Congratulations to the new Little League World Champions: Team USA from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, who won the championship on a dramatic walk-off two-run home run by Michael Memea.

You might recall that Hawaii has the largest proportion of Asian Americans of any U.S. state -- around two-thirds of the state’s population has Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry. I’m not sure how many players on the Little League team are Asian American, but judging from the pictures, it looks like it’s in line with the state’s proportions.

Hats off to the champions and let’s hope that as many of them make it all the way to the Major Leagues as possible.

U.S. News & World Report has released its annual survey of the top universities and colleges in the U.S. Predictably, Ivy League schools like Harvard and Princeton are at the top. Not to be outdone, other organizations such as Newsweek/Kaplan, Peterson, and Princeton Review have their own competing lists on the best colleges in the country.

How did my current employer, the University of MA, Amherst fare? Well, in the U.S. News rankings, we were ranked as the 50th best public university in the country and something like 84th overall. To be honest, that’s not terribly impressive. But the Princeton Review did place UMass Amherst near the top in other measures: #3 when it comes to “Long Lines and Red Tape,” #3 for “Students Dissatisfied with Financial Aid,” #9 for “Their Students (Almost) Never Study,” #13 for “Refer Madness,” #20 for “Campus is Tiny, Unsightly, or Both,” and perhaps most impressively, #9 in terms of “Party Schools.”

I suppose that’s better than my graduate alma mater, the University at Albany SUNY, which scored impressive wins in these categories: #1 for “Professors Make Themselves Scarce” and #1 for “Campus is Tiny, Unsightly, or Both.”

However, a different set of rankings has appeared -- Washington Monthly’s ranking of colleges on how well they are using public funds for good use in society, by being “engines of social mobility,” promoting knowledge and economic growth, and instilling “an ethic of service.” Overall, their top ten for national universities and liberal arts are (with the U.S. News rankings in parantheses for comparison):

National Universities
1. MIT (7); 2. UCLA (25); 3. UC Berkeley (20); 4. Cornell (13); 5. Stanford (5); 6. Penn State (48); 7. Texas A&M (60); 8. UC San Doego (32); 9. Univ. of PA (4); 10. Univ. of MI (25).

Liberal Arts Colleges
1. Wellesley (4); 2. Wesleyan (12); 3. Bryn Mawr (21); 4. Harvey Mudd (18); 5. Fisk (Unranked). 6. Amherst (2); 7. Haverford (8); 8. Wofford (55); 9. Colby (20); 10. Spelman (73).

As you can see, in terms of national universities, public universities fare better in the Washington Monthly list than in the U.S. News list. But alas, UMass Amherst is still nowhere to be found. Let’s see if the University of Massachusett’s flagship campus can do better next year . . .

AlterNet has an interesting article written by a young Vietnamese woman on her struggles about what name she should go by -- her given Vietnamese name or an “Americanized” one that is easier for Americans to pronounce. This article isn’t exactly a news item, but it is a common issue that many Asian Americans inevitably face at one time or another:

In school, I would see girls named Linda, Anne or Susie whom I know weren’t called that by their mothers. I respect their decision to make their names into something easier for others to pronounce and understand. A name is an important thing, and being able to create your own is powerful. It means you can choose your own identity over the one your parents chose for you. But I made a different choice. . . .

Even though the schools I went to were filled with Vietnamese students, I had to Americanize my name for the teachers in order for them to pronounce it. Even then, I’d have to come up with a story to help them remember my name. I’d tell them to use the “Bingo” song:” clap, clap, N-G-O, clap , clap, N-G-O, and Thuy Ngo was her name-0.” When you think about it, it’s kind of sad to have to go through all of that trouble just so your teacher will remember your name.

I can personally relate to this article because as I’ve explained to many friends, colleagues, and students, I also used the American name “Sean” throughout high school and college but eventually decided that it did not really reflect my “rediscovered” Asian- and Vietnamese-American identity any longer after I began studying sociology and eventually realizing that my ancestral roots are a source of pride and inspiration, not of shame or embarassment.

I wanted to go back to using my given name “Cuong” but didn’t want people to constantly mispronounce it. Ultimately, I compromised and decided to just go by my first and middle initials “C.N.” The author of the article poignantly describes how the choice of names is so often fraught with anxieties and mixed reactions from both Asians and non-Asians.

