Eight Greats: Phil Tajitsu Nash
Date: Sunday, May 30 @ 10:00:00 EDT
Topic: Leaders

The career of Phil Tajitsu Nash is proof-positive that many roads can lead to the same destination. He is guided by a deeply held belief in social justice, a philosophy he has parlayed into a diverse career as a lawyer, lobbyist, activist, columnist, professor, and political strategist.

Mr. Nash was born in New York City in 1956 and at an early age moved to Maywood, New Jersey, where he grew up. His father, a 13th-generation Irish-English American, was a teacher whose forebears had founded the city of New Haven, Connecticut. His mother, a second-generation Japanese American whose family had experienced firsthand the hardship of internment, was a teacher and a nurse. From early childhood, they taught Phil and his siblings to cherish both Asian and European cultures and to understand that both heritages were part of a larger, eclectic American culture. They also instilled in their children an appreciation of the diversity of American people. Mr. Nash recalls that as a youngster his parents drove him to nearby Hackensack, New Jersey to swim at a pool with African American and Latino children so that he would interact with children from different backgrounds. It was in this diverse environment of Northern New Jersey that Mr. Nash's sense of social awareness first took root.

The events that most profoundly shaped Mr. Nash's convictions and set him on his current path occurred several years before his birth. His mother, Yoneko Tajitsu Nash, was taken from her home in Seattle as a teenager and held at an internment camp near Hunt, Idaho for three months during World War II. Her parent, unfortunately, were interned for over two years. As a youngster, Phil heard countless stories of these experiences from both his mother and his maternal grandparents.

As a teenager and in his time as a college student at New York University in the mid-1970s, Mr. Nash's personal philosophy matured as he made sense of the lessons he had learned earlier in life. From childhood he learned that Americans come from myriad combinations of cultural and economic backgrounds and that though America is a land of opportunities, there are still inequalities that require rectifying. From his mother's internment experiences in World War II he learned that without political empowerment and activism, civil liberties and social justice are vulnerable to attack from those who do not value such virtues.

Mr. Nash's legal career started before he earned a J.D. degree, while he was a law student at Rutgers University. During his time there, the law school was sued for its affirmative action admissions policies. The plaintiff was a white applicant who believed he had been rejected for admission because of his race. Mr. Nash became involved with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) and worked to defend the school's policies. In the process, he gained a familiarity with civil procedure that would have been unattainable in any classroom. After finishing law school, Mr. Nash went to work at the Education Law Center in Newark, New Jersey, where his caseload consisted primarily of interpreting school finance law. While there, he also gained experience working bilingual education and disability cases on a pro bono basis.

From there, Mr. Nash moved to New York City where he served as staff attorney for AALDEF and provided legal services to the Japanese American Redress Movement. While in New York, he also worked at the District Council 37 Division of Municipal Employee Legal Services on family services cases. There, he had the opportunity to travel to the five boroughs, counseling city employees whom could not otherwise afford legal representation.

In 1984, realizing that he valued the practice of law as a means to justice as opposed to an end unto itself, Mr. Nash decided to take his career in a new direction.

That same year, while still practicing law, he began teaching Asian American history at Yale University. By 1986, Mr. Nash was teaching first-year law courses at City University of New York (CUNY) and had become a faculty member at NYU in the Department of Metropolitan Studies and helped to establish an Asian American Studies program at the university. Two years later, he had moved to Washington, D.C. to teach at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he remained for several years. Mr. Nash currently teaches Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland and attributes his teaching philosophy to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which emphasizes, among other theories on education, that learning, both by the student and the teacher, is most effectively accomplished through dialog and interaction.

Through his time as a lawyer and professor, Mr. Nash's columns have regularly appeared in local, regional and national publications, in print and on the Internet. His first experience as a writer was as a columnist for the New York Nichibei. The Nichibei, an English-language newspaper founded by Mr. Nash's maternal grandfather, was a source for news and articles on the Japanese American Redress Movement. As a writer, Mr. Nash published a weekly column called Inter-Changes. He also served as interim editor for a time, while the regular editor took time off for personal reasons. Since 1998, Mr. Nash has written Washington Journal, a weekly column on Washington politics as they relate to Asian Americans that appears in the print and online editions of Asian Week. He has also written several editorials that were published in the Washington Post.

In his current career, Mr. Nash and his wife, Emilienne Ireland, are principles of Science Writers, Inc., a company that develops web sites and documentation standards for government, corporate, and non-profit clients. Clients includes AT&T Corporation, IBM Corporation, the Departments of Defense and Energy, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Brown University, and the American Indian Law Alliance.

Within the auspices of Science Writers, Mr. Nash and Ms. Ireland also run Campaign Advantage, a company that specializes in generating web sites, online fundraising tools, and strategic Internet communication tools for Democratic and progressive campaigns and causes. Current projects include the 2002 campaign web sites for Stan Matsunaka, a fourth generation Japanese American running for an open Congressional seat in Colorado's fourth district, and Sam Page, a physician running for an open State Legislature seat in Missouri's 82nd district. In 2000, Campaign Advantage received the Golden Dot Award for Excellence in Online Campaigning for the campaign web site for Rick Johnson, a successful candidate for Missouri State Representative. Campaign Advantage has also designed web sites and Internet solutions for U.S. Congressman Dick Gephardt and Americans for Gun Safety.

Mr. Nash and Ms. Ireland live in Bethesda, Maryland with their two teenage sons. In his spare time, Mr. Nash provides pro bono legal services for Native American, Asian American, and family law cases.