May 2022
To the Brooklyn College Community,
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. We are pleased to honor this month and share with you the work we’ve been doing here at Brooklyn College to develop an Asian American studies program on campus.
Faculty members have worked to develop new courses for a prospective minor in Asian American studies, and the administration is surveying the faculty to find others with subject matter expertise to teach or develop additional courses that may be cross-listed in Asian American studies. The college has made a modest grant to faculty leaders in the area to bring speakers and events to campus, and the college is identifying space that would house Asian American studies on campus. Perhaps most importantly, the college has promised to search for a new faculty scholar in Asian American studies in the coming cycle.
To help us celebrate this important month, we have a lineup of many interesting programs and events to highlight our Asian American and Pacific Islander community. I hope you can join us.
May is designated as the following:
- Haitian Heritage Month
- Jewish American Heritage Month
- Mental Health Awareness Month
- National Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
- Older Americans Month
- Personal History Awareness Month
- South Asian Heritage Month
- Speech and Hearing Awareness Month
The following events take place or are celebrated in May:
- May 1–2: The Twelfth Day of Ridvan
- May 2: Ramadan Ends
- May 5: Cinco de Mayo
- May 8–9: Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives During the Second World War
- May 21: World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
- May 22: International Day for Biological Diversity
- May 23: Declaration of the Bab in Shiraz, Shavuot
- May 29: Ascension of Baha’u’llah
- May 30: Memorial Day
Below are some of this month’s events that are taking place at Brooklyn College to celebrate diversity. Try to attend these events, as they represent an opportunity for you to celebrate the great diversity of the college.
Regards,
Anthony Brown, Esq.
Chief Diversity Officer and Special Assistant to the President
Office of Diversity and Equity Programs
Brooklyn College
718.951.4128
Anthony.Brown@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Selected May Events
Film Screening: Vincent Who? With Producer and Writer Curtis Chin
May 2, 11 a.m.
Tanger Auditorium
Producer and writer Curtis Chin will screen Vincent Who? and contextualize the Asian-American experience through the lens of the Vincent Chin killing. This screening is ever timely given how Asian Americans are perceived and targeted in our current sociopolitical climate.
Eid Celebration
May 4, 3–5 p.m.
West Quad (rain location: West Quad Center)
Join Muslim students and student clubs to celebrate the end of Ramadan with food, picnic blankets, games, henna table, and cultural celebrations. For more information, e-mail Iqura Naheed.
How to Not Have Your S#@* Together: A Workshop on Failure, With Mimi Khuc
May 4, 5 p.m.
Register Now
What does it mean to fail? Why are we so terrified of failure? This workshop explores our ideas around success and failure, the social and cultural forces that shape those ideas, and the costs those ideas bear on us. The stakes of failure are particularly high for Asian Americans, and this workshop explores the burden of constantly feeling like a failure and how we might opt out—perhaps by leaning into failure and not having our s#@* together at all times.
Panel Discussion: A Path Forward to Unity and Diversity—AAPI History in School Curriculum
May 5, 5 p.m.
Register Now
Join panelists John Liu, New York State Senator; Professor Ying Lu, New York University, and board member, Make Us Visible NJ; Mark Treyger ’05, ’09 M.A., ’12 M.S.Ed., executive director, Intergovernmental Affairs, New York City Department of Education; and Mikayla Lin, sophomore, Stuyvesant High School.
Lydia X.Z. Brown: A Personal Journey
May 10, 12:30 p.m.
Register Now
Lydia X.Z. Brown, Esq., a gender nonbinary, queer, disabled person of color, is self-described as “multiply marginalized” and will share how belonging to various minority groups helped shape Brown’s personal journey.
Third Annual Lavender Graduation Ceremony
May 26, noon–1:30 p.m.
Fill out this form to attend as a graduating student or guest.
Lavender Graduation is conducted by universities to honor LGBTQIA+ students and acknowledge their accomplishments and contributions. Students who graduated in fall 2021 or winter 2022, or who are graduating in spring or summer 2022, are welcome to invite family, friends, professors, and other guests to the ceremony. As this will be a virtual event, we invite people to participate in a variety of ways. In addition to the ceremony on May 26, we encourage you to share pictures, artwork, etc., on social media ahead of time using the hashtag #BCLavenderGrad. If you have any questions, e-mail the LGBTQ Resource Center.