But in the end, as she notes, it is a something that you have control over so it should be one that is meaningful to you, not necessarily anyone else.

I thought I had seen everything, but Salon.com reports that there is a growing controversy over the sale of marijuana-flavored candy around the country:

The confections are legal, because they are made with hemp oil, a common ingredient in health food, beauty supplies and other household products. The oil imparts a marijuana’s grassy taste but not the high. Merchants call them a harmless novelty for adults and insist they advise stores to sell only to people 18 and older.

“There are more than 70 million people in the United States who smoke marijuana. We’re catering to the audience of people who are in that smoking culture,” said Rick Watkins, marketing director for Corona, Calif.-based Chronic Candy, which uses the slogan “Every lick is like taking a hit.”

Just another skirmish in the neverending battle between capitalism and conservative morals.

USA Today has an article that describes what many of us academics have known all along -- the requirements to become a tenure-track professor these days are becoming higher each day and the competition among newly-minted Ph.D.s in each field is probably the most intense it’s ever been.

Summer is no vacation anymore for those with career ambitions in academia. As teaching positions become more competitive and less secure, college-level educators are scrambling wherever they can to get an edge. Though this new reality bears its marks year-round, never is it more pronounced than now, when today’s frenzied research replaces the leisurely summer sojourns of yesteryear. . . .

“Many people have a misconception that faculty have the summer off, but that’s really not the case,” says John Curtis, the [American Association of University Professors’s] director of research. This picture means more than the fierce competition that Green faces when he goes up against 400 other qualified candidates for a single, tenure-track position next year. It also raises hard-to-meet expectations for academicians to publish research, do community service and supplement their often meager, part-time incomes. . . .

College-level instructors are sometimes quick to say they’re not complaining. Earning a living, however precarious, by following an intellectual passion is a blessing worth remembering with gratitude, say those interviewed for this article. Such attitudes keep the applications coming as schools increasingly hire part-timers to keep payroll expenses down.

For many of us academics, it is indeed a fiercely competitive, almost cutthroat type of environement, with sky-high expectations from hiring committees, universities administrators, and among ourselves. But to have the chance to do what you find interesting and rewarding -- to get paid to learn new knowledge and the chance to apply your skills to make a difference in the world -- it is worth it.

A few recent articles in the news highlight the importance of voting among communities of color in general, and within the Asian American community specifically. First, several news organizations report that as the nation celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act that finally removed all the legalistic barriers to voting, there is debate in Congress about whether the act needs to be renewed or whether it’s no longer necessary:

In the weekly Democratic radio address, [U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia] said his party is committed to strengthening the sections of the law that are set to expire at the end of next year. Conservatives are pushing for modification of two provisions. One requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal approval before changing voting rules. The other requires election officials to provide voting material in the native language to immigrant voters who don’t speak English.

Similarly, as reported by the New CA Media, a coalition of Asian American legal rights organizations released a report titled “Sound Barriers: Asian Americans and Language Access in Election 2004″ that details several instances in which Asian American voters were not provided with the rights and opportunities for voting that the Voting Rights Act supposedly guarantees. This is just an excerpt of some of the issues encountered:

Among the common problems encountered by Asian American voters with limited English proficiency (LEP) in these polling sites were:

Poll workers were frequently reluctant to help, were unaware of how to help, or were suspicious of bilingual poll workers and LEP voters. In Los Angeles County, CA, a poll worker sent an Asian American voter to the back of the line for “causing too much trouble” due to the voter’s limited English proficiency.

About 46 percent of the polling sites monitored had multilingual materials but these were inaccessible to those who needed them. In 96 polling stations, there were no instructions in other languages on how to use the voting machines, the sample ballots or even directional signs. Many poll workers did not understand why multilingual materials were necessary. In Cook County, IL, one election judge who could not understand a voter said that the voter should learn to speak English.

As further proof of the barriers that many Asian American voters still face, the Boston Globe reports on several more instances of voter discrimination:

Voters at 11 polling stations in Boston, Quincy, and Lowell encountered ‘’multiple barriers” similar to those experienced by some black and Latino voters in Florida in 2000. City and state elections officials said yesterday the problems had been addressed since the group sent its letters in March.

The letters, however, provide new details of the allegations facing the city of Boston and show that other cities also experienced similar problems. The group sent its findings to the US Justice Department before the department filed a voting rights lawsuit against the city of Boston last month.

