1990 Institute

Who We Are

The 1990 Institute is a 30-year-old+ nonprofit that champions fair and equitable treatment for Asian Americans and a constructive US-China relationship. We believe that education about Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history and culture as well as understanding China and US-China relations are imperative to combating anti-Asian discrimination and violence.

To that end, we 1) create and curate robust educational materials on AAPI/ethnic studies for secondary school teachers, including short- and long-form videos, profiles/stories, newsletters, podcasts, lesson plans, and discussion guides, which are all available on our platform: Reference Library; and 2) organize Teachers Workshops and convene Teacher Forum meetings with experts and scholars, designed to allow educators to find community and strategize with other teachers on implementing AAPI studies and ethnic studies.

Your donation is an investment in education, teachers, and the next generation of Asian Americans to see themselves represented and visible in the classroom. 

Your support will allow us to help teachers implement AAPI/ethnic studies that are increasingly required across the country and to disrupt the way that we teach and share stories about AAPI communities and the long history of US-China relations.

Materials we create and curate for our Reference Library provide a nuanced and balanced education point of view on foundational concepts in AAPI/ethnic studies and U.S.-China relations. Our videos are being adopted by school districts as reference material for schools that have been mandated to teach AAPI/ethnic studies. We collaborate with best-in-class, up-and-coming writers and editors and are advised by top-tier academics to create original long- and short-form videos to inform viewers on the Asian American experience, life in modern China, the complex relationship between the US and China, how we got here, and ways to partner and move forward. Since the launch of our video program, we continue to receive an overwhelming response in support of this work. Teachers have noted in various fora that time is of the essence, and these “Cliff Notes”-like videos help them and their students learn oft-times difficult topics in an easily digestible way. Two of these foundational videos about the Asian American experience on immigration and exclusion were launched earlier this year : “Waves of Immigrants: The Asian American Journey” and “Exclusion: The Asian American Experience.” We are in the process of revamping the interface of the Reference Library to make it more user-friendly for teachers and students. 

In addition to our educational materials, Teachers Workshop, our flagship program for the past decade, provides secondary school teachers with curated 60-minute lectures, led by recognized academics and experts, followed by discussions on how to incorporate what they’ve learned into actionable discussion guides and lesson plans. The program garnered international attention in 2022; individuals from 16 countries outside of the United States registered and participated. Our newly launched Teachers Forum is designed to support teachers to network, learn from, and strategize with other teachers on navigating discussions about exclusionary history and potentially difficult topics to make these topics more meaningful and impactful in the classroom and beyond. All our programs are free to all secondary school teachers.

Your support will directly fund the revamped one-stop content platform, the continued efforts around creating the educational resource materials, and the teachers support programs: Teachers Workshop and Teachers Forum.