July 1 was a historic day for Asian-Americans as Dr. Jim Yong Kim stepped into his post as the first Asian-American president of an Ivy league institution.   Dr. Kim comes to Dartmouth from his tenure at Harvard and what you may not know is that he first arrived in Iowa at the age of 5 before 99% of all Korean-Americans immigrated to the U.S.  He even played high school football growing up in Iowa.  Along the way, Dr. Kim was the director of the HIV/AIDS department of the World Health Organization and was once named Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential people back in 2006.  Fast forward to yesterday: Dr. Kim officially became the president of Dartmouth College, a truly historic day.    So what was on the agenda yesterday?  Dr. Kim toured the engineering and business schools and met with faculty, students and then addressed the Dartmouth community.

Kim told the students, alumni, faculty and staff gathered on the Green that it was his belief in the ability of Dartmouth students to take on global problems broader than those of his own work that led him to forgo those other career possibilities.

“It’s a gamble for me but it’s a gamble that I took knowing that we were going to win,” Kim said, referencing his confidence in the potential of the College’s students. Read more>

Ron Kim (Governor Patterson’s rep in NY City) and P.J. Kim (community activist) are featured in the New York Fox TV report on Asian-Americans living in poverty: 1 out of 5 Asians.  Interestingly, Asians represent 12% of the New York population but they only receive less than 1% of the available assistance from both government and private aid.  A special gathering was convened with Asian-American leaders in New York to discuss how to help those folks living in poverty.   A study by the Asian American Federation of these folks uncovered that many don’t know about the government assistance available to them such as housing and medicare.