Recorded on April 1, this timely panel — presented as part of the Berkeley Conversations and Matrix on Point series — considered both the long history of anti-Asian racism and present-day patterns linked to the pandemic and to cultural anxieties about Asian ascendancy and Western decline.

The panel featured presentations by Professors Russell Jeung (San Francisco State University), Catherine Choy (UC Berkeley), and Kimberly Hoang (University of Chicago).

Michael Lu, Dean of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, offered an introduction, and Raka Ray, Dean of the Division of Social Sciences in the UC Berkeley College of Letters and Sciences, moderated the panel.

This event was presented as part of the Matrix On Point discussion series, which promotes focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today’s most pressing contemporary issues. Learn more at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/matrix-on-point.

Co-sponsors included the UC Berkeley Social Science Division initiative “Toward a Just Social Sciences," the Asian Pacific American Student Development (APASD), the Asian American and Pacific Islander Standing Committee, the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, and Stop AAPI Hate.