Growing up in small-town Ohio, Seattle University School of Law Prof. Robert Chang learned some painful lessons about the realities of racism. His father was a librarian at Denison University in Granville, a town of 3,500 that was home to very few Asian Americans, African Americans or Latinos. He remembers being left out and called names, including the “N word” when he was in seventh grade. As hurtful as those incidents were, they helped foster Chang’s commitment to fighting discrimination of all kinds.
“I don’t know that I really thought about that much on a really conscious level, but those formative experiences with race had an impact on me that has allowed me to make connections to other groups,” he said.
Chang has become one of the nation’s most respected legal scholars in the area of critical race theory. He joined Seattle University School of Law in 2008 and founded the law school’s Fred T. Korematsu Center on Law and Equality, which will study and combat discrimination through research, advocacy and education projects.
In January, he received the Clyde Ferguson Award from the Minority Groups Section of the Association of American Law Schools. The honor, named for one of the first African-American tenured professors at Harvard Law School, is granted to “an outstanding law teacher who in the course of his or her career has achieved excellence in the areas of public service, teaching and scholarship.”
Chang is the author of Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law and the Nation-State and more than 35 articles, essays and chapters published in leading law reviews and books on Critical Race Theory, Latina & Latino Critical (“LatCrit”) Legal Theory and Asian-American legal studies. He is working on an anthology on “Asian Americans and the Law” that will be published by NYU Press.
“Professor Chang is a talented teacher and a prolific scholar, and having him at the helm of this important new center — and imparting his knowledge and wisdom to our students in the classroom — is a privilege,” Dean Kellye Testy said. “He has made a difference in the areas of race and the law and through the Korematsu Center he will make an even bigger difference in our community and our world.”
Chang, whose family moved to the United States from Korea when he was three, joined Seattle University School of Law from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where he was professor of law and J. Rex Dibble Fellow. He said Loyola had offered him a prestigious chair, but he opted for the opportunity Dean Testy gave him to start a center in Seattle.
“What drew me to Seattle University was its commitment to social justice and this amazing opportunity I had to start a center — something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” said Chang, who most recently served as the Sturm Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
He relished the opportunity to not only teach and do his own scholarly work, but to involve others, create a think tank, provide opportunities for junior scholars, institute post-graduate fellowships and effect change. “Improving diversity, giving opportunities — those are the things this center will allow me to do,” he said.
Chang always wanted a career in academia, but he didn’t intend to study race and the law. He went to Princeton, thinking he would go on to medical school and become a scientist and teacher. But as a molecular biology major, he found he didn’t much like being in a lab. In completing his thesis on the ethics of genetic screening, he read a lot about law and philosophy, and opted to pursue a joint program in both areas at Duke.
Chang’s first teaching job was as a legal writing professor at the University of Puget Sound, which became Seattle University School of Law. He started in 1992, the same year Testy joined the faculty. At that time, there were no people of color on the tenure-track faculty.
After moving on, he stayed in touch with Testy and other professors, and heard good things about the law school as it moved to Seattle and attracted scholars and friends, including Prof. Margaret Chon, Lily Kahng and Tayyab Mahmud, to join the faculty. He visited the law school a couple of years ago, was impressed with the great strides in academic programs and the increasingly accomplished and diverse faculty. It was then that Testy first planted the seed with him about developing a center. Now it’s become reality.
“For the center to come together has been really remarkable,” Chang said. “It’s been really exciting to get involved in all this.”
The Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality aims to advance social justice by fostering critical thinking about discrimination in U.S. society. Its research unit will focus on understanding the relationships between law and categories of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, disability and religion, especially with regard to their intersections. It will bring together scholars from various disciplines and will support interdisciplinary scholarship.
The advocacy unit will apply this understanding to combat discrimination through targeted advocacy efforts to foster equality and freedom. The education unit will create a focus area in Law and Equality for J.D. students and will help train the next generation of scholar/teacher/activists through post-graduate teaching and advocacy fellowships.
The Center is named for Fred Korematsu, who, as a 22-year-old welder in Oakland, Calif., defied military orders to report for internment during World War II. He was convicted and jailed, and then sent for internment. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed his conviction in 1944. Forty years later, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California vacated his conviction on proof that the government had suppressed, altered and destroyed material evidence that contradicted the government’s claim that “military necessity” justified the removal of Japanese Americans to internment camps.
Korematsu, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton in 1998, went on to champion the cause of civil liberties, seeking redress for Japanese Americans who were wrongfully interned, and traveling the country speaking about his case and other violations of civil rights, especially after 9/11.
Prof. Lori Bannai, who was a member of the legal team that worked to reverse Korematsu’s wartime conviction and is writing a biography of Korematsu, is the Center’s associate director. The center will build on the law school’s strong faculty in the area of law and equality, including Profs. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, leading authorities in critical race theory, and Donald and Lynda Horowitz Professor for the Pursuit of Justice Margaret Chon, co-author of Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment. Many other faculty members have contributed to the development of the center. Several events are being planned for the spring semester, culminating in a formal launch and celebration on Saturday, April 18.
Leading the center is a fitting role for Chang, who has been at the forefront of race and the law, taking part in the Critical Race Theory workshops beginning in 1994 and getting involved with other initiatives and organizations. He is on the board of directors of the Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty and LatCrit, Inc. He also serves on the advisory board of Berkeley’s Asian American Law Journal.
Chang also has been engaged in legal advocacy work and was a primary contributor to an amicus brief in support of marriage equality submitted by 63 Asian Pacific American organizations in the marriage equality cases before the California Supreme Court.
“I’m doing that in part because I felt it was the right thing to do, but also it’s a way of giving back,” Chang said. He met his wife, Catheryne Nguyen, at LA Gay Pride, when both were marching with friends. “We were able to get married, but that’s something that is still denied to many,” he said.
Chang says he’s gratified to be taking steps toward eliminating discrimination in all forms. He recalls again his early days, when there were so few minorities they weren’t even classified by race. “You were just ‘other,’” he said. “When your numbers are so small or your resources are so limited, you really need to work together.”
There have obviously been great strides since Chang was a child and he hopes that with more awareness his two young children won’t encounter the racism he did. He and his wife, a social worker who is writing grants for Solid Ground, which works to end poverty and racism, are grateful for their new hometown.
“We’re excited about the diversity in Seattle,” he said. “The energy around the law school is really great.”
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For more information on the Fred T. Korematsu Center, visit http://www.law.seattleu.edu/Centers_and_Institutes/Korematsu_Center.xml.
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