Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism

The Counterinsurgency of the “Stop Asian Hate” Movement: Carceral Receipts and Zionist Affinities (and Beyond)

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By Dylan Rodríguez

Introduction

The emergence of the United States–based Stop Asian Hate movement since 2021 has catalyzed various forms of organization and grassroots mobilization, much of which pivots on demands for enhanced policing, expansions of criminal justice and civil rights infrastructures, increased state and private funding, and various forms of state-centered grievance.[1] As a liberal-progressive social justice orientation, Stop Asian Hate hinges on a redemptive political fantasy: a reformed US nation-building project in which police power, criminal jurisprudence, public policy, and earnest carceral state actors (including elected officials and prosecutors) strengthen and expand the state’s obligation to protect people of Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) descent from “hate,” “hate crimes,” “hate incidents,” and other forms of racial animus.[2]

As with every social movement, the fantasy matters. It guides practical decision-making, short- to long-term organizing strategies, and tactical choices. The institutional affinities and interactions, political priorities, and deep internal contradictions characterizing the formation of two of Stop Asian Hate’s most prominent organizations—Stop AAPI Hate and The Asian American Foundation—raise urgent questions about the stakes and consequences of the larger movement’s public-facing claims, demands, and mobilization/advocacy activities.[3]

Carceral Receipts: Stop AAPI Hate and the Calculus of “Hate Acts”

Founded on March 19, 2020, in “response to the alarming escalation in xenophobia and bigotry resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Stop AAPI Hate immediately garnered corporate media and philanthropic attention as a national coalition developed by two well-established nonprofit organizations (AAPI Equity Alliance and Chinese for Affirmative Action) and the San Francisco State University Department of Asian American Studies.[4]

Developed as “the nation’s largest reporting center tracking anti-AAPI hate acts,” Stop AAPI Hate’s data collection framework reproduces the terms and methods of criminology even as the organization asserts it is “grounded in the belief that we must confront racism at its root with comprehensive, non-carceral solutions.”[5] The coalition’s reporting apparatus atomizes “hate acts” as discrete, individual events and interpersonal encounters, producing a dynamic, evolving database that is cited by police, the US Department of Justice, Congress, and other administrative units of the carceral state.[6] By way of example, FBI agent Susana Mapu, speaking on a 2021 panel alongside one of Stop AAPI Hate’s cofounders, endorsed Stop AAPI Hate’s use of the broad category “hate incidents” as a supplement to the narrower juridical concept “hate crimes.” Narrating a key presentation slide, she declared, “We want to know about both! Report to local law enforcement or FBI (tips.fbi.gov).”[7] Mapu continued, “The reason I say here that we want to know about both is because, as you know, the FBI holds all the data. . . . We want to know about statistics.”[8]

Figure 1. Headshots of Stop AAPI Hate cofounder Manjusha P. Kulkarni alongside FBI agent Susana Mapu, assistant United States attorney Ashley Washington, and attorney Karen King (member of the Asian American Bar Association of New York’s Anti-Asian Violence Task Force) on publicity for “Combating Hate, Racism, and Xenophobia Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,” April 28, 2021. Screenshot of event website accessed May 2024.

Stop AAPI Hate gathered almost two thousand “incident reports” of “coronavirus discrimination” during its first two months of research, and its ongoing efforts have attracted financial and political support from foundations, police, state governments, the Biden-Harris administration, well-funded Asian American nonprofits, and numerous celebrities, academics, industry executives, and cultural/social media influencers.[9] In addition to receiving $10 million from California’s Asian and Pacific Islander Equity Budget “to track, respond, and prevent incidents of racial bias and harm,” the coalition has obtained funding from the Asian American Foundation (see below), Hewlett Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and Kaiser Permanente.[10] Reflecting the entrepreneurial logic of the group’s ascension, two of the coalition’s administrative leaders published a USA Today opinion piece for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month calling on “policymakers, government agencies and others” to invest in “partnerships between government civil rights agencies and trusted community-based organizations” while strengthening “existing protections and enforcement and [passing] new civil rights laws.”[11]

Responding to a previous draft of this article, Stop AAPI Hate asserts that any claim that it is “a ‘police friendly’ organization” is false: “rather, core to its mission is advocating for alternatives to carceral approaches.”[12] Their objection describes the group’s “documented history of championing more comprehensive solutions beyond policing,” highlighting Stop AAPI Hate’s cosigning of a February 2024 public letter opposing expansion of New York’s hate crime laws while quoting the coalition cofounders’ 2022 Time op-ed: “The problem with investing in ineffective solutions like policing is that they keep us from adopting methods that will actually make us safer and that our community actually wants. These methods involve investing in our communities, not in policing.”[13]

Yet, a body of evidence suggests that primary components of Stop AAPI Hate’s work and advocacy are not only passively compatible with the paradigms of the policing and carceral state but also actively contribute to the state’s criminal justice functions. A 2021 KCAL (Los Angeles) television report describes Stop AAPI Hate’s origins “as a clearing house for information because of gaps in record keeping between law enforcement agencies,” with cofounder Manjusha Kulkarni expressing concern over how police departments “don’t always share… information with the Department of Justice, with the FBI, and with the state [attorneys general].” The KCAL report notes that “the LAPD worked with [Stop AAPI Hate] to launch a campaign . . . to provide information cards with resources in a variety of languages to victims of hate.”[14] Relatedly, California Governor Gavin Newsome’s Golden State Plan to Counter Antisemitism highlights a January 2024 event that “focused on the size and scope of hate crime from a data perspective and which included panelists from the FBI, CA DOJ, and Stop AAPI Hate.”[15]

Stop AAPI Hate’s leadership has contradicted the group’s stated commitment to noncarceral principles in rather public ways as well. Kulkarni, during 2022 testimony to the US House Judiciary Committee, clearly evinced support for new federal hate crime legislation that would expand carceral punishment for “hate crime offenses,” create “federally-funded, state-run hotlines dedicated to receiving reports of hate crimes and other incidents of anti-AAPI discrimination,” and “[provide] victims with guidance on which law enforcement officials and community services groups to contact for further help.”[16] Further, the FBI reported that in summer 2021, as part of a project intended to “address the barriers that prevent people [in Asian American communities] from reporting hate crimes,” its San Francisco office convened a meeting with Stop AAPI cofounder and San Francisco State Professor Russell Jeung, whose “recommendations for addressing the reporting gap” included “[recruiting] more FBI agents and personnel from diverse backgrounds” and using “Asian-language media to encourage reporting.”[17]

Evaluated in the context of this record of expressed, active, and aspirational affinities with the carceral and policing state, Stop AAPI Hate’s objection to the critical analysis developed in an earlier draft of this article—and further developed both here and in forthcoming work—lacks factual credibility and conveys a fundamental organizational dishonesty.[18] The coalition’s leadership conveys persistent, though functional, inconsistencies and periodic irreconcilable contradictions between its organizational branding and organizational activities. That is, even as Stop AAPI Hate consistently asserts a commitment to “non-carceral solutions,” its practices often reproduce, reflect, or otherwise support carceral and policing state infrastructures.

