"How do you protect from threats to freedom without compromising that very freedom?" he said.

Mineta said that national security often takes precedence over rights concerns, noting that the public almost universally accepts airport security procedures and federal monitoring of hate groups.

He added that the U.S. government sometimes goes too far. He cited the example of FBI agents who conducted invasive personal probes of Arab-American citizens in Michigan during the Persian Gulf War.

Audience questions focused on a variety of specifically Asian-American issues, from the Lee case to the situation of 2,500 Peruvian Japanese imported into the U.S. and detained during the Second World War.

Some audience members said a Forum event focusing on Asian-Americans was long overdue.

"We really had to fight to have this forum on Asian-American issues," said Jessica A. Eng '01, co-president of the CSA.

Another audience member said that this was the first Asian-focused IOP event she had heard about in her five years at Harvard.

Zhou said that Asian-American groups from various schools at Harvard and MIT decided to form a yet-unnamed coalition in a meeting before the forum.