Harvard College · Pan-Ethnic Undergraduate Association
For five decades, the AAA has worked to unite Harvard’s pan-ethnic Asian American community and to raise awareness of Asian American issues on campus and beyond.
The Asian American Association is Harvard College’s pan-ethnic Asian American student organization. Where many campus groups center a single heritage, the AAA’s role has always been to bring those communities together and to give them a shared voice.
In its own words, the AAA strives to unite the pan-ethnic Asian American community at Harvard and raise greater awareness of Asian American issues through social, cultural, educational and political programming.
The association is student-run, with a board elected each year. Membership and leadership change with every class, so check with Harvard’s student organization listings for current contacts.
Four kinds of programming
How it started · Fall 1976
A welcome banquet for minority freshmen, and no place at it for Asian American students.
According to founders interviewed by The Harvard Crimson, a 1976 orientation banquet for minority first-years left Asian American students out. The incident galvanized students already organizing through the Coalition of Asian American Students, and that fall they formed the Asian American Association. Composer and activist Fred Ho ’79 is credited among the original founders.
Key moments in the AAA’s history, as reported by The Harvard Crimson and national press.
The Coalition of Asian American Students forms at Harvard, pressing for recognition of Asian Americans as a minority group on campus.
In the fall, students build on the Coalition's work and form the Asian American Association. Early priorities include minority recognition, an Asian American Studies department and divestment from companies profiting from apartheid, alongside cultural programming.
AAA organizes the month's schedule of events together with 15 other campus Asian American groups.
A co-president estimates the AAA's largest events draw around 600 of Harvard's roughly 1,200 Asian and Asian American students.
AAA tables in front of Widener Library against California's Proposition 187, a moment many saw as Harvard's Asian American community speaking with one voice.
Newly elected officers emphasize political engagement as what sets the pan-ethnic AAA apart from ethnicity-specific groups.
The Crimson notes the AAA's long-running, still unsuccessful campaign for an Asian American Studies concentration at Harvard.
From February 20 to 22, AAA hosts the East Coast Asian American Student Union conference, described as the largest Asian American student conference in the country, with more than 1,200 students. Planning took a year and a half.
As SFFA v. Harvard moves from trial to the Supreme Court's June 2023 ruling, CBS News, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe all cite the AAA in their coverage of Asian American students and admissions.
The Harvard Alumni Association shared interest group for Asian American alumni, which has linked to the AAA for years.
The intercollegiate network whose 2015 conference the AAA hosted at Harvard.
A sister undergraduate organization focused on Asian American women at Harvard.
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