Rise of The (Crazy Rich) Asian American Foundation: Affinities with Zionism and Empire

Perhaps the most significant twenty-first-century development in the political economy of Asian American organizations has been the lightning-quick emergence of the Asian American Foundation (TAAF), founded in May 2021. TAAF garnered over $1 billion in its first year of existence, including influxes from the Ford, MacArthur, and Mellon Foundations, Bank of America, Etsy, Coca-Cola, Citi Foundation, Merck, and Zoom.[19] Led by a board that includes the founder and chair of Himalaya Capital, the co-CEO of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (a global firm managing over $500 billion), the cofounder of Alibaba Group (also governor of the National Basketball Association’s Brooklyn Nets and Women’s National Basketball Association’s New York Liberty), the cofounder of Yahoo!, and the CEO of Citadel Securities, TAAF boasts a “five-year portfolio strategy” to distribute grants to “best in class organizations working to mobilize against hate and violence, educate communities, and reclaim our narratives.”[20]

The presence of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on TAAF’s founding board indicates a key political and organizational influence on the foundation’s mission that exceeds Greenblatt’s individual influence: after Greenblatt completed his three-year board term in July 2024, the foundation issued a press release titled, “TAAF Affirms Strategic Relationship with ADL.[21] Described in a Jewish-branded philanthropic periodical as “the only non-Asian member of [the] board,” Greenblatt has consistently affirmed the ADL’s involvement in the creation of TAAF, stating in a 2021 interview with actor Daniel Dae Kim that “we [at the ADL] were so humbled and proud to share our experience and to help incubate The Asian American Foundation.”[22] Given the ADL’s relative inattention to building remotely comparable organizational relationships with Asian American groups prior to 2021, it is appropriate to raise the question as to why the emergence of the Stop Asian Hate movement appears to have catalyzed a partial redirection of the ADL’s interest, resources, and public-facing attention to TAAF and other Asian American organizations (including Stop AAPI Hate).[23]

The ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, which indicated a “a dramatic spike in anti-Asian sentiment” in 2020, helped advance a “hate”-centered framing of rising anti-Asian violence during the early period of the Covid-19 pandemic.[24] eJewish Philanthropy describes TAAF’s mission and operations in terms that portray it as an emergent Asian American analog of the ADL, stating that “Greenblatt’s role is primarily to support [TAAF] in its work with existing AAPI organizations whose mission is to fight hate and extremism, such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Stop AAPI Hate.”[25] Echoing this depiction, the ADL notes in its 2023 Year in Review that it “accelerated our program to embed investigators from partner organizations alongside the ADL Center on Extremism. . . . We now host embeds from . . . TAAF (The Asian American Foundation).”[26]

TAAF, Stop AAPI Hate, and other Stop Asian Hate organizations operationally replicate the ADL’s organizational fixation on “hate” as a primary unit of information gathering, public discourse (common sense-making), and carceral state intervention.[27] As Stop Asian Hate organizations reproduce the ADL’s methods, it is worth raising a key question: What are the consequences of the movement’s organizational attachments to hate-based victimization frameworks?

Since its founding in 1913, the ADL has functioned as a watchdog organization that ostensibly identifies antisemitic activities and calls on institutional leaders, state officials, corporations, and media outlets to condemn, fire, or otherwise disaffiliate from those it deems culpable.[28] The ADL has long defined itself as “the leading anti-hate organization in the world” and endorses a definition of antisemitism closely aligned with the pro-Zionist framework adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).[29] Notably, IHRA’s definition of antisemitism has faced mounting global scrutiny for conflating political criticism of Israel and critical analysis of the ethnosupremacist, colonialist political ideology of Zionism with antisemitism.[30]

Critiques of the ADL’s and IHRA’s conflation of critical challenges to Zionism and Israeli state violence with antisemitism have emerged from a range of scholarly, human rights, free speech, decolonial, Palestinian liberationist, radical feminist, and abolitionist perspectives and have periodically been publicized by global media outlets.[31] Relatedly, the inaugural 2023 conference of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism convened a broad community of scholars, including Rabab Abdulhadi, Emmaia Gelman, Christine Hong, Jennifer Kelly, Sean Malloy, Alana Lentin, Jennifer Mogannam and others to develop rigorous archival, theoretical, and practical responses to demystify this conflation.[32] Gelman, a Jewish anti-Zionist scholar, organizer, and teacher who cofounded the institute writes, “At a time when it should be easier to see the ADL as a conservative knowledge production agency, a resurgence of concern with ‘hate’ has only consolidated its power.”[33] Crucially, Gelman shows how since at least the 1960s, “the ADL [has] targeted civil rights groups from liberals to revolutionaries. . . . The ADL also surveilled ethnic representational groups, particularly Arab and black, and Jewish groups concerned about Israeli treatment of Palestinians. . . . In the present, the ADL has continued to militate against internationalist, intersectional anti-racism, and has used its status as ‘the nation’s premier civil rights organization’ to do so.”[34] Gelman’s analytic history demystifies Greenblatt’s grandstanding declaration of alliance: “The Asian-American community has been under siege and now it’s the Jewish community. . . . It’s moments like this when allyship really matters.”[35] Here, Greenblatt projects a coalition of Jewish and Asian American reaction against an open-ended notion of “siege,” not limited to hate crimes and incidents. This linkage—both organizational and ideological—enacts an analogy of exceptional victimhood that tethers the figure of the violated Asian American to the ADL’s Zionist notion of Jewishness. Crucially, Greenblatt has infamously asserted that “anti-Zionism is genocide” and that “every Jewish person is a Zionist.”[36]

The Stop Asian Hate movement’s affinity for carceral, policing, anti-Palestinian, pro-Zionist, and global militarist frameworks, logics, and institutions crystallizes in the bureaucratic infrastructure of TAAF and the organizational collaborations and interactions of Stop AAPI Hate. Given that these are arguably the two most influential organizations in the Stop Asian Hate movement, it is crucial to delineate their relation to each other.

Stop AAPI Hate, TAAF, and the Problem of Liberal Counterinsurgency

Stop AAPI Hate states in response to an earlier version of this article that it “has not received funding from TAAF . . . since 2022 and does not have a working relationship with TAAF.”[37] The coalition cannot dispute, however, that it obtained at least $1 million of funding from TAAF in 2021 as part of what Reuters describes as “the largest-ever philanthropic effort to support the AAPI community.”[38] The ADL-supported TAAF also listed Stop AAPI Hate and AAPI Equity Alliance (one of Stop AAPI Hate’s founding organizations under the executive directorship of Kulkarni) on the “Community Partners” section of its website until the day a shorter, article-length version of this chapter was published by the Critical Ethnic Studies Journal Blog on April 10, 2024.[39] On or around that day, both organizations’ logos were conspicuously scrubbed from the TAAF site, though archived versions of the previous version of the page are available.[40]

Figures 2 and 3. Screenshots of archived “Community Partners” page of the Asian American Foundation website (archive date November 14, 2023); organizational logos of AAPI Equity Alliance and Stop AAPI Hate are circled.

