Dr. Leakhena Nou, Executive Director of ASRIC, a trained medical sociologist, has more than fifteen years of research on the community effects of the Khmer Rouge. Dr. Nou is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department at California State University, Long Beach and also holds a Visiting Scholar appointment at the Asia Pacific American Institute at New York University. Her research focus specializes in a wide range of the social health and human rights related conditions effecting Cambodians inside and outside the country. Dr. Nou has published extensively in cross disciplinary journals and book publications.
Theodora (Teddy) E . Yoshikami M.A., is ASRIC's Program Director. She was born in Tule Lake, California, in one of ten American concentration camps during WWII, and was later relocated with her family to Seabrook, New Jersey. After high school, she moved to New York City, where she has lived since 1961, and followed her passion for the arts as a professional modern dancer/choreographer. For over 25 years she has also been a member of New York’s taiko group, Soh Daiko, which performs at most Seabrook Obon festivals in July. Additionally, Ms. Yoshikami is Manager of Public Programs at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, creating and developing diverse cultural programs with various local, national and international communities, including those from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. She has received several grants for her museum work, community research, and as a performing artist, including the Smithsonian Institution, New Jersey Historical Commission, New York State Council on the Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts. Her graduate work is in Performance Studies, a theoretically-based anthropology division of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University. She has one daughter, Miwa.
Kosal Path, Ph.D., is director of ASRIC's Human Security research. He brings to the team a focus that has grown out of his interest in the Critical Security Studies framework which defines “security” as “emancipation” of people from fear, want and human rights abuses. Dr. Path obtained his B.A. in Public International Law from Cambodia's National Institute of Management and received both his M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Southern California. As a scholar, Dr. Path recently completed a groundbreaking study based on Vietnamese archival materials that focused on diplomatic and economic impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on Sino-Vietnamese relations during the decade 1966-1976 that destroyed the Sino-Vietnamese alliance. He also taught courses on international relations of the Asia-Pacific at the USC School of International Relations. In addition to his rich academic background, Dr. Path, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide himself, brings to ASRIC a significant professional grounded background that began with working as a research assistant with Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program and later serving as Deputy Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia between 1996 and 2000.
Kenneth Long, B.S., is ASRIC's Finance Director. He is also a chemical engineer and a graduate of Stanford University. Mr. Long has taken ASRIC through the initial development stages and is continuing to set its course toward fiscal soundness. As well, he is increasingly engaged with strategic economic development initiatives that include mapping out global industrial partners as they connect to Cambodia. Ken also manages ASRIC's blog site!
Cathy Schlund-Vials, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in English and Asian American Studies and the Associate Director for the Asian American Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut. She is helping ASRIC on a number of fronts. These include grant applications, web page editing and design and analyzing organizational symbols. Her diverse research interests include refugee and immigrant literature, human rights, and genocide remembrance. Her first book, Modeling Citizenship: Jewish and Asian American Writing (forthcoming, Temple UP), examines the interplay between narrative, immigration policy, and naturalization law. Her second book, Resistive Memory: Genocide Remembrance, Justice, and Cambodia America (forthcoming, Minnesota UP), focuses on Cambodian American memoir, hip hop, and film. Shortly, she will be in Cambodia as part of her work.
Joshua Bender, Ph.D. is a Senior Community Researcher with ASRIC. He is also working on transforming ASRIC's organization from a 'volunteer-run' to a 'professionally-run' basis -- while still retaining a strong volunteer-community participation backbone. He has come to us from Columbia University and recently completed his dissertation research on community based multicultural collaboration. As part of that research, he has studied how Cambodian Americans and other Asian Americans best collaborate with Latinos, African Americans and Euro Americans in the City of Long Beach's poorest areas.
In terms of Dr. Bender's own background, he recently explained over several conversations with survivors, volunteer staff and press in several Long Beach Cambodian Diaspora Victims' Participation Project Workshop venues that):
"Because one third of my people were destroyed during the 20th century Shoah / Churban (the Holocaust / השוא/ חורבן, ); I have a personal responsibility to help stop genocidal behaviour now; to prevent genocides in the future; and to engage with afflicted communities from previous genocides in order to rebuild and re-connect -- and to interlink all genocide communities to that end. As well, I believe we (as communities of genocide) have to link to communities that have not been directly effected by genocide (in their collective memories) so that turning the tides against genocide anywhere and at any time is understood to be both a universal desire and fulfilable obligation. We should and can do this. Our universal definition demands that we must both pledge and act upon the following words: Never Again!"
"I see multicultural collaboration as one significant way to do that; to provide both safety and opportunity....Finally, we know more or less that on one hand genocide is the attempted destruction of a people (ethnic, national, political and so forth). On the other hand, I intend to be a part of changing that meaning 'collaboratively' so that I as a Jewish American can bring my family's and my people's unwanted connection to genocide as an unexpected way to realize our community strengths. I also bring this kind of intellectual and emotional background to connect with other communities that have been tragically dealt the hand of genocide. Essentially, from the palette of such tragedy, we may imagine and then draw on vibrant renewed canvases a renewal of individual and community being."
"When I stand here now, my grandparents are with me. I can feel them. I thank you because you have so generously -- in inviting me to speak with you, and more importantly, listen -- provided me opportunity to honour them, their kin, their friends, their community (their 'kehilla'). Ar Kuhn."
In terms of Dr. Bender's own background, he recently explained over several conversations with survivors, volunteer staff and press in several Long Beach Cambodian Diaspora Victims' Participation Project Workshop venues that):
"Because one third of my people were destroyed during the 20th century Shoah / Churban (the Holocaust / השוא/ חורבן, ); I have a personal responsibility to help stop genocidal behaviour now; to prevent genocides in the future; and to engage with afflicted communities from previous genocides in order to rebuild and re-connect -- and to interlink all genocide communities to that end. As well, I believe we (as communities of genocide) have to link to communities that have not been directly effected by genocide (in their collective memories) so that turning the tides against genocide anywhere and at any time is understood to be both a universal desire and fulfilable obligation. We should and can do this. Our universal definition demands that we must both pledge and act upon the following words: Never Again!"
"I see multicultural collaboration as one significant way to do that; to provide both safety and opportunity....Finally, we know more or less that on one hand genocide is the attempted destruction of a people (ethnic, national, political and so forth). On the other hand, I intend to be a part of changing that meaning 'collaboratively' so that I as a Jewish American can bring my family's and my people's unwanted connection to genocide as an unexpected way to realize our community strengths. I also bring this kind of intellectual and emotional background to connect with other communities that have been tragically dealt the hand of genocide. Essentially, from the palette of such tragedy, we may imagine and then draw on vibrant renewed canvases a renewal of individual and community being."
"When I stand here now, my grandparents are with me. I can feel them. I thank you because you have so generously -- in inviting me to speak with you, and more importantly, listen -- provided me opportunity to honour them, their kin, their friends, their community (their 'kehilla'). Ar Kuhn."