Adam Smith, Author at Sampan

Adam Smith

Education March 21, 2025 0

Before Khalil and Countless Others, There Was Fred Dube

“The fear and silencing on college campuses today is not arbitrary or new,” wrote Abena Ampofoa Asare, an associate professor of Modern African Affairs at Stony Brook University, in an essay titled, “The Silencing of Fred Dube,” published last year in the Boston Review. This might be a surprise for those who are just now realizing the relationship between censorship and speaking out for Palestine, after seeing the news of immigration officials detaining Columbia University Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. Others […]

Health March 21, 2025 0

Congress Should Tackle Health, Food Costs, Asians Tell Pollsters

The growing costs of healthcare, grocery bills and housing are top concerns for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults – and they want Congress to address all three.That was a key takeaway from a new AAPI Data/AP-NORC Poll of Congressional priorities for Asian and Pacific Islander adults. According to the survey published earlier this month, the price of health care was the top issue for nearly 8 out of 10 people who identify as AAPI. Food inflation came […]

Snake Mural Lets Viewers Send Wishes, Artist Hold onto Chinese Heritage

A red snake with gold “scales” is winding through the walls of the Pao Arts Center in Chinatown as part of a celebration of the Lunar New Year. “We invited people to come and cut out scales from a gold shimmery paper, and then we prompted them to write or draw their Lunar New Year wish,” said artist Amanda Beard Garcia, who painted the indoor mural over several days in January. “Some people made one wish and a few people […]

Order Said to ‘Criminalize’ Some Non-Citizen Students for Protest

With additional reporting by Harmony Witte and D.Y. Photo by Witte. In the spring of 2024, students at colleges all over Greater Boston called out what they viewed as a campaign of genocide in Gaza. The students objected to the U.S. paying for much of Israel’s military expenses. They protested their universities’ ties with U.S. companies who build the weapons and fighter jets used by Israeli forces, by calling for divestment and boycott. And they marched against Israel for dropping […]

Immigration February 7, 2025 0

Don’t Say ‘It Won’t Affect Me’: Immigration Expert Gives Take on Trump Crackdown on Immigrants

In just the past few weeks, the second administration of Pres. Donald Trump has issued a barrage of executive orders and efforts — as long promised — around immigration enforcement as well as sweeping attempts to upturn rights promised in the U.S. Constitution, such as birth-right citizenship. Most recently his pick for longtime South Dakota governor and former lawmaker, Kristi Noem, as the 8th Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, has stirred concerns from some groups, because […]

Education January 24, 2025 0

Doctor’s Prescription for Injustice: Speak Up

While at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health a couple years ago, Dr. Yipeng Ge faced a dilemma – and the decision he would make would profoundly influence the following years of his life.Already outspoken on the genocide of indigenous people and racism in North America, Dr. Ge discovered the Palestine Program during graduate studies at Harvard. Also taking courses in the Kennedy School and Harvard Law, he then soon found out about Palestine Trek, or PalTrek. In […]

Arts January 24, 2025 0

Activism Through Art: Interview With Carlos Hernandez Chavez

You could say that artist Carlos Hernandez Chavez has taken a bit of the Mexican Muralist Movement of the 1900s to modern-day New England. But his path to painting on walls and buildings here after growing up in Mexico was a winding one. In the mid-1960s, Chavez devoted his education to the arts while still in Mexico. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas-UNAM at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico and INBA’s Escuela de Pintura y […]

Education January 24, 2025 0

Muslim Lawyer Event to Tackle Big Issues of Faith, Bias and Law

Civil rights attorney Mariam Aydah knows what it’s like to be singled out for being a Muslim while practicing — and studying — law. A few incidents stand out in particular. Once, while handling a case, she was mistaken for a client, even after co-counsel introduced her as one of the client’s lawyers. Another time, while in college, a professor who often associated Muslims with terrorists offhandedly rejected a paper she wrote that presented Islam in a positive light. And […]

Boston January 24, 2025 0

State Doles Out Funds for Security Amid Hate Fears

A Chinese bible group, Boston-area Islamic society, Sikh group and several Jewish organizations were among the dozens of nonprofits given a total of $5 million in funds earlier this month by the state to boost security amid increased fears of hate crimes. The grants are supposed to support more than 100 nonprofit organizations identified as being “at high risk of hate crimes or terror attacks” so that they can enhance their security, according to a statement from the administration of […]

Immigration January 24, 2025 0

Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi Persisted – And Helped End Mass Incarceration of Japanese Americans

Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi didn’t set out to be a civil rights hero. And she didn’t promote herself as one. But she played a key role in ending the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans – many of them U.S. citizens – during World War II. “Mitsuye was an ordinary person who was caught up in an extraordinary circumstance,” explains writer Frank Abe, who was part of a team who first told the personal story of Endo Tsutsumi in print, in the […]

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