It is beyond dispute that Stop AAPI Hate sustained a significant financial and collaborative relationship with TAAF during the coterminous, formative periods of both organizations. Their organizational interactions included formal coauthorship of the Documenting Anti-AAPI Hate Codebook, a forty-five-page white-paper-style document published in 2021, the opening page of which states that “TAAF and the [Stop AAPI Hate] coalition are collaborating to facilitate the documentation of AAPI experiences through multiple sources of data and methodologies.”[41] Thus, while Stop AAPI Hate apparently cut ties with TAAF around 2022, it is reasonable to suggest that the successful construction of Stop AAPI Hate’s operational and research infrastructure owes, in significant part, to TAAF’s million-dollar grant as well as the groups’ assembly of “a working group to draft standards and practices for community-based data collection.”[42]

Here, it is necessary to raise the question of whether and how Stop AAPI Hate’s financial and authorial affiliation with TAAF may evidence a broader logic of entanglement, that is, a passive affinity between U.S.-based social justice entrepreneurialism and the extended influence of empire. TAAF’s advisory council boasts current and former high-level administrators and staffers of the US global counterinsurgency apparatus, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Council on Foreign Relations member X. Rick Niu, three-time National Security Council appointee Farah Pandith, Hoover Institution Fellow and George W. Bush administration appointee Lanhee Chen, and former World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim, among others.[43] Yet, TAAF seems intent on obscuring the political-financial terms of its creation and construction by inundating the public with liberal, progressive, and reformist messages that mirror social justice imperatives.[44] TAAF’s “About Us” page avers: “TAAF is dedicated to building a safer, more inclusive future for AAPIs everywhere. Founded in response to the rise in anti-Asian hate and violence, TAAF is reversing the longstanding under-investment in our community and addressing the root causes of hate and discrimination. Our Mission: To serve the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in their pursuit of belonging and prosperity that is free from discrimination, slander, and violence.”[45]

While it does not feature such a group of advisers, Stop AAPI Hate, in continuity with TAAF, has substantively benefited from material collaboration and supportive political interactions with organizations that openly persecute and criminalize critics of Israel and Palestinian solidarity organizing. Notably, the ADL has backed Stop AAPI Hate’s work in both the legislative and research arenas, endorsing a 2022 California State Assembly Bill (AB 2448) principally sponsored by Stop AAPI Hate, and joining Stop AAPI Hate in support of the Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act (which, in part, establishes a network of new “State-Run Hate Crime Reporting Hotlines”).[46] Further, the ADL cites and praises Stop AAPI Hate in its March 2021 letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Justice as an example of a “community-based organization” engaging in “collaborative efforts” to collect vital “hate” data.[47]

In addition to attracting support from the ADL, Stop AAPI Hate evidences a history of organizational engagements with Davis Polk, a corporate law firm that made national news in October 2023 for rescinding offers of employment to Harvard and Columbia University law school students due to their criticisms of Israel’s mounting genocidal campaign against Palestinians.[48] Davis Polk provided significant pro bono legal research to support Stop AAPI Hate’s 2023 civil rights report, while one of the firm’s attorneys made an additional $10,000 private donation.[49] The law firm openly boasts of its support for Israel, noting that it is “a firm of choice for Israeli companies pursuing opportunities around the world, and for international companies doing business in Israel.”[50] Davis Polk was also one of twenty-four firms that signed a public letter to US law school deans demanding action against “anti-Semitic activities,” including “calling for the death of Jews and the elimination of the State of Israel.”[51]

Available evidence suggests that Stop AAPI Hate’s connection to Davis Polk was a substantive one, while it lasted. Davis Polk’s 2022 “Racial Justice Pro Bono Update” describes a partnership “with . . . Stop AAPI Hate to create a tool kit of resources for use by government leadership and school districts across the country. . . . School districts wishing to implement Asian-American Studies and Ethnic Studies programs will also utilize the resources we contributed.”[52] Jennifer Kim, a self-identified “AAPI lawyer” and associate at Davis Polk elaborates, “Through Davis Polk’s partnership with Stop AAPI Hate, I have worked on two projects so far—one focused directly on addressing anti-AAPI hate and the other centered on promoting ethnic studies.”[53] The law firm’s list of 2022 “Pro Bono Award honorees” highlights attorney Nancy Regan, whose “work for Stop AAPI Hate” included “an in-depth analysis of local discriminatory laws, which will aid in the organization’s pursuit of legislative and judicial measures at the federal level.”[54] Additionally, the firm’s 2023 Pro Bono Matters report boasts Regan “directed the firm’s donation to Stop AAPI Hate.”[55]

Responding to a previous version of this article, Stop AAPI Hate asserted that it “is not pro-Zionist, does not have a relationship with the ADL, and does not ‘tacitly comply with the ADL’s positions.’ ” The correspondence highlighted the coalition’s public support for a ceasefire in Gaza as well as its statements regarding “egregious acts of hate against the AMEMSA [Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian] community—from the horrific murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume and the attack on three Palestinian students in Vermont, to egregious comments from Rep. Brian Mast and an Islamophobic headline from the Wall Street Journal.”[56] Stop AAPI Hate also emphasized cofounder Kulkarni’s decision to withdraw from Duke University’s “Combating Hate and Bias” event in November 2023 over concerns that other speakers (including keynote speaker Jonathan Greenblatt) opposed the call for a ceasefire.[57]

Nonetheless, while Stop AAPI Hate constantly signals antiracist and antihate virtues in press releases, public statements, and many organizational activities (including its carceral and criminological data collection practices), it also has a history of sharing platforms with entities—including carceral state, pro-Zionist, and pro-Israel organizations—that abrogate such avowed principles and commitments.

While Stop AAPI Hate disavows the existence of any relationship with the ADL, it (alongside TAAF) nonetheless openly acknowledges the ADL for “[providing] invaluable feedback” on a the aforementioned Documenting Anti-AAPI Hate Codebook. Further, the TAAF x Stop AAPI Hate Working Group, which includes all three Stop AAPI Hate cofounders, acknowledges “the colleagues and organizations who have provided invaluable feedback for this working document,” specifically referencing the Anti-Defamation League and Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Relatedly, Stop AAPI Hate apparently consents to certain ADL chapters’ online use of Stop AAPI Hate’s logo and published resources, including its National Report.[58]

Figure 4. Screenshot (accessed May 2024) of Anti-Defamation League Plains States chapter website displaying Stop AAPI Hate logo on “AAPI Support and Resources” page.

