Frank Wu, author of “Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White“, will assume the position of dean at the UC Hastings College of Law. Here’s an excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle article on the story:
The school said Wu, 42, had been chosen after a nationwide search. Nell Newton, who had been dean since 2006, resigned in July to take the same position at the University of Notre Dame.
Wu, a Michigan native, has said he changed his career plans from architecture to law as a teenager in response to the racially motivated murder of a young Chinese American man in Detroit in 1982.
He first practiced law with a San Francisco firm and later taught at Columbia, the University of Michigan and Stanford. He became the nation’s youngest law school dean at Wayne State University in Detroit in 2004 and served until mid-2008.
Wu was chairman of the Washington, D.C., Human Rights Council in 2001-02. He is the author of the 2003 book “Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White,” and was a co-author of the 2001 textbook “Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment.”
Wu is a member of the Committee of 100, a group founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, architect I.M. Pei and others to promote political participation by Asian Americans.
I love it when people’s careers into law/medicine/any other humanitarian field are inspired by political events.
It makes me feel good to know that people can fight for social justice THROUGH THEIR CAREERS on a day-to-day basis! 