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What's primarily at work here is a set of cultural differences that most of us, Asian and otherwise, negotiate without understanding very well.
My parents came to the United States after World War II with everything they owned in one suitcase. They were hardly alone--it's a journey tens of millions have made. Different centuries and origins, same dream. I was lucky in my choice of relatives: My grandfather was mayor of the Japanese city of Chiba and then Japan's under secretary of transportation; my father was a professor at the Johns Hopkins University.
I'm lucky, too, that my parents passed on the higher-education gene--my two brothers are professors. But outside the family, I had few role models growing up, and in academe I find myself in a singularly small group. Asian-Americans make up only 3.4 percent of executives and administrators in higher education, according to Education Department statistics, and just 1.5 percent of college presidents, according to the American Council on Education. They are "nearly absent from the ranks," Renu Khator, president of the University of Houston, has said. When her appointment was announced, in 2007, television stations in India interrupted programming; congratulatory e-mails from Asian-Americans proclaimed it "a great day."
By most measures, Asian-Americans are doing fine. They are the nation's fastest-growing racial group, and on average better educated and wealthier than Americans as a whole. While they make up just 4.8 percent of the U.S. population, people...