ASIAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY
Stewart David Ikeda has published and spoken widely on the diverse cultures, histories and politics of Asian Americans in media, universities and venues nationwide, and as a result his thought and writings are routinely cited in scholarly and popular APA references as Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia, Asian American Autobiographers, The Cambridge Companion to Asian American Literature, Multiethnic Asian American Identities, the World Heritage Encyclopedia, as well as Wikipedia entries on Asian American definitions, roles in government and politics, U.S. conservatism, and others.
He played leadership roles in such organizations as the Asian American Writers Workshop,the progressive advocacy group Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, and the 80-20 Initiative & PAC. Ikeda and filmmaker Eric Byler co-founded APAs for Kerry, a coalition of Asian American media artists to provide endorsements and conduct outreach on behalf of John Kerry and other Democratic candidates in the 2004 national elections.
In academia, he served on ALANA faculty and graduate study committees at University of Michigan and Boston College, and was among the first faculty hired to work with Prof. Amy Ling at the launch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Asian American Studies Program -- the first formal academic AAS program in the Midwest.
As an editor and digital content producer for IMDiversity, he developed pioneering online vehicles to incubate, publish and promote top Asian American community voices, including Frank Wu, Angela Oh, Helen Zia, Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, Paul Igasaki, CN Le, Gil Asakawa, Tak Toyoshima, and Yayoi Winfrey. He forged pan-ethnic business and media alliances with the Pacific Citizen, Organization of Chinese Americans, Sikh Media Watch, National Council of APAs, the National Federation of Filipino American Associations and many more.
Of mixed European and Japanese background himself, Ikeda was an early and ardent advocate for inclusiveness and recognition of both multiracial and adoptee experiences within often-tradition-bound Asian American communities. His opinions on the subject have been published or profiled in Pacific Citizen, Eurasian Nation, When Half Is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities, and the anthology Mixed (W.W. Norton).