Recap: Columbia’s conversation on violence against Asian Americans Recap: Columbia’s conversation on violence against Asian Americans Emma Cho / Zoom Screenshot “It has caught a lot of people by surprise.” The surge in anti-Asian hate crimes in major U.S. cities has started an important and long-awaited conversation for this country. In an event hosted by the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights on April 14, Ellen Wu, associate professor of history and director of Asian American studies at Indiana University Bloomington, and Jiayang Fan, a staff writer for The New Yorker, examined the United States’ long-standing history of violence and discrimination against Asians.