Ling Woo Liu Selected as Director of Korematsu Institute

The Asian Law Caucus is excited to announce Ling Woo Liu as the founding Director for the Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education!

After a comprehensive and thorough search for the right person to carry on the legacy of Fred T. Korematsu, the Asian Law Caucus has decided to hand the torch to Ling Woo Liu.

Ms. Liu comes to the Korematsu Institute with a wealth of media experience and a passion for giving a voice to the voiceless. She has spent five of the past 10 years living in Asia, most recently in Hong Kong, where she worked for three years as a reporter and video producer for TIME magazine. She is also the director of Officer Tsukamoto, a documentary film about the unsolved murder of a Japanese-American police officer in 1970. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Ling holds master’s degrees in Journalism and Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from UC Berkeley.

“I am thrilled by the opportunity to help shepherd the Korematsu Institute from its infancy toward a future where it is capable of inspiring future generations of civil rights leaders,” Liu said.

In April 2009, the Asian Law Caucus launched the Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education to advance the cause of Asian American civil rights and human rights through programs that focus on community education, strategic communications and leadership development.

Fred Korematsu Leads Nominations for Name of San Leandro HS New Campus

UPDATE DEC. 15: In unanimous decision, San Leandro School Board tonight named new 9th grade campus after Fred Korematsu.

The new freshman campus of San Leandro High School may be named after Fred Korematsu, according to a story in The Oakland Tribune.

The school district reached out to the public for suggestions on naming the new campus.  Korematsu’s name led the nominations with 32. President Barack Obama, Stephen Colbert, Cesar Chavez and Maya Angelou were among the nominated names.

While President Obama received four nominations, Fred Korematsu far and away received the most with 32. Korematsu was a Japanese-American who refused to go to the internment camps during World War II and was convicted of disobeying an executive order. The conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court, but in 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his fight against racism and injustice.

Nominations for the campus name were made by a wide swath of the local public, including city residents, business owners, police officers, students, teachers and school administrators.

Whatever name is chosen will be displayed at the front of the campus.

Read more about this story on The Oakland Tribune website and on The New York Times Bay Area blog.

The Smearing of a Loyal American

In the November 1, 2009 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, editorial page editor John Diaz made these observations about Magistrate Judge Edward Chen’s public image:

On May 20, 2005, U.S. Magistrate Edward Chen offered a poignant, almost poetic description of American patriotism. A month earlier, he had attended a memorial service for a friend and man he helped represent, Fred Korematsu, a U.S. citizen who had been convicted of defying the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

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