The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) was founded in 1968 by a group of graduate students and younger faculty as part of the opposition to the American war in Vietnam. They proposed a "radical critique of the assumptions which got us [The United States] into Indo-China and were keeping us from getting out." The caucus was held at the Association for Asian Studies convention in Philadelphia, but was a radical critique of that professional association's values, organization, and leadership. The group was largely formed due to the Association for Asian Studies lack of public stance on the Vietnam War. Most of the original members were graduate students or junior faculty in Area Studies programs at Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of California at Berkeley, and Columbia University, although there were also independent scholars and those with no affiliation in the field.