Fil-Am educator is one of USA TODAY’s ‘Women of the Year’

Dr. Melissa Borja.Melissa Borja. UM

Dr. Melissa Borja, a Filipina American educator, has been named one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year, a recognition of women across the country who have made a significant impact.

Melissa Borja is a professor at the prestigious University of Michigan’s Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program. She also advises an Asian American graduate student organization on campus.

In 2020, she started the Virulent Hate Project, a research initiative that collects analyzes data on anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Borja is highly respected for the attention she gives her students.  “My job isn’t just to help them learn. I really should help them live,” Borja said. “And I really see the work I do, teaching in the classroom, mentoring a group of researchers …. I see it all as helping them live. Not just to learn. I want to give them skills to live. I want to affirm their value every day,” told Indystar.com.

Borja, earned a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in history from Columbia University, in addition to an M.A. in history from the University of Chicago and an AB in history from Harvard University.

Before teaching at the University of Michigan, Borja was Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

Borja researches and teaches about religion, migration, race, ethnicity, and politics in the United States and the Pacific World, with special attention to how Asian American religious beliefs and practices have developed in the context of pluralism and the modern American state.

Politically active in both Ann Arbor and Indianapolis, she is involved with the local National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) chapter and Faith in Indiana. Her book, Follow the New Way: Hmong Refugee Resettlement Policy and Hmong Religious Change is forthcoming from Harvard University Press, is about how religious communities are involved in refugee resettlement.

Borja’s parents left the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship, and became politically active in the United States.  Her father served on Michigan’s Asian American Advisory Commission. “They just love voting. They love being involved in making the community better,” she said.