More than a year after its founding, Stop AAPI Hate participated alongside the ADL in the May 2021 conference “A Community United: A National Convening Against Anti-AAPI Hate.”[59] Cohosted by the National Association of Attorneys General president and the District of Columbia attorney general, the conference program listed Kulkarni and Greenblatt as copanelists for a session titled “The Rise of Online AAPI Hate & Its Real World Impact.”[60] (ADL senior vice president and chief impact officer Adam Neufeld took Greenblatt’s place at the live event.)[61]

In January 2024, about two months after issuing its support for a ceasefire in Gaza and mere weeks after Kulkarni declined to participate in the aforementioned Duke University event, Stop AAPI Hate joined the ADL and TAAF as “community partners/sponsors” for a “Hate Crimes Summit” hosted by seventeen separate “government partners,” including the FBI, Department of Justice, the Oakland and San Jose Police Departments, six separate district attorneys’ offices, the US Attorney’s Office, and the California Attorney General’s Office.[62] A featured panel seated Stop AAPI Hate co-founder Cynthia Choi alongside an FBI special agent, the executive director of the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, and a coordinator from the California Attorney General’s Office.[63]

Figure 5. Post from Twitter/X account of Annie Lee (director of policy at Chinese for Affirmative Action) showing Stop AAPI Hate cofounder Cynthia Choi (far right) sitting alongside copanelists at January 2024 “Hate Crimes Summit.”

Responding to a prior version of this article, Stop AAPI Hate contends that “Choi’s remarks [at the ‘Hate Crimes Summit’] were specifically to demonstrate to a law enforcement-based audience how Stop AAPI Hate’s data does not support carceral approaches, consistent with Stop AAPI Hate’s long-established positions.”[64] This rebuttal does not address the substance of the analysis offered here or in the earlier draft of this article, however. Even as Stop AAPI Hate consistently asserts and insists that its work and methods are “non-carceral,” the organization’s data collection practices remain entirely compatible with criminological and carceral policing approaches, including liberal and reformist ones.[65]

By way of example, in addition to the previously mentioned examples, the US Department of Justice website prominently lists Stop AAPI Hate, the Anti-Defamation League (San Diego), San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, San Diego Police Department, and FBI in a resource document titled “Who Should I Call if I Experience a Hate incident?”[66] Further indication of the carceral congruence between the ADL’s and Stop AAPI Hate’s data-gathering methods surfaces in the ADL’s Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2021, which states, “Law enforcement agencies should use data from the FBI, Department of Education and NGOs such as ADL and Stop AAPI Hate to anticipate where hate incidents are most likely to occur and to proactively contact community members and institutions to strengthen relationships and collaboration.”[67]

Such cooperative interactions, collaborations, and methodological affinities with policing, carceral, and Zionist entities demystify Stop AAPI Hate’s declared commitment to “confront racism at its root with comprehensive, non-carceral solutions.” In fact, the organization makes mission claims, public statements, and assertions of principle that are contradicted or otherwise discredited by many of its affiliations, activities, and organizational interactions.

Stop AAPI Hate, TAAF, and other Stop Asian Hate organizations are actively constructing an extrastate, liberal-reactionary ensemble through their initiatives and campaigns. Such efforts reflect a key political logic structuring the U.S. military’s larger strategic definition of counterinsurgency: “Political reform should be started as soon as feasible, even if the insurgency is still ongoing.”[68] The Stop Asian Hate movement effectively advocates a form of populist criminology that calls for an inclusive, aggressive, equity-oriented response from the domestic war-making state. This amounts to a reformist mandate to relegitimate anti-Black, colonial, carceral state violence in a moment of crisis. In this sense, Stop Asian Hate represents an early twenty-first-century Asian Americanist equity grievance that looks to the state as its arbiter, protector, and militarized authority figure.

As important, Stop Asian Hate fabricates and projects a canonical set of liberal-reactionary feelings. Liberal feelings work to pacify, narratively rationalize, and politically domesticate existing and emergent forms of insurgent, insurrectionist, abolitionist, and antistate imagination and activity. More creepily, liberal feelings groom the purported Asian American subject as an ideal inheritor of a twenty-first-century liberal multiculturalist dream: a civilizational fantasy that solicits identification with—if not active participation in—US empire as a legitimate, reformable, redemptive global project.

Stop Asian Hate thus attempts a narrative reordering, containment, and collapsing of fear, terror, and vulnerability into a respectable liberal cage of justice and resolvability. As a capitalized, politically prominent, state-adjacent institutionalization of liberal feelings, the movement seeks to tame the leaking, proliferating, temporally confounding, incommensurable streams of power and violence that disassemble the coherence of Asian Americanism. Put differently, Stop Asian Hate attempts to neutralize the irruptive and scattering effects of radical asymmetries and singularities of different (Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander) peoples’ historical experiences with US and US-supported colonial occupation, state terror, protogenocidal to genocidal warfare, regimes of gendered and sexual violence, and imperial militarism.[69]

A critical tracing of Stop Asian Hate catalyzes ongoing analysis of its alignment and grievance-based alliance with the anti-Black and racial-colonial state as well as its entrepreneurial relation to philanthropic foundations and the nonprofit industrial complex.[70] I conclude by again raising a principal question invoked by this essay: What is the work “hate” does? How does the most sustained, infrastructurally developed, and publicly visible Asian American social movement of the last half-century enact the political logics of counterinsurgency in its claims of racial victimization and calls for justice? What might it mean to engage in a practical-theoretical ambush of Asian Americanism as a carceral, counterinsurgent project of liberal reaction, multiculturalist personhood, and refurbished US patriotism?

Footnotes:

  1. Hereafter, I use the phrase Stop Asian Hate as an umbrella term that includes social media circulations of #StopAsianHate, #StopAAPIHate, and related hashtags, the creation of new coalitions, institutional mobilizations, and organizational initiatives premised on notions of “anti-Asian hate,” and various research, pedagogical, and advocacy projects that focus on anti-Asian hate crimes, hate “incidents,” and related forms of violence and interpersonal harm.

