Janrey Javier
University of California Berkeley, Student Engagement Manager
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Janrey Javier (he/him/siya) is a first-generation student, cis-het male, Asian American, Filipino American, and child of immigrants. He finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston and his master’s at University of San Francisco, completing the MA Organization & Leadership program with a focus in Higher Education Leadership. Janrey currently works full-time at the University of California, Berkeley as the Student Engagement Manager at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, under the College of Engineering. His first exposure to ethnic studies was through the Asian American Studies department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, inspiring him to co-trip lead an alternative spring break trip dedicated to Asian American mental health in response to anti-Asian hate incited during COVID-19 and support local Asian American organizations, dedicate his undergraduate honors thesis to the topic of Asian American student leadership development in Massachusetts public higher education institutions, and pursue graduate school as he shifted his career trajectory to education. After enduring a harmful experience at a predominantly white institution, Janrey took a leap of faith and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to work full-time while transferring to the University of San Francisco as a full-time student. His exposure to bell hooks’ Theory as Liberatory Practice urged him to explore the gaps of his undergraduate honors thesis to make sense of his past experiences while generating empirical evidence that would contribute to the concretization of Filipino American student experiences in academic research. Finishing his master’s program and thesis inspired him to give back to the community, which led him to teach part-time in the San Francisco Unified School District with Pin@y Educational Partnerships, teaching Filipinx/a/o American studies to high school students. Janrey has presented his work at the 2023 Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education conference as well as Asian American Studies classes at UMass Boston. He strives to be an active member of the communities he’s connected with, from serving in student government and staff organizations to volunteering in local Filipino organizations and higher education associations. Janrey’s research interests center around Asian American and Filipino American student development, exploring how leadership, community engagement, and family influence shape their experiences as they transition from high school to post-secondary education and navigate higher education.
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Bridging Coasts, Cultivating Change: Innovative Approaches in Asian American Studies
This panel explores innovative approaches in Asian American Studies, focusing on collaborative initiatives between the East and West Coasts of the United States. Through a series of interconnected papers, we examine the transformative impact of community-engaged pedagogy, student-led initiatives, and cross-institutional partnerships in addressing the evolving needs of Asian American students and communities.
The first paper introduces the Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) and its collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston). It highlights PEP's Community Action Praxis (CAP) framework and its possibilities with UMass Boston's Asian American Studies Program, demonstrating how this partnership can address institutional challenges with community-based solutions.
The second paper focuses on UMass Boston's innovative "Rise Up! Asian American Leadership and Social Change" course. It explores how this writing seminar integrates critical literacy with activism, responding to urgent issues such as educational equity, COVID-19 impacts, and anti-Asian hate. The paper also discusses how the tragic death of a student, Arif Sayed Faisal, influenced the course's evolution and emphasized the need for culturally responsive support for immigrant and refugee students; inclusive of Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian experiences.
The third paper examines the Filipino American Experience (FAE) initiative at UMass Boston. It traces the development of this student-led project from its inception as an experiential learning opportunity to its current goal of establishing a Filipino American Studies course. The paper highlights how FAE addresses the critical need for Filipino American representation in the curriculum and its potential to foster a broader understanding of collective liberation.
The final paper presents an autoethnographic account of a first-generation Filipino American student's journey from Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area. It explores the personal and professional growth facilitated by cross-coastal collaborations and emphasizes the importance of nurturing connections between Asian American studies programs across the United States.
Collectively, these papers demonstrate the power of innovative pedagogical approaches, student activism, and cross-institutional collaborations in expanding the scope and relevance of Asian American Studies. By centering diverse Asian American voices and experiences, particularly those of Filipina/x/o communities, this panel contributes to the ongoing dialogue about the role of Ethnic Studies in combating systemic oppression and fostering social change.
The roundtable aims to inspire further collaboration between Asian American Studies programs nationwide, emphasizing the importance of community engagement, critical pedagogy, and student empowerment in shaping the future of the field. It underscores the potential of these approaches to address contemporary challenges faced by Asian American communities while honoring ancestral legacies and paving the way for future generations committed to social justice and liberation.
"Filipino Enough": Racism & Filipino American Student Leadership
Filipino American students often begin their leadership journey while developing a stronger sense of their racial identity when they begin and navigate college. This study examines the phenomena of racism among Filipino American student leaders as their racial identity positions them to experience a dual layer of racialization as Asian Americans among other communities of color and Filipino Americans within the Asian American identity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted among four graduating or recently graduated Filipino American student leaders across the US. The phenomenology methodology approach allowed semi-structured interviews to capture the essence of the experience among Filipino American student leaders in higher education while the theoretical frameworks Critical Race Theory and Asian Critical Theory offered lenses that assisted in the formulation of the research questions, analysis of the literature review, and analysis of the findings discovered across the four interviews. Analysis of the findings discovered that participants' perceptions of themselves were strongly influenced by their environments and upbringings, the structures in higher education that impacted participants included the peers they connected with, the student organizations they participated in, and the communities they were members of, and the perceptions participants sensed from others included othering and exclusion. This study concludes that Filipino American student leaders actively combat racialization within themselves and from others, persevere against structures that perpetuate racialization when they’re grounded in themselves, their peers, and their community, and experience discrimination across multiple leadership roles, among communities of color, and within the Asian American community.
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