May 9, 2026 marked the official launch date of Foundations and Futures, a comprehensive multimedia textbook created by UCLA’s own Asian American Studies Center (AASC).
Many gathered at the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center to attend the launch event, which spanned from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. It brought together contributors, speakers and important figures in the Asian American sphere. With performances from UCLA’s Naya Zamaana and Kyodo Taiko as well as remarks from Chancellor Julio Frenk and Congressional Representatives Ted Lieu and Judy Chu, the event underscored the community effort that went into the textbook’s production.
Co-coordinated by a UCLA professor in the department of Asian American Studies, Kelly Fong, and Director’s Chair of the Asian American Studies Center, Karen Umemoto, Foundations and Futures comes to us after six years of production. The textbook reimagines how we visualize Asian American history by telling the stories erased in today’s classrooms, and, vitally, comes to us free of charge. The textbook is entirely online, making it accessible to all audiences, which is especially significant in an industry where essential history is kept behind paywalls. They say that this decision represents the “democratization of knowledge” in an attempt to “make little known history visible and accessible,” rather than being entrenched in the “pedagogical pillars of ethnic studies.”
The six year production of the textbook is a culmination of various efforts. Over 100 authors and over 200 staff and contributors composed Foundations and Futures, including UCLA undergraduates and graduate students. Production cost 12 million dollars, 10 million of which was sourced from California State Assembly member Al Muratsuchi, who champions California public instruction in his campaign for state superintendent. He spoke at the event, revealing that he owes much to the Asian American movement for inspiring his political aspirations, and that contributing to the textbook is his way of giving back.
This American history, as told in Foundations and Futures, synthesizes fifty years of scholarship for the public. One of the main missions for the textbook was accessibility, which comes in the form of multiple tools such as automatic translation, text resizing, line height adjustment for annotations and a free lesson plan for educators. How history is told, and how this telling was composed in an approachable, truthful manner, is almost as important as the history itself.
AASC invited Dr. Maya Soetoro from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as a keynote speaker lecturing on thought leadership for the launch event. During her lecture, she spoke about what it means to be a peacebuilder working towards achieving positive peace, which she defined as taking action to change the conditions that cause harm in society. “The textbook is a powerful act of positive peace,” Soetoro said. She identified how its work addresses silence and opens an important dialogue through the acknowledgement of past history and the unequivocable truth.
Video remarks from Julio Frenk, Ted Lieu and Judy Chu commended the AASC for their efforts, and Frenk further encouraged the audience to carry the work forward. “It is vital that young people see themselves reflected in history,” Lieu said. Similarly, in her remarks, Chu said that she was “glad that young people will be able to encounter Asian American history.”
Foundations and Futures is an enduring effort. The work does not end with the textbook’s production, but must be continued by endeavors to distribute the textbook into classrooms and affect change on the ground. Towards the end of the event, event coordinators encouraged attendees to donate to their crowdfund.
The movement for Asian American rights and education is still, if not more, relevant to today’s political hemisphere, and Foundations and Futures honors this mission. California State Assembly member Mike Fong, who spoke early on in the event with Muratsuchi, put it most succinctly: “Asian American history is American history.”
Visual Credit: “Education Through Struggle” (1995), Dylan Marr and Students
Comments are closed.