    By way of overview, see Jiepin Cao, Chiyoung Lee, Wenyang Sun, and Jennie C. De Gagne, “The #StopAsianHate Movement on Twitter: A Qualitative Descriptive Study,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 7 (2022): 3757, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19073757; S.937 COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, Pub Law No. 117-13, 135 Stat. 265 (2021), https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/937/text; Raising Awareness of Hate Crimes and Hate Incidents During the COVID-19 Pandemic (US Department of Justice and US Department of Health and Human Services, 2022), https://www.justice.gov/file/1507346/download; Anh Do, “After Attacks on Asians in Oakland’s Chinatown, Volunteers Offer Protection and Support,” Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-19/anti-asian-racism-oakland-chinatown. ↑

  2. See San Francisco Police Department, “SFPD’s Hate Crime Tip Line Is Expanded to Nine Languages at (415) 558-5588—as Hate Crime Rate Shows Uptick for 2021,” news release, June 9, 2021, https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/news/sfpds-hate-crime-tip-line-expanded-nine-languages-415-558; US Congresswoman Grace Meng, “Meng Secures Millions to Help Implement Her Hate Crimes Act Recently Signed into Law by President Biden,” news release, July 20, 2021, https://meng.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/meng-secures-millions-to-help-implement-her-hate-crimes-act-recently; San Francisco District Attorney, “District Attorney Brooke Jenkins Announces Charges in Muni Hate Incidents,” news release, April 20, 2023, https://sfdistrictattorney.org/press-release/district-attorney-brooke-jenkins-announces-charges-in-muni-hate-incidents/; “Hate Crime Statistics,” US Federal Bureau of Investigation, https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/ucr/hate-crime; “Hate Crimes,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, https://oag.ca.gov/hatecrimes. ↑

  3. Stop AAPI Hate, https://stopaapihate.org/; Asian American Foundation, https://www.taaf.org/. ↑

  4. “Our Origins,” Stop AAPI Hate, https://stopaapihate.org/our-origins/; Victoria Namkung, “The Story Behind the Group Tracking Anti-Asian Hate Incidents,” NBC News, May 3, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/story-group-tracking-anti-asian-hate-incidents-rcna662; “Stop AAPI Hate 2020–2021 National Report,” Philanthropy News Digest, March 18, 2021, https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/features/research-briefs/stop-aapi-hate-2020-2021-national-report. ↑

  5. “Our Approach,” Stop AAPI Hate, https://stopaapihate.org/our-approach/; Jennifer Schweppe, “What Is a Hate Crime?,” Cogent Social Sciences 7, no. 1 (2021): https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2021.1902643; Jennifer Schweppe and Barbara Perry, “A Continuum of Hate: Delimiting the Field of Hate Studies,” Crime, Law and Social Change 77 (2022): 503–28, https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10611-021-09978-7.pdf. ↑

  6. See “Report Hate,” Stop AAPI Hate, https://stopaapihate.org/report-hate/; “About,” Stop AAPI Hate, https://stopaapihate.org/about/; “Stop AAPI Hate,” Asian Equity Alliance, https://aapiequityalliance.org/stop-aapi-hate/; “Reporting Center Data,” Stop AAPI Hate, https://stopaapihate.org/explore-our-data/; “Hate Crime Tools & Resources,” Los Angeles Police Department, https://lapdonlinestrgeacc.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/lapdonlinemedia/2021/12/hate-crime-english2.pdf; US Department of Justice, “Readout of the Department of Justice’s Efforts to Combat Hate Crimes Against Asian American and Pacific Island Communities,” news release, March 5, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/readout-department-justice-s-efforts-combat-hate-crimes-against-asian-american-and-pacific; S.2030 Hate Crimes Commission Act of 2023, 118th Cong., 1st sess., June 15, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/s2030/BILLS-118s2030is.htm; “Stop the Hate Resources,” California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs, https://capiaa.ca.gov/stop-the-hate/. ↑

  7. “Events: Combating Hate, Racism, and Xenophobia Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,” Asian Pacific American Bar Association of South Florida, https://www.apabasfla.org/events/#!event/2021/4/28/panel-discussion-combating-hate-against-asian-americans-and-pacific-islanders. ↑

  8. Greater Orlando Asian American Bar Association, “Combating Hate, Racism, and Xenophobia Against AAPI,” Facebook live recording, April 28, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/GOAABA/videos/297158338646866. ↑

  9. Chinese for Affirmative Action, “In Six Weeks, STOP AAPI HATE Receives over 1700 Incident Reports of Verbal Harassment, Shunning and Physical Assaults,” news release, May 20, 2020, https://caasf.org/press-release/in-six-weeks-stop-aapi-hate-receives-over-1700-incident-reports-of-verbal-harassment-shunning-and-physical-assaults/; Shades of Hate: A Deeper Understanding of Asian American & Pacific Islander Experiences (Stop AAPI Hate, 2023), https://stopaapihate.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/23-SAH-TaxonomyReport-F.pdf; “Stop Anti-Asian Hate and Violence Initiative,” Asian Americans Advancing Justice, https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.org/stop-anti-asian-hate-and-violence-initiative; “Stop the Hate Resources,” California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs, https://capiaa.ca.gov/stop-the-hate/; Hewlett Foundation, “Hewlett Foundation to Award $5.5 Million to Nonprofits Serving AAPI Communities,” news release, November 18, 2021, https://hewlett.org/newsroom/hewlett-foundation-to-award-5-5-million-to-nonprofits-serving-aapi-communities/; City News Service, “Stop AAPI Hate Founder Urges Community to Report Hate Incidents,” NBC News Los Angeles, March 19, 2021, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/stop-aapi-hate-founder-urges-community-to-report-hate-incidents/2555036/; AB-85 Budget Act of 2020, California Assembly Bill No. 85, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB85; US Department of Health and Human Services, “Biden-Harris Administration Unveils National Strategy to Advance Equity, Justice, and Opportunity for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Communities,” news release, January 17, 2023, https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/01/17/biden-harris-administration-unveils-national-strategy-advance-equity-justice-opportunity-asian-american-native-hawaiian-pacific-islander-communities.html; “Our Team: Founding Organizations,” Stop AAPI Hate, https://stopaapihate.org/our-team/; Rebecca Sun, “Kelly Marie Tran, H.E.R., Rep. Ted Lieu to Join CAA Amplify Town Hall Addressing Anti-Asian Hate (Exclusive),” Hollywood Reporter, March 29, 2021, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/kelly-marie-tran-h-e-r-rep-ted-lieu-to-join-caa-amplify-town-hall-addressing-anti-asian-hate-exclusive-4157560/; Liann Herder, “Higher Education Has Important Role to Play in Stopping AAPI Hate,” Diverse, July 22, 2022, https://www.diverseeducation.com/demographics/asian-american-pacific-islander/article/15294438/higher-education-has-important-role-to-play-in-stopping-aapi-hate; Jennifer Liu, “Zoom CEO Eric Yuan and Hundreds of Asian American Business Leaders Pledge $10 Million to AAPI Causes,” CNBC, April 1, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/01/asian-american-business-leaders-pledge-10-million-toward-aapi-causes.html; Yola Robert, “AAPI Voices Are Taking to Social Media to Spread Awareness to #StopAAPIHate,” Forbes, March 23, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/yolarobert1/2021/03/23/aapi-voices-are-taking-to-social-media-to-spread-awareness-to-stopaapihate/. ↑

