We hosted our inaugural DC Holiday Potluck, celebrating the end of the year with our fellow NABEA members from the Washington DC metropolitan area.

Everyone brought delicious dishes to share and wore their best ugly holiday sweaters. It was truly a night filled with great food, good company, and unforgettable memories!

NABEA Conversations are back by popular demand! This week, we dived into the world of the Chinese video game industry in a discussion led by Chelsea Anglin titled, The Transformative Cultural Power of Chinese Wuxia Video Games. This engaging discussion left our members inspired and eager to explore the intersection of culture and gaming, setting the stage for more exciting NABEA Conversations in the future!

Career Pathways in Asia: Panel & Mixer was an enlightening evening that bridged the gap between seasoned professionals from NABEA and students in Georgetown University's MA in Asian Studies (MASIA) program.

Our happy hour was a success! Members from around the world joined for a relaxing evening of smiles and laughter. Members spoke about everything from automatic trash cans to the results of the recent elections and everything in between.

Co-hosted by the Korea Foundation USA and the National Association for Black Engagement with Asia, the event offered an enlightening networking dinner and presentation that explored transpacific connections between Black liberation struggles in the United States and anticolonial movements in Korea. This event featured a keynote presentation by Dr. Jang Wook Huh, Associate Professor of English at Seoul National University, titled, Echoes of Resistance: "Afro-Korean" Relations in the Twentieth Century.

NABEA partnered with National Committee on United States-China Relations to offer an exclusive information session to our members about the Public Intellectuals Program, which is dedicated to nurturing the next generation of China specialists.

NABEA hosted a second New York meetup for members across the New York tri-state area.

We kept the good times rolling with our first ever Atlanta member meetup! Members came from the Greater Atlanta area and surrounding cities to meet other NABEA members in their area.

The NABEA Tokyo community met at the Mori Art Museum for an exclusive, private tour of the “Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei” exhibit by museum curator Hirokazu Tokuyama. This remarkable installation blended Black and Japanese cultures using ceramics, architecture, and music to create a profound cultural encounter.

Our back-to-school happy hour at La Cosecha in D.C.’s Union Market District was our most engaging yet! Despite the rain, members came out to connect with the rest of the NABEA Community.

NABEA met on Zoom for a Virtual Member Meetup for a fun and engaging happy hour with members showing up from Texas, Tennessee, Boston, Atlanta, and beyond.

NABEA came to the Big Apple! To bring our members together from across Greater New York, we hosted a casual afternoon mixer in Brooklyn. Members came together at Spritzenhaus 33 where Alex Foote, Tyrell Walker, and Chadwick Eason hosted members for lively Asia-related discussions.

NABEA celebrated the rich history of Juneteenth and the significance of Pride Month with a member meetup in Washington, D.C. Members gathered together for an evening that united Black Asia experts from across the Washington DC metropolitan area.

Our Tokyo community met, bringing together longstanding members and new members alike. They gathered at Legacy Lounge, a Black-owned gem in Tokyo to meet each other and make new friends.

Our Osaka community met, bringing members from Osaka, Kyoto, and beyond. Members gathered for lunch and shared stories about their experiences living in Japan while eating tasty okonomiyaki.

NABEA hosted an enlightening event, where we demystified the process of securing language scholarships in Asia! This virtual event unlocked valuable insights and insider tips from experienced language scholars.

NABEA kicked off the Year of the Dragon with its first member meetup of 2024 in Washington DC. Members came from across the Washington DC metropolitan area (and even as far as Philadelphia) to gather for a vibrant happy hour.

Since the early history of the United States, America has been engaged in Asia and home to Asian Americans and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. The arc of the United States’ history is filled with legacies of both rising opportunity for and deepening discrimination toward AAPI communities that often intersected with shifting tides in U.S. foreign policy toward Asia. As the United States emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic—and the spike in AAPI hate crimes that came with it—and adopts a more assertive foreign policy towards China, how can the U.S. foreign policy community further counter AAPI hate and discrimination?

NABEA members in the Greater Tokyo Area met in a local park for a BBQ with family and friends. Everyone had a great time, exchanging business cards and making new friends.

NABEA hosted a joint event with Schwarzman Scholars. Panelists Amani Core, Chayla Cherry, Damian Murray, and Raven Witherspoon–all Scholars, and members of NABEA–shared their experiences with the program and describe how it shaped their professional trajectories. The panelists, who are all members of NABEA, represented various sectors and provided attendees an understanding of how becoming a Schwarzman Scholar can help them incorporate Asia into their own careers no matter their area of interest.

NABEA members based in the Greater Tokyo Area met for a fun afternoon in the city Yokohama with family and friends.

NABEA hosted an impromptu happy hour to host members who happened to be visiting Washington DC at the same time. Members gathered in Chinatown, sharing their experiences on living across the US and comparing them to their experiences living in Asia.

NABEA hosted a chat with Ryan Alexander Holmes, a Chinese-African American Content Creator and Actor with over 52,000 followers across the U.S. and Asia. Ryan shared his incredible story growing up in a Black and Chinese family, discussed how he navigates these two cultural spaces, and offered best practices for generating content that celebrates harmony and multiculturalism. The event was moderated by Leland Lazarus, Special Assistant-Speechwriter at United States Southern Command.

Panelists discussed how South Korean popular music, or K-pop, has become a global phenomena in the past decade, and the ways in which it has been influenced by Black culture, and how the K-pop industry and its fandom have engaged with the Black diaspora over the years. 

CSIS and the National Association for Black Engagement with Asia (NABEA) hosted a conference on U.S. leadership in Asia. The first panel on diplomatic engagement was moderated by Dr. Michael Green, and will feature former Ambassador Charles Ray, former Ambassador Aurelia Brazeal, and former Ambassador Harry Thomas. The second panel on economic statecraft was moderated by Mr. Matt Goodman, and will feature Mr. Marc Mealy, from the US-ASEAN Business Council, and Ms. Terri Batch, from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In The Rohingya Crisis, NABEA member and Southeast Asia expert Danielle Fallin explored the Rohingya crisis ongoing within the region, including the history of the Rohingya identity in Myanmar, foreign policy, and where things stand after the 2021 military coup that plunged Myanmar’s formerly-civilian run political infrastructure into chaos.

This Thursday NABEA members gathered for our largest Washington DC happy hour yet. Members met at Crimson Whiskey Bar in Chinatown and had a great time getting to know one another.

In The Politics of Who Can Say What and Why, NABEA member and Princeton PhD candidate Jessica LeGare led a roundtable discussion on her work with postwar censorship and literature in Japan, as well as answered questions on how the topic relates to and differs from more recent times.

The State of Racial Discourse in China focused on attempting to assess the mainstream understanding of race and racial identity within China and reflecting on how the gaps between American and Chinese perceptions of these issues may continue to impact how Beijing is viewed abroad.

In China & The Caribbean, Rasheed Griffith, host of the ‘China in the Caribbean Podcast‘, discussed the evolution and implication of the US-China-Caribbean relationship amid China’s increased development finance provided under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.