It's official: HMS Professor Jim Kim is off to be President of Dartmouth, putting a spotlight on Asians in the Ivy League. Reactions around the ancient eight have been somewhat...mixed.

An email circulated at Dartmouth, published yesterday by IvyGate (O hey guys!), contained some pretty inflammatory language on the topic of Kim’s race. Some are calling it satire, others outright racism. An excerpt from the email:

Unless "Jim Yong Kim" means "I love Freedom" in Chinese, I don't want anything to do with him. Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant.

Y'all get ready for an Asianification under the guise of diversity under the actual Malaysian-invasion leadership instituted under the guise of diversity. It's a slippery slope we are on. I for one want Democracy and apple pie, not Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen.

In a bizarre coincidence, this cropping up of Asian stereotypes has arrived just in time for Harvard’s Asian American Association to debut its first ever “Mr. Asian Sensation” beauty pageant. On the invitation, the AAA offers all those with a “bad case of that yellow fever” to see “Harvard’s most attractive boys of the Asian Persuasion duke it out for the honor of being the hottest Asian male on campus.” The winner will go on to compete in a Boston-wide pageant for hot Asian dudes held at Wellesley.

We all know what came next. Any Harvard event + race/sexuality/gender/hair color = Endless house email list debate. This time Kirkland stepped up and pulled the “Isn’t this offensive?” trigger. Highlights from the 30+ thread after the jump:

It's just hilarious that the winner's race is specified by the event -- not sure if I'd call it offensive. But definitely, ah, interesting :) One of those things that racial minorities get away with but white people could never do.

White people get away with it all the time. Tokenism for the win!

and it's a total double standard--it shouldn't be ok for asians to have an explicitly asian pageant because it would NOT be ok if there were an all-white beauty pageant (let's face it, we all know that people would flip sh*t if that ever happened)

also, did anyone ever stop to think that it's possible this "contest" is simply a way for Wellesley asians to snag themselves an asian ivy-leaguer. I know that, culturally, many asians are pressured by their parents to date within their race, and it just seems like this sort of event perpetuates that kind of close-mindedness. and i really don't think this is strictly an asian stereotype--it's common within many races/ethnicities/religions.