UC Hastings has announced Frank Wu will become Chancellor and Dean in July 2010. UC Hastings is located in San Francisco, California within blocks of the California Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. According to US News & World Reports, 23% of the UC Hastings student body, or about 300 of its students, are Asian.
When reached for comment, Wu said:
I am honored to have been selected to serve as Chancellor & Dean of the University of California Hastings College of Law. The first law school in the western United States, it is located in San Francisco — a magical city like no other. I once practiced law in the Bay Area, and it has remained a dream to return.
With an excellent faculty and administration, innovative center for negotiation and dispute resolution, and historic strengths, Hastings is an extraordinary school. My vision for its future is based on three related ideals: first, that higher education must prepare students for their careers by giving them the skills needed to succeed; second, that the lawyers and the leaders of today and the future must be ready to work within a global economy with a trans-Pacific emphasis; and, third, that the best advocates and counselors are those who blend their technical abilities in analyzing doctrine with the strengths of other disciplines as well. To advance these ideals, my priority will be securing private support through the first-ever capital campaign for the institution.
I would like to express my appreciation to the stakeholders of Howard University Law School, which has fostered my work for almost all of my career. This academic year, my greatest pleasure has been engaging with the Howard students, and I have been overwhelmed by the welcome from my colleagues. It was a very difficult decision to leave this unique community.
The San Francisco Chronicle has more about Wu:
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.
The school says Wu will be paid $350,000 a year and has agreed to donate $25,000 of it to a Hastings fund for scholarships and academic support.
The National Law Journal has more on the selection process:
“Hastings has tremendous advantages,” Wu said. “First of all, it’s in San Francisco — a place that is diverse, progressive and welcoming. That’s a strength as far as recruiting faculty and students. It’s also unique in that it’s the only public law school that is stand-alone. It has its own independent governing board. It can move more quickly. And it has a national profile.”
Wu said he presented a three-point plan to build upon the school’s successes. First, he said the curriculum should be structured to ensure graduates have real-world legal skills when they leave, such as taking depositions, negotiating deals, and reading balance sheets. Second, students should be prepared to work in a global economy that is driven by Pacific Rim nations.
“The global economy is not the future. It’s here and now,” he said. “I see us recruiting students and placing them in Seoul and Saigon.”
Additionally, Wu said the school is too reliant on state funding and he intends to launch its first capital campaign.
Bruce Simon, chairman of the board of directors at the University of California Hastings, said Wu’s commitment to securing private funding for the law school was a major factor in his selection. “With today’s fiscal challenges, U.C. Hastings needs dynamic, top-flight leadership fully engaged in the legal and greater community at large,” Simon said.
Wu will be inheriting some financial hurdles when he steps into the deanship, in part because of cuts in state funding. The costs to attend the law school have risen sharply in recent years. Tuition — called fees at the schools in the University of California system — and other related costs are set to rise 20% for law students in the coming academic year, an increase of $6,617. However, a third of that fee increase will be earmarked for need-based financial aid.
To learn more about the selection, read the PDFs of the press release, or Wu’s resume
UC Hastings’ APALSA chapter has not yet responded to a request for comment.
It is with great personal pleasure that I report this announcement. Wu was one my my professors — one of my favorite professors — during my time in law school. His meticulous attention to procedures and other managerial necessities shone through even in his teaching. And a word of advice to students at UC Hastings: Get to know Wu well — very well. To say his letters of recommendation are the most outstanding one would ever come across would be insufficiently superlative.
On behalf of AAA-Fund, I give Frank Wu a hearty congratulations in his selection and wish him the best of luck in his relocation and new position.
- Justin Gillenwater
