Description

Purpose of grant: Renewed support for the New York Southeast Asia Network.
Amount recommended: A three-year grant of $500,000.
Summary: The New York Southeast Asia Network (NYSEAN) is a collaborative scholarly community dedicated to enhancing the visibility of Southeast Asia (SEA) and fostering study of the region. The Foundation helped launch the Network in 2015 with seed funding and renewed its support in 2017. 
Co-founded by scholars concerned about the longstanding gap in coverage of SEA in the New York area: John Gershman (New York University), Duncan McCargo (Columbia), Ann Marie Murphy (Seton Hall University), and Margaret Scott (former Luce Scholar, journalist and NYU adjunct professor), over the past five years NYSEAN has expanded to form alliances with 25 partners, to whom it provides small sub-grants for SEA activities. Partners now include public universities such as the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, University of Albany and University of Massachusetts-Lowell, local non-profits such as the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and institutions in SEA such as the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (Indonesia), ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (Singapore) and Lontar Foundation (Indonesia). 
Since the onset of the pandemic, NYSEAN’s responsive and innovative programming has helped extend its reach nationally and internationally; the community has become as much a virtual as an actual network of scholars, students, artists, journalists, policymakers, activists and diasporic groups. NYSEAN.org has become the North American go-to site for SEA-focused news, events, calls for proposals, job opportunities, and resources. The Network curates dozens of events per year, sponsors research collaborations and develops curricular resources. Activities run from conferences, webinars, exhibitions and performances to podcasts, long-form journalism and photo essays that address historical and contemporary issues. As an alternative to the Title VI National Resource Center model, NYSEAN has filled a critical need, and helped the field to reconceptualize the study of SEA for the 21 st century.
Columbia, in partnership with NYU and Seton Hall, requests HLF’s renewed support, which would enable the Network to move its part-time coordinator to full-time status, sponsor larger collaborative events, produce more focused research outputs, and generate more learning opportunities and teaching materials for undergraduates. Crucially, it would allow NYSEAN to deepen collaborations with institutes and universities in SEA, diaspora organizations, public universities, and historically marginalized scholars and students. Thirty percent of the “partner fund” resources the Network requests, for example, would be earmarked specifically for use by existing and new public university partners. It is exploring with SUNY Albany the launch of an interdisciplinary collective of students in the SUNY/CUNY systems who work on SEA. 
The Network will continue to be housed at Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, with leadership from the four co-founders along with Professors Lien-Hang Nguyen (a Vietnam expert recently appointed to a tenured position at Columbia) and Eve Zucker (Yale University, and president of the Center for Khmer Studies). Toward the expansion of NYSEAN, Columbia, NYU and Seton Hall are expected to contribute a combined $322,000, including funding for seminars, conferences, undergraduate and graduate student travel, and internship stipends as well as in-kind support for event and office space, technical services and administrative assistance.  
Recommendation: That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a three-year grant of $500,000 to Columbia University for renewed support for the New York Southeast Asia Network. http://www.nysean.org www.columbia.edu/weai