Frank H. Wu: An Academic Career Dedicated to Finding Justice for All People

Posted Thursday, June 30, 2011 - 4:02 PM

When asked to join the R. H. Perry Foundation Board of Advisors, Frank Wu's almost immediate response was "I am delighted to accept your invitation to serve on your Advisory Board. I am honored to be asked. I look forward to helping you with this important work." 

Frank H. Wu is a law professor, author, and public intellectual. He is Chancellor and Dean of University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, California, a position he assumed in July 2010. He is the first Asian American professor to teach at Howard Law School, as well as the first Asian American to serve as dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan. Wu is the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, which was immediately re-printed in hardcover. Arguing for a new paradigm of civil rights that goes beyond a black-white paradigm, while also addressing subtle forms of racial discrimination, the book has become canonical in Asian American Studies and is widely used in classes on the subject. Yellow appears in both the film, Americanese, an adaptation of American Knees by Shawn Wong, and the book, Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology. Wu himself has appeared as a character in Asian America: The Movement and the Moment.

All of us at the Foundation are excited to have Frank Wu join ranks with our other advisors as we seek new ways to expand diversity in the board rooms of U.S. colleges and universities. In Frank's words, "We all have a stake in promoting greater understanding in race relations. Our success as a society depends upon it."