  10. Stop AAPI Hate, “Statement: Governor Newsom Signs API Equity Budget,” news release, July 13, 2021, https://stopaapihate.org/2021/07/13/statement-governor-newsom-signs-api-equity-budget/; Hewlett Foundation, “Hewlett Foundation to Award $5.5 Million to Nonprofits Serving AAPI Communities,” news release, November 18, 2021, https://hewlett.org/newsroom/hewlett-foundation-to-award-5-5-million-to-nonprofits-serving-aapi-communities/; Laleh Ispahani and Kavita Nandini Ramdas, “A History of Anti-Asian Hate in the United States,” Open Society Foundations, March 25, 2021, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/a-history-of-anti-asian-hate-in-the-united-states; “Stop Anti-Asian Hate and Violence Initiative,” Asian Americans Advancing Justice. ↑

  11. Candice Cho and Annie Lee, “New Survey Shows Increase in Anti-Asian Hate, Discrimination. Here’s How We Can Stop It,” USA Today, May 4, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/05/04/asian-pacific-american-heritage-month-honor-heroes-stop-aapi-hate/70169888007/. At the time of the opinion piece’s publication, Cho was managing director of policy and counsel at AAPI Equity Alliance and Lee was managing director of policy at Chinese for Affirmative Action. ↑

  12. Truthout editorial correspondence with author (includes forwarded responses from Stop AAPI Hate to earlier draft of this article), email dated April 3, 2024. ↑

  13. Ibid.; Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, “New York Hate Crime Bill Opposition Sign on Letter,” news release, February 26, 2024, https://www.aaldef.org/press-release/new-york-hate-crime-bill-opposition-sign-on-letter/; Cynthia Choi, Manjusha Kulkarni, and Russell Jeung, “One Year After Atlanta Shootings, Why We’re Still Struggling with Anti-AAPI Hate,” Time, March 16, 2022, https://time.com/6157617/atlanta-shootings-why-were-still-struggling-with-anti-aapi-hate/. ↑

  14. “Police, Activists Concerned as Asian-American Hate Crimes Continue,” KCAL News, May 14, 2021, https://youtu.be/42-SfC_nPDQ?si=pDAC71o4OD6vxUgt. ↑

  15. Golden State Plan to Counter Antisemitism (Governor Gavin Newsom, April 2024), 9–10, https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Golden-State-Plan-to-Counter-Antisemitism.pdf. ↑

  16. Manjusha P. Kulkarni, “Written Testimony for the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,” March 18, 2021, https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/20210318/111343/HHRG-117-JU10-Wstate-KulkarniM-20210318-U22.pdf; S.1086: Summary: Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act, 117th Cong., April 13, 2021, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1086. ↑

  17. US Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Building Community Trust Is Key to Improving Hate Crime Reporting,” news release, February 3, 2022, https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/community-outreach-seeks-to-improve-hate-crime-reporting-020322. ↑

  18. Relevant forthcoming work from this author includes Counterinsurgency Machine (AK Press, forthcoming 2026) and “The Counterinsurgency of Stop Asian Hate,” in Antonio T. Tiongson, Jr. and Susan Thomas (eds.), Genealogies of Anti-Asian/Asia Violences (Fordham University Press, forthcoming 2025). ↑

  19. Dan Parks, “New Asian American Foundation Aims to Shift Narratives, Curb Hate Crimes, and Promote Change,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, May 20, 2021, https://www.philanthropy.com/article/new-asian-american-foundation-aims-to-shift-narratives-curb-hate-crimes-and-promote-change; Asian American Foundation, “The Asian American Foundation Announces First Year Success of Its $1.1 Billion AAPI Giving Challenge and Commits $65M over Five Years Through Launch of New Portfolio Strategy,” news release, May 3, 2023, https://www.taaf.org/news/2-year-anniversary-press-release. ↑

  20. “About Us,” Asian American Foundation, https://www.taaf.org/about-us/home. ↑

  21. “TAAF x Forbes Celebrate 2nd Annual AAPI CEO Dinner,” The Asian American Foundation, https://www.taaf.org/projects/2023-aapi-ceo-dinner; “TAAF Affirms Strategic Relationship with ADL,” The Asian American Foundation, https://www.taaf.org/news/taaf-affirms-strategic-relationship-with-adl. ↑

  22. Helen Chernikoff, “How the ADL Helped Create the Asian American Foundation to Track and Combat Hate Crimes,” eJewish Philanthropy, May 21, 2021, https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/adl-advises-the-asian-american-foundation-on-tracking-hate-crimes/; Anti-Defamation League, “ADL’s Never Is Now 2021: Jonathan Greenblatt and Daniel Dae Kim Discuss AAPI Hate and Antisemitism,” November 9, 2021, https://youtu.be/r-ScZRNPHJA?si=MjUWc2cf6pFbwjVk. ↑

  23. Scott Richman, host, From the Frontlines, Anti-Defamation League podcast, “From the Frontlines: ADL Works with the Asian American Foundation to Counter AAPI Hate,” May 16, 2023, https://soundcloud.com/scott-richman-2/from-the-frontlines-adl-works-with-the-the-asian-american-foundation-to-counter-aapi-hate. ↑

  24. “Center for Technology & Society,” Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/research-centers/center-technology-society; Anti-Defamation League, “ADL Report: Anti-Asian Hostility Spikes on Twitter After President Trump’s COVID Diagnosis,” news release, October 9, 2020, https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/adl-report-anti-asian-hostility-spikes-twitter-after-president-trumps-covid; Online Hate and Harassment: The American Experience 2023 (Anti-Defamation League, 2023), https://www.adl.org/resources/report/online-hate-and-harassment-american-experience-2023. ↑

  25. Chernikoff, “How the ADL Helped Create the Asian American Foundation”; David Nakamura, “Advocacy Group Launches National Network to Combat Anti-Asian Hate,” Washington Post, September 28, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/asian-hate-crimes-grants-foundation/2021/09/28/1656e9cc-1fca-11ec-8200-5e3fd4c49f5e_story.html. ↑

  26. Anti-Defamation League, “ADL’s Year in Review 2023,” December 28, 2023, https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/adls-year-review-2023. ↑

  27. “Stop Anti-Asian Hate and Violence Initiative,” Asian Americans Advancing Justice. ↑

  28. Associated Press, “Marc Lamont Hill Fired from CNN After His Speech on Israel Draws Outrage,” NBC News, November 30, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/marc-lamont-hill-fired-cnn-after-his-speech-israel-draws-n942151. ↑

  29. “Who We Are,” Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/about/who-we-are; Anti-Defamation League, “Backgrounder: Anti-Zionism,” November 18, 2021, https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/anti-zionism; “Working Definition of Antisemitism,” International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism. ↑

