Growing up in a city that was 1% Asian American, Cherice Chan has always been interested in how context shapes the way in which individuals learn and think about race. During her time as an undergraduate at UCLA, Cherice fell in love with research about race and its potential impact to make positive change in the world.
Now, Cherice has the opportunity to advance research on the intersection of race and tech with U-M’s Digital Studies Institute (DSI). In addition to organizing educational events as the Program Coordinator for the DISCO Network,* Cherice has been working on a DSI curriculum research project with DISCO CO-PI and Professor M. Remi Yergeau, which studies how DSI courses integrate race, gender, and disability discussions in the classroom. In the following Q&A, Cherice discusses her previous research experience and the organization process for the DISCO Network event: “TikTok, DeepSeek, and the Fear of Chinese Tech in Nationalist Times,” which took place on March 31, 2025. [Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.]
What attracted you to the DISCO Network and the DSI at U-M?
When I initially saw the DISCO Network job posting, I knew the position would be perfect for me because it intersected with so many of my interests. I was excited to find an organization that researches the digital side of race and inequality, as I have always been interested in how individuals learn about race online and how racism manifests in the digital world. In addition, DISCO's mission is about building community with underrepresented scholars and developing public-facing programming that makes research accessible to the public, which really aligns with my values. Being able to coordinate free and accessible programs and events that are available to all academics and people outside of the academy was what drew me in.
Tell me more about your scholarly background and research.
My undergraduate degree is in Psychology and Anthropology. As an undergrad at UCLA, I became involved in research labs on campus related to social justice initiatives. One of the labs conducted a really cool longitudinal study about the impacts of school diversity, which inspired my Honors thesis project. I analyzed how changes in school diversity impact intergroup attitudes among Asian American youth; I wanted to understand more about how cultural context within a school can help shape views about race. I also wanted to provide insights into how we can lay the groundwork for coalition-building among different communities of color. The Asian community is often very divided amongst ourselves, and our relationship with other people of color is often contested, so I am interested in understanding how we can get these groups together to fight for racial justice.
After graduation, I was involved in another longitudinal research study based in Boston, MA. This project was a fantastic fit for my interests because it was about how Asian American high school students, their parents, and peers have conversations about race. I got to really see how to start a study from the ground up, and I contributed to designing the research protocol, surveys, and our interview script. Research also includes all the other stuff that nobody wants to hear about, like spending hours and hours on REDCap or Qualtrics editing surveys, figuring out all of the logistics of trying to work with multiple different groups, and working with IRBs and lots and lots of paperwork. Since I helped design the study, I was also able to integrate my own research interests, like studying how interaction with social media impacts young people’s understanding of race and how youth develop a sense of critical consciousness, which is basically how they can identify, analyze, and challenge inequity. By far, my favorite part of that role was conducting outreach at local high schools and community organizations and developing a youth advisory board program for Asian American youth to share about their experiences. That made me realize that while I enjoy research, what I actually find more meaningful is getting the research findings out to the community and developing shared spaces for community members to learn and reflect together. That’s how I ended up at DISCO!
What are some of the overarching conclusions from your research?
I always like to share the fact that only .017% of all research funding allocated by the NIH is dedicated to projects about Asian communities. That’s less than a penny out of a $100 bill. When I heard that statistic for the first time, it was really eye-opening. There is such a severe underrepresentation of Asian Americans in research, especially in the health and social sciences, which has a direct impact on the amount of resources dedicated to our communities. And if we’re specifically talking about research about race, diversity, and inequality, Asian Americans are rarely included in that discussion. As much as the model minority myth might reinforce the idea that race isn’t relevant to Asian Americans, racism impacts all of us on a daily basis. One of the biggest conclusions that I’ve found from my research is that members of our community often just feel invisible, and that most of our racialized experiences are often disregarded or outright invalidated.
What’s your main takeaway from working with youth specifically?
