April 2026
by Carina Tu
Elijah Chhum’s residency brings Southeast Asian diasporic history, intergenerational healing, and pathways for refugee scholarship into focus
On April 13, 2026, we welcomed our second Critical Southeast Asian Scholar in Residence, Elijah Chhum, for a week of powerful intergenerational healing and knowledge-sharing. Elijah Chhum (he/they) is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of New Light Wellness, a proud UC Berkeley alumnus, and the first in his family to graduate and earn a bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies. New Light Wellness serves Southeast Asian communities impacted by deportation across borders and seas through transformative statewide organizing, collective healing, and reunification. His scholarship is grounded in leading the Pardon Refugees coalition, creating pathways toward transnational healing, and uncovering modalities that decolonize mental health.
During his residency, Elijah invited students, staff, and faculty to engage with the political reality of 50 years of Southeast Asian diasporic history through a decolonial framework. His scholarship offered intergenerational and transnational wisdom for new modalities of healing, which are especially critical in this current climate to understand the impact of forced removal and the trauma of deportation. To combat heightened anti-immigrant sentiment, he hosted student wellness workshops and facilitated discussions for the campus community, uplifting ancestral practices and, most importantly, empowering us to face fear together! In his final talk, he encouraged students and faculty to imagine new pathways and pipelines for refugee academic scholarship, hoping to continue these conversations with his colleagues and campus educators in Underground Scholars and NavCal. We explored what infrastructure remains necessary for communities impacted by deportation to have access to higher education, and the barriers that exist for individuals forcibly removed across the world to a completely different ecosystem. Crucially, he drew the connection between the school to prison to deportation pipeline, inviting an impacted leader to share their stories of double punishment, their healing, and their own scholarship.
His week of residency grounded Southeast Asian students in their history, amplified the voices of communities impacted by deportation, and reminded us ពេលយឺងប្រឆាំងយើងនឹងឈ្នះ when we fight, we win! One student encapsulated how they had felt throughout the offerings of his residency, “Thank you so much for holding, teaching, and guiding this space, and for your love and care in the midst of contradictions, and with an intergenerational grounding and lens.”
We were incredibly honored to have Elijah Chhum share his work and scholarship, empowering our campus to remember the most vulnerable and center our roots.
