When I heard the announcement that Kal Penn would be teaching courses at the University of Pennsylvania next year, I thought it was pretty cool. Students would have the opportunity to learn and examine images of Asian Americans in the media from someone who has actually been in the trenches and has had to deal with ups and downs of being a person of color in Hollywood. I would love to take that course. Turns out, there are some people at U. Penn who weren't very happy with this announcement, arguing that administrators set the bar too low and got an unqualified instructor: Misguided reasons. It seems to me that some people might be confusing Kal Penn's party dude/underachiever roles (Kumar, Taj) with the real thing. (Okay, so the above photo doesn't do anything to disassociate that image.) Here's a response opinion from Asian American Studies program director Grace Kao, who brokered the arrangement for Mr. Modi to teach: Kal Penn is qualified to teach at Penn. And while I'm at it, here's a video clip of Kal Penn on The Late Late Show
