Frank H. Wu | |
|---|---|
| Education | Johns Hopkins University University of Michigan |
| President Queens College, City University of New York | |
| Assumed office July 1, 2020 | |
| Preceded by | William Tramontano (interim) |
| William L. Prosser Distinguished Professor, Hastings College of the Law | |
| In office 2015–2020 | |
| Chancellor and Dean of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law | |
| In office July 1, 2010 – December 2015 | |
| Preceded by | Dean Nell, Leo Martinez (acting) |
| Dean of Wayne State University Law School | |
| In office 2004–2008 | |
| Preceded by | Joan Mahoney |
| Personal details | |
| Born | August 20, 1967 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
| Spouse | Carol L. Izumi |
| Occupation | Law professor, author, academic administrator |
| Known for | First Asian American to serve as dean of Wayne State University Law School |
Frank H. Wu (Chinese: 吳華揚; pinyin: Wú Huáyáng) is an American law professor and author currently serving as the president of Queens College, City University of New York.[1][2] He served as the William L. Prosser Distinguished Professor at UC Hastings. Wu was also the first Asian American to serve in that position. In November 2015, he announced he would return to teaching.[3]
Wu was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 20, 1967. Wu's parents were immigrants from Taiwan to the United States. Wu's father was an engineer at Ford Motor Company and his father lived in Detroit, Michigan.[4][5]
In his book Yellow and other writings, Wu recounts how his childhood experience of being the only Asian American among his classmates and the schoolyard taunting he endured as a result of his race alerted him to racial inequalities at an early age. He further describes how his attempts to assimilate and reject what was "Asian" only seemed to reinforce his marked difference to his peers.
When Wu was a teenager, a Chinese American man, Vincent Chin, was killed by two white autoworkers in Highland Park, Michigan. The multiple criminal and civil cases that ensued throughout the 1980s have been recognized as birthing the Asian American victims and Asian American movement, and were marked as the 34th Michigan Legal Milestone in 2009.[6] It was the Vincent Chin case that inspired Wu to pursue an active role in civil rights advocacy and the law.[7]
Wu earned his bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1988 and his J.D. degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1991.[8] He completed courses at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.[9]
Wu was formerly a law professor at Howard University, resuming a role he held from 1995 to 2004, and visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he taught Asian Americans and the Law. He also was a CV Starr Foundation Visiting Professor at the School of Transnational Law at Peking University, in its English language JD program, in summer of 2009. He has previously taught at Stanford, Michigan, Columbia, Maryland, George Washington University, and Deep Springs College.
From 2004 to 2008, Wu served as the ninth dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan, succeeding the law school's first female dean, Joan Mahoney (1998–2003). Along with Harold Hongju Koh of Yale Law School and Jim Chen of the University of Louisville School of Law, Wu was one of only three Asian American law school deans in the United States. In April 2007, Wu announced he would resign as dean in May 2008, a year before his appointment was to end, citing his wife's health problems as the leading cause of his resignation.[10] In 2008, he was one of two recipients of the Asian Pacific Fund Chang-Lin Tien Award, given for leadership in higher education. Named for the first Asian American to head a major research university, the award comes with a $10,000 honorarium. He also has received the Trailblazer Award from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
On July 1, 2010, at age 42, Wu became the chancellor and dean of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, until December 2015. Wu succeeded Nell Newton, who departed in Summer 2009, and acting Chancellor and Dean Leo Martinez.[9][11] UC Hastings is a unique institution, a standalone law school affiliated with a public system and entitled to brand itself as University of California. Wu was the first Asian American to serve as the chancellor and dean University of California, Hastings College of the Law. In 2012, Wu gained national publicity for rebooting legal education, by announcing that his school would be voluntarily reducing its enrollment by 20 percent over the next three years.[12][13][14][15] UC Hastings was acknowledged as the first leading law school to make such changes.
On March 30, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York elected Wu as president of Queens College, City University of New York. He assumed the office on July 1, 2020.[2]
Prior to his academic career, Wu held a clerkship with the late U.S. District Judge Frank J. Battisti in Cleveland, Ohio. He then joined the law firm of Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, concentrating on complex litigation and devoting a quarter of his time to the representation of indigent individuals.
Wu accepted the trustees of Deep Springs' invitation to serve as a member of the college's governing board; he later was academic affairs chair and vice-chair.[16] Deep Springs College transitioned to co-education during Wu's tenure. Wu previously served as a trustee of Gallaudet University, the school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, from 2000 to 2010. As a board member, Wu emphasized the significance of shared governance, asserting that decision-making authority at a university leads by serving its many stakeholders, the most important of which are the students.[17] He became vice-chair of that board following the protests over the appointment of Provost Jane Fernandes as president, in 2006.
Wu is a board member of the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights Education Fund, and served as both chair and then the first president of the Committee of 100 (United States),[18] the non-profit group of Chinese Americans seeking to promote better US-China relations and the active participation of Chinese Americans in public life, and has chaired its many research projects.[19] He was the Project Advisor for the Detroit Historical Museum exhibit on Chinatown, which opened in spring 2009.[20]
Wu is a commissioner of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission,[21] an organization created to find ways to eliminate any barriers to advancement of minority Service members.[22] Wu was appointed by the Obama administration and served as chair on the 18 member National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), an organization that advises the Secretary of Education on matters related to postsecondary or higher education accreditation and the eligibility and certification process for higher education institutions to participate in the Federal student aid programs.[23]
In 2008, Wu testified before the Detroit City Council regarding governmental reforms following the controversy regarding Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. He also has testified before the United States Congress and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and he appeared as an expert witness on behalf of students who intervened in the historic University of Michigan affirmative action case.
Wu frequently appears in the media and on the college lecture circuit. He has debated Dinesh D'Souza[24] and Ward Connerly, among others, on affirmative action and has appeared on both the O'Reilly Factor and Oprah discussing the same. Wu is represented by the American Program Bureau.
In 2017, Wu wrote an article for The Huffington Post titled "A Private Note To Asian-American Activists About New Arrivals". In it, he criticized Asian American progressives for failing to reach out to new Chinese immigrants.[25] The article caused a stir as it was shared in Chinese-language circles where it was interpreted as critical not of progressives but of immigrants, and prompted mixed responses from mainland Chinese (as well as some American-born Chinese) readers,[26][27] And other sources have reported findings that seem to contradict the accuracy of Wu's remarks.[28][29][30][31][32] He later published a follow-up article addressing new Chinese immigrants, and suggested in a conciliatory tone that his intentions had been misinterpreted.[33]
Wu's wife is Carol L. Izumi, a legal scholar.[9]