In Boston, home to about 19,000 Chinese-American and 10,000 Vietnamese-American voters, poll watchers interviewed about 500 Asian-Americans as they left five polling stations in Chinatown, Mission Hill, and Dorchester last November.

The survey found 10 voters who said they had been turned away because their names were not on the rolls and who were not offered provisional ballots as required by law. About 100 voters told interviewers that the polling stations lacked Chinese and Vietnamese ballot guides. And 62 voters had to show identification, a practice that raised questions about racial discrimination,

Personally, I still find it absolutely mind-boggling how completely screwed up the U.S. voting system is. The 2000 debacle in Florida finally exposed just how utterly incompetent and fundamentally flawed our voting system is, even 40 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Supposedly, it’s illegal to discriminate against voters of color and immigrant voters but these incidents still happen time and time again, against all non-White groups.

The irony is that the U.S. likes to pound its chest and forcefully show the world that it has the best democracy in the world. If that’s not the height of hypocrisy, I don’t know what is. But as long as these “voting irregularities” end up helping those in power stay in power, I predict that not much is going to change at all.

Absolutely incredible.

CBS News has an article that describes the emergence and growing assertiveness of College Republican student organizations around the country. The article notes that this is tied to the parallel trend of conservative critics lambasting the predominance of liberal/progressive professors on many college campuses:

These young GOP’s have a clear plan of attack that has already been executed at some of the nation’s most traditionally leftie institutions. First, confront liberal bias at the core by calling out professors they think are guilty. Next, get creative about attracting members and making conservatism cool on campus. Then, get prominent conservative speakers on campus, push to open student publications to conservative voices or start conservative newspapers. . . .

While back in the 1960s heyday of student protests, liberal students charged conservative-leaning professors with marginalizing liberal viewpoints in the classroom, the Republican radicals of today insist that their voices are being silenced by ex-hippie academics. . . . According to an increasingly vocal contingent of campus conservatives, the carryover of liberal political bias into the classroom is undeniable.

Well, I suppose they’re right about liberal students challenging the conservative academic establishment in the 1960s and that it’s apparently now swinging the other way as conservative students challenge the predominance of liberal professors these days. As the article and another post I wrote notes, sociology is one the most liberal-heavy academic disciplines in the country, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans 30 to 1.

For me personally, as a openly liberal sociologist, I tell my students on the very first day of class that my personal viewpoints tend to be liberal. However, I also tell them that it does not mean that my goal is to convince them that I’m right or to persuade them to think the same way I think. In fact, I really want them to bring up their own opinions, viewpoints, and perspectives so that we as a class can discuss them together and learn from each other.

Therefore, I don’t fear being questioned about my beliefs. But there needs to be ground rules on both sides -- (1) question and challenge in a calm and respectful way and (2) be prepared to support your arguments with data and examples. Ultimately, that’s what I trry to teach my students to do -- to examine and debate issues as sociologists, whether they are liberal, conservative, or neither.

The New York Times reports that New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is cutting back on Chinese food, apparently because he believes it is not good for his health. Needless to say, when news of this reached NYC’s Chinese community, they weren’t exactly smitten by the idea:

When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, 63, mentioned last week that he was cutting back on Chinese food, as part of an attempt to lose weight for the home stretch of his re-election campaign, the news hit the Chinese restaurants and landed splat in the duck sauce.

“He is making big mistake,” [Raymond Wong, 45, a manager at Joe’s Shanghai, on Pell Street in Chinatown] said. . . . Mr. Wong pointed to a photograph in the newspaper showing Mr. Bloomberg eating a piece of fried chicken. “Does he think that fried chicken is healthier than Chinese food?” . . .

[Bloomberh spokesman] Mr. Skyler said that far from denigrating Chinese food, the mayor was such a big fan that he was eating too much of it. . . . “Having shared a lot of meals with him over the years, I can assure owners of Chinese restaurants across the city that this is a mayor who has and will continue to deeply love Chinese food,” Mr. Skyler said. He added that his boss enjoyed a good relationship with New York’s Chinese community and had recently been endorsed by Sing Tao, a local Chinese-language daily newspaper.

Mayor Bloomberg may think that he has a good relationship with the Chinese American community in NYC, but with comments like this, he only shows that he still has a few cultural blindspots and insensitive stereotypes that he needs to be more aware of, if he wants to maintain his “good relations” with Chinese Americans in NYC.