The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) evolved from the Vietnam caucus held during the 1968 annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). Spurred by a need to reassess the relationship of their area of study to the war, delegates presented a Statement of Conscience to the faculty and students attending the caucus. Further discussion led to the organization of a radical group of Asian scholars committed to organizing and activism against the war and to the exchange of ideas derived from their research.
The first concrete result of this meeting was the publication of a newsletter. The second was a national conference coordinated with the AAS annual meeting on March 27, 1969. At this meeting the group adopted a statement of purposes and completed the organization of the committee.
CCAS was organized in local chapters which were located on various university campuses in the United States and abroad. Three national coordinators, one each from the West, East, and Midwest, directed national events and planned annual conventions. Functionally organized national committees included Indochina, South Asia, GI Support, the Philippines, and China Exchange. In 1971 a small group from the CCAS was allowed to travel in China. While there, the group interviewed the Chinese leader, Chou En Lai. Another group from the CCAS traveled in China in 1973. Each local chapter coordinated its own regional activities. These varied widely and included local demonstrations, teach-ins, and conferences and meetings.
In addition to the newsletter, the national committee also published a scholarly journal, the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, which was concerned with radical analyses of Asian-American relations. As a group, CCAS issued several books on China and Indochina (Indochina Story (1970), China: Inside the People's Republic (1972), and The Opium Trail: Heroin and Imperialism (2nd edition, 1972)), as well as publishing the work of several individual members.
After the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, the focus changed from its political purpose of organizing and activism to concentration on scholarly meetings and conferences. As the annual meetings of AAS began to provide a forum for scholarship which had previously been excluded as too political, the need for a separate organization of Asian scholars declined. Although CCAS had boasted a membership of approximately 500 individuals during the early 1970s, by 1979, only the Stanford chapter was still functioning. Publication of the Bulletin continued through 2000. The title changed in 2001 to Critical Asian Studies, which is still published quarterly.