  30. See, for example, Amnesty International, “Global: UN Must Respect Human Rights While Combatting Antisemitism,” news release, April 20, 2023, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/04/global-un-must-respect-human-rights-while-combatting-antisemitism/; “Backgrounder on Efforts to Redefine Antisemitism as a Means of Censoring Criticism of Israel,” Palestine Legal, January 2020, https://palestinelegal.org/redefinition-efforts; John Morgan, “IHRA Antisemitism Definition ‘Undermining Academic Freedom,’ ” Times Higher Education, September 13, 2023, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ihra-antisemitism-definition-undermining-academic-freedom; Chris McGreal, “UN Urged to Reject Antisemitism Definition over ‘Misuse’ to Shield Israel,” Guardian, April 24, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/apr/24/un-ihra-antisemitism-definition-israel-criticism; “Rights Groups Urge UN Not to Adopt IHRA Anti-Semitism Definition,” Al Jazeera, April 4, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/4/rights-groups-urge-un-not-to-adopt-ihra-anti-semitism-definition. ↑

  31. By way of example, see Ronit Lentin, Traces of Racial Exception: Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018); Kenneth Roth, “Op-Ed: The Palestinians’ Decision to Join the ICC Deserves Support,” Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2015, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-roth-palestinians-icc-20150115-story.html; Jillian LaBruzzo, “Defining the Contours of Debate: Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semitic, Anti-Zionism, and Legitimate Political Activism at the University of California” (master’s thesis, Central European University, 2017), https://web.archive.org/web/20200823153525/http://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/labruzzo_jillian.pdf; Editorial Board, “Editorial: UC’s Intolerance Policy Goes Dangerously Astray on Anti-Semitism,” Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2016, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-uc-intolerance-20160316-story.html. ↑

  32. “Battling the ‘IHRA Definition’: Theory & Activism Conference,” Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, https://criticalzionismstudies.org/battlingihra2023/. ↑

  33. Emmaia Gelman, “The Anti-Defamation League Is Not What It Seems,” Boston Review, May 23, 2019, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/emmaia-gelman-anti-defamation-league/. ↑

  34. Gelman, “Anti-Defamation League Is Not What It Seems.” ↑

  35. Greenblatt cited in Chernikoff, “How the ADL Helped Create the Asian American Foundation.” ↑

  36. “One on One with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt,” MSNBC, October 15, 2023, https://www.msnbc.com/katie-phang/watch/one-on-one-with-adl-ceo-jonathan-greenblatt-195515461524; Emmaia Gelman, “It’s Time to Break with the ADL as a Source for News and Research on Extremism,” Truthout, December 15, 2023, https://truthout.org/articles/its-time-to-break-with-the-adl-as-a-source-for-news-and-research-on-extremism/; Anti-Defamation League, “ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt Delivers 2024 State of Hate at Never Is Now,” news release, March 6, 2024, https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/adl-ceo-jonathan-greenblatt-delivers-2024-state-hate-never-now. ↑

  37. Truthout editorial correspondence with author, April 3, 2024. ↑

  38. Joseph Ax, “Asian-American Business Leaders Launch $250M Effort to Fight Hate,” Reuters, May 3, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-foundation-launches-with-125-mln-business-leaders-combat-anti-asian-hate-2021-05-03/. ↑

  39. Dylan Rodríguez, “How the Stop Asian Hate Movement Became Entwined with Zionism, Policing, and Counterinsurgency,” Critical Ethnic Studies Journal (blog), April 10, 2024, https://www.criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org/blog/2024/4/10/how-the-stop-asian-hate-movement-became-entwined-with-zionism-policing-and-counterinsurgency. ↑

  40. The current (as of May 2024) version of TAAF’s “Community Partners” webpage no longer lists Stop AAPI Hate or AAPI Equity Alliance (https://www.taaf.org/our-work/community-partners); however, an archived version of the webpage dated November 14, 2023, displays both organizations’ logos on the very same page (https://web.archive.org/web/20231114024611/https://www.taaf.org/our-work/community-partners). ↑

  41. Documenting Anti-AAPI Hate Codebook (The Asian American Foundation and Stop AAPI Hate, 2021), 2, https://stopaapihate.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/SAH-x-TAAF-Codebook-FINAL-2021-08-19.pdf. ↑

  42. Documenting Anti-AAPI Hate Codebook, 2. ↑

  43. “About Us,” Asian American Foundation; US Government Counterinsurgency Guide (US Government Interagency Counterinsurgency Initiative, 2009), https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/119629.pdf. ↑

  44. On the concept of astroturf organizations, see Joanne Barkan, “Hired Guns on Astroturf: How to Buy and Sell School Reform,” Dissent Magazine, Spring 2012, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/hired-guns-on-astroturfhow-to-buy-and-sell-school-reform/. ↑

  45. “About Us,” Asian American Foundation. ↑

  46. California Assemblymember Phil Ting, “AB 2448: Expanding Civil Rights Protections at Businesses,” flyer, 2021, https://www.noplaceforhateca.org/ab2448.pdf; California Assemblymember Phil Ting, “Gov. Newsom Signs Asm. Ting’s Bill Protecting Customers’ Civil Rights at Businesses,” news release, September 13, 2022, https://a19.asmdc.org/press-releases/20220913-gov-newsom-signs-asm-tings-bill-protecting-customers-civil-rights; California AB 2448, February 17, 2022, https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2448/id/2588064/California-2021-AB2448-Amended.html; US Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs and Office for Victims of Crime, “Updates Regarding the OVC FY 2023 Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act State-Run Hate Crime Reporting Hotlines Solicitation,” April 4, 2023, https://ovc.ojp.gov/funding/o-ovc-2023-171708.pdf (site discontinued). ↑

  47. Anti-Defamation League to Steve Cohen and Mike Johnson, March 25, 2021, https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/20210318/111343/HHRG-117-JU10-20210318-SD109.pdf. ↑

  48. Breck Dumas, “Top Law Firm Rescinds Job Offers to Harvard, Columbia Students Linked to Anti-Israel Letters,” Fox Business, October 18, 2023, https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/top-law-firm-rescinds-job-offers-harvard-columbia-students-linked-anti-israel-letters. ↑

  49. See Righting Wrongs: How Civil Rights Can Protect Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Against Racism (Stop AAPI Hate, 2023), https://stopaapihate.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/23-SAH-CivilRightsReport-F.pdf; “Racial Justice Pro Bono Update: Protecting the Right to Record and Fighting AAPI Hate,” Davis Polk, August 5, 2022, https://www.davispolk.com/news/racial-justice-pro-bono-update-protecting-right-record-and-fighting-aapi-hate. ↑

  50. “Israel,” Davis Polk, https://www.davispolk.com/israel/overview. ↑

  51. Madina Touré, “Top U.S. Law Firms Press Universities to Address Antisemitism,” Politico, November 2, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/law-firms-press-universities-to-address-antisemitism-00125000; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP et al. to US law school deans, November 1, 2023, via Reuters, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/xmvjlxxodvr/Letter%20to%20Law%20School%20Deans.pdf. ↑

