggling with demanding scores, filmmaker Ty Kim confronts a broader cultural question: Why do we so easily forget the artists who demand the most of us? Watch the official trailer here.

RECENT EVENTS

Jacob Wang, ’74, accepted the 2025 Susan W. Schofield Oral History Award for excellence in the practice of oral history on behalf of SAPAAC, at a special ceremony held at Pigott Theater on May 28. Jay leads the Stanford Asian American Pacific Islander Oral History Project, which has captured the stories of Stanford AAPI alumni and staff. Explore some of their stories here.

On June 14, the 2025 Asian American Graduation Celebration was held on campus to honor graduating seniors. SAPAAC Board member Kuldip K. Ambastha attended the event and offered remarks as part of giving out the SAPAAC Distinguished Senior Award to Alexandra "Alex" Huynh.

Alex is a poet laureate and prolific volunteer, among other roles too numerous to mention. As one nominator stated: “It is clear that Alexandra’s poetry and presence have been an inspiration to the Vietnamese American community and the larger world.” As another nominator wrote: “While all of Alexandra’s accomplishments are admirable, what resonates most with other Asian American students is the genuine love and intentionality Alexandra has for the Asian American community …She is truly a unique individual whose deep love, care, and compassion not just for our Asian American communities, but all marginalized communities, is evident in how she moves and all that she does.” Congratulations, Alex!

STORIES FROM ASIAN AMERICA

We cover issues important to Asian Americans and Stanford alumni, around the country and on campus. If you have a story you’d like to share with the SAPAAC community, submit it for consideration here.

Last month for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Boston Public Library created an AAPI reading list with 77 books for children, teens, and adults. While no one book (or even hundreds of books!) could fully reflect the diversity of the Asian American experience, the Boston Public Library staff put together this selection of recent releases to highlight current Asian American representation in print.

ABC10 in Sacramento also produced this neat series of short interviews with Hmong, Sikh, Filipinos, and other AAPI individuals.

Los Angeles County’s Terminal Island is known for shipping and commerce today, but it was once a thriving Japanese American community. KTLA's Frank Buckley reports on the Island's rich history and the fight to preserve it.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT🔦

Name: Dan Kojiro

Position: I retired as a Research Scientist / Principal Investigator at NASA Ames Research Center in 2007. Since then, I have been coaching high school basketball at Mount Pleasant High School in San Jose for nine years as a paid coach, and eight years as an unpaid Assistant Coach.

Stanford Affiliations: BS in Chemistry and Biology, 1973; two term SAPAAC Board member; member of SAA and FLAN. Football season ticket holder for 40 years and a fan of Women’s Basketball!

What I’m currently working on.

Participated in the FLI Networking Night on 2/6; attended the Asian American Awards dinner on 5/9; co-organized the SAPAAC Boba Mixer for Stanford Students on 5/13; and plan to participate in the SAPAAC Picnic / Potluck this summer. I am also starting preparations for an event at Okada House for the Class of 1975 who will be celebrating their 50th Reunion Year at Homecoming this October. These folks were frosh during the first year of the Asian American Theme Dorm!

What I’m currently enjoying.

I just finished two books by Naomi Hirahara, Clark and Davidson and Evergreen. Both are mystery novels set in post-WWII Nisei communities. They follow nearly exactly the paths my parents took from Southern California to Internment Camp or 442nd Unit in Europe, to Chicago, then back to SoCal and the Evergreen/Boyle Heights areas of Los Angeles. I will now go back through Naomi's Mas Arai mystery novels.

My wife, Atsuko, and I enjoy traveling—usually one or two cruises each year, as well as road trips to places that interest us.

Fun Fact.

My elementary school in East Los Angeles was over 60% Asian (nearly all Sansei), but my high school was over 95% Mexican American (Garfield High, featured in the film Stand and Deliver and one of the schools in the film Walkout directed by Edward James Olmos).W

GET INVOLVED! Do you want to have an impact on AAPI alumni? Work with any of our three working committees, which focus on organizing events, advocating for Asian American issues within the university, and growing our membership. Our next committee meetings will be held in July.

Events

Chair: Andrew Jabara, ‘18, [email protected]

West Coast Leader: Jin Park, ‘91, [email protected]

East Coast Leader: Josephine Lau, ‘06, [email protected]

Advocacy & Education Committee

Chair: Takeo Rivera, ‘08, [email protected]

Membership Committee

Chair: Kuldip Ambastha, ‘04, [email protected]

Other questions for SAPAAC? Email us at [email protected]

Follow us online!

To change your subscription for future mailings, please log into your alumni account at groups.stanford.edu. For all other inquiries, contact us at [email protected].