Working with youth and learning about how youth negotiate with race is one of my greatest interests because adolescence is when you start critically thinking about race and developing your own identity, as well as just generally becoming more aware of the world around you. Young people have so much to say about race, ethnicity, and identity, but they feel disempowered. I think many adults and researchers underestimate the power of youth to critically understand the world around them. While teens may not have a lot of the formal vocabulary about inequality that is used in the humanities and social science disciplines, they’re still incredibly insightful because they are experts in their own lived experiences. I love learning from them, and I often deeply resonate with their experiences as someone who grew up in a predominantly white school and who grew up on the internet.
I strongly believe that we need to make research and critical conversations about race, identity, and inequality more accessible to young people. It’s extremely important to expand our research to new demographics. In my work, I try to do everything possible to reduce barriers to access; for example, it’s important to use accessible language that anyone, even without subject expertise, would be able to understand.
Tell me about the organization for the event, “TikTok, DeepSeek, and the Fear of Chinese Tech in Nationalist Times.”
At the time when we were coming up with our first event for our DISCO Voices in Protest programming series, there were a lot of conversations around TikTok and its potential ban in January. One of my previous research projects specifically focused on the experiences of racism among the Chinese American community, and many of them expressed their concerns about the rise in Sinophobic rhetoric, including the narrative that we need to ban TikTok, and by extension, Chinese Americans, on the basis of national security. When Lisa Nakamura, DISCO’s lead principal investigator, proposed the idea of having a panel about the TikTok ban, I knew it would be perfect for our first event since it was such a timely, important, and accessible conversation. On a personal level, this type of discussion was actually my dream event since it combines all of my interests in race, Asian American experiences, anti-China rhetoric, and geopolitics, so I was super excited about the idea.
But we didn’t want the event to solely focus on TikTok, since anti-Chinese sentiment in the tech world is so prevalent, so we broadened it out to talk about the racialization of Chinese tech in general, including the new AI platform DeepSeek, which was making headlines every week at the time of planning the event. It also just so happened that the TikTok ban got pushed back to the exact week that we were hosting the event, so truly, we could not have picked a better time to do this panel.
I was obsessed with the entire panel that we had. Everyone was so personable, knowledgeable, and just great speakers. We recruited Tara Fickle, an Asian American Studies professor at Northwestern, whom we had worked with previously at various events here at DISCO and the DSI. Another panelist, Ian Shin, is an assistant professor here at U-M who teaches Asian American history. He was crucial to establishing the historical context for today’s anti-China climate. We also invited Jeff Yang, a journalist and an Asian/Asian American pop culture expert, and I’m a huge fan of his work myself.
It was critical to ensure that we invited panelists who not only have expertise on the topic of the representation of Asian tech in mainstream media, but also have lived experiences that they can pull from and uplift their voices in a conversation where they have often been left out. Having three different perspectives: an academic who studies the racialization of Asian Americans in tech, an Asian American historian, and a journalist who has written about Asian-American culture for years, was incredible. Together, they centered the conversation on how a fear of TikTok and other Chinese (and by extension) Asian companies reflects the racialization of Asia as a whole, not only in the present, but across time.
We also had free boba at the event and hosted a student coffee hour with pastries catered from a local Korean bakery in the morning. I hoped that these helped create a sense of belonging, especially for Asian American students on campus. I really curated what refreshments we offered based on things that I enjoy eating with my friends! We were able to bring in a lot of undergrads for the event, which was great for bringing new people into the fold and getting them interested in critical conversations about the intersection of race and tech. Not only researchers care about these types of topics, since what happens in the tech world impacts everyone, and I think it’s important that we make sure our events reflect that. I’ve loved getting to coordinate these events, especially ones with topics like this that bridge all of my interests.
To learn more about the event, “TikTok, DeepSeek, and the Fear of Chinese Tech in Nationalist Times,” read more here or watch the event here.
*The DISCO (Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, and Optimism) Network is a collective of interdisciplinary researchers working to envision a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future.