  52. “Racial Justice Pro Bono Update: Protecting the Right to Record and Fighting AAPI Hate,” Davis Polk, August 5, 2022, https://www.davispolk.com/news/racial-justice-pro-bono-update-protecting-right-record-and-fighting-aapi-hate. ↑

  53. “Racial justice pro bono update: Protecting the right to record and fighting AAPI hate,” Davis Polk, August 5, 2022, https://www.davispolk.com/firm-news/racial-justice-pro-bono-update-protecting-right-record-and-fighting-aapi-hate. ↑

  54. “Davis Polk Announces 2022 Pro Bono Award Honorees,” Davis Polk, November 10, 2022, https://www.davispolk.com/news/davis-polk-announces-2022-pro-bono-award-honorees; archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250118190054/https://www.davispolk.com/news/davis-polk-announces-2022-pro-bono-award-honorees. ↑

  55. Pro Bono Matters (Davis Polk, 2023), https://www.davispolk.com/sites/default/files/2023-07/davis-polk-probono-matters-2023.pdf; archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250118190209/https://www.davispolk.com/sites/default/files/2023-07/davis-polk-probono-matters-2023.pdf.. ↑

  56. Stop AAPI Hate, “Stop AAPI Hate Raises Alarm About Escalation of Hate in the U.S. and Echoes Calls for Ceasefire in Gaza,” news release, October 30, 2023, https://stopaapihate.org/2023/10/30/stop-aapi-hate-calls-for-ceasefire-in-gaza/; Stop AAPI Hate, “Statement: Stop AAPI Hate on the Murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume,” news release, October 16, 2023, https://stopaapihate.org/2023/10/16/statement-on-murder-of-wadea-al-fayoume/; Stop AAPI Hate (@StopAAPIHate), “Recent shooting of 3 Palestinian students in Vermont,” X, November 26, 2023, https://x.com/StopAAPIHate/status/1728964057364132051; Stop AAPI Hate (@StopAAPIHate), “Politician conflating Palestinian civilians w/ Hamas,” X, November 3, 2023, https://x.com/StopAAPIHate/status/1720606572185874548; Stop AAPI Hate (@StopAAPIHate), “Reckless op-ed naming Dearborn, Michigan as ‘America’s Jihad Capital,’” X, February 7, 2024, https://x.com/StopAAPIHate/status/1755278330428035501?s=20. ↑

  57. Manjusha P. Kulkarni (@KulkarniManju), “I have decided to withdraw from my role as a panelist at the Combating Hate & Bias Conference,” X, November 5, 2023, https://twitter.com/KulkarniManju/status/1721422645093421389; Polis Center for Politics, “Combating Hate and Bias, November 6–7, 2023,” original conference agenda/program, https://polis.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/11/Official-Combating-Hate-and-Bias-Conference-Agenda-11.6-11.7.23.pdf; Polis Center for Politics, final version of “Combating Hate and Bias” conference agenda/program, November 6–7, 2023, https://polis.duke.edu/combating-hate-and-bias/. ↑

  58. “AAPI Support and Resources,” Anti-Defamation League Plains States/CRC, https://omaha.adl.org/aapi-resources/; “Support the AAPI Community,” Anti-Defamation League Southeast, https://atlanta.adl.org/support-the-aapi-community/. ↑

  59. Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, “AG Racine & AG Tong Host Landmark National Convening on Combating Anti-AAPI Hate,” news release, May 4, 2021, https://oag.dc.gov/release/ag-racine-ag-tong-host-landmark-national-convening. ↑

  60. Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, “A Community United: A National Convening Against Anti-AAPI Hate,” conference program, May 4, 2021, https://oag.dc.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/A%20Community%20United.pdf. ↑

  61. Attorney General Alliance, “A Community United: A National Convening Against Anti-AAPI Hate” (conference video), Vimeo, streamed on May 4, 2021, https://vimeo.com/535028504. ↑

  62. Mike Sena (Executive Director of Northern California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area and Northern California Regional Intelligence Center) email message to unknown list of recipients (original email forwarded to the author), subject: “Invitation & Agenda for the January 30—US Attorney’s Office—Hate Crimes Summit—San Francisco, CA,” January 19, 2024, copy of email available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zwQ_mPYu3gsMAl3y7NvgfEeSbZvjIlUZ6lnFXc_86BU/edit; United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California (@USAO_NDCA), “Hate Crimes Summit,” X, January 30, 2024, https://twitter.com/USAO_NDCA/status/1752487875915194420. ↑

  63. Annie Lee (Director of Policy at Chinese for Affirmative Action) (@annielee415), “@cynthiachoi1 of @StopAAPIHate discussing the size and scope of anti-AAPI hate at today’s USAO summit,” X, January 30, 2024, https://twitter.com/annielee415/status/1752396090475962376. ↑

  64. Truthout editorial correspondence with the author, April 3, 2024. ↑

  65. See the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, directed by Ruha Benjamin at Princeton University, for a thorough critique and dynamic methodological departure from criminological and carceral data collection practices. “About,” Just Data Lab, https://www.thejustdatalab.com/about. Also see Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Polity, 2019); Steven Hutchinson, “Countering Catastrophic Criminology: Reform, Punishment and the Modern Liberal Compromise,” Punishment & Society 8, no. 4 (2006): 443–67, https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474506067567. ↑

  66. US Department of Justice, “Who Should I Call If I Experience a Hate Incident?,” news release, https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/press-release/file/1400321/dl?inline. ↑

  67. Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2021 (Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, 2022), 30, https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2022-05/ADL_2021%20Audit_Report_042622_v11.pdf. ↑

  68. Joint Publication 3–24: Counterinsurgency (US Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2021), 19, https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_24.pdf. ↑

  69. By way of partial example, see Setsu Shigematsu and Keith L. Camacho, eds., Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific (University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i (Common Courage Press, 1993); Rick Bonus and Antonio Tiongson Jr., eds., Filipinx American Studies: Reckoning, Reclamation, Transformation (Fordham University Press, 2022); Dylan Rodríguez, Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2010). ↑

  70. Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (Africa World Press, 1990); Robert L. Allen, “Personal Reflections on the Road to Black Awakening in Capitalist America,” Souls 22, no. 1 (2020): 118–22; INCITE!, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (South End Press, 2007). ↑

Dylan Rodríguez is a teacher, scholar, organizer, and collaborator who is employed as a distinguished professor at the University of California, Riverside. He is a faculty member in the recently created Department of Black Study and the Department of Media and Cultural Studies. He was elected to serve as president of the American Studies Association in 2020–2021, and in 2020 he was named to the inaugural class of Freedom Scholars. He is the author of three books, most recently White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide, which won the 2022 Frantz Fanon Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

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JOURNAL FOR THE CRITICAL STUDY OF ZIONISM

Volume 3, Issue 1 | Fall 2026

Special Issue: Zionism from the Standpoint of Ethnic Studies

Volume 3

JCSZ