Asian American Empowerment - Wu Named One of the Country’s Best Lawyers

By Vanessa Ward Hines
©2004 The South End (Wayne State University)
November 18, 2004

Wayne State University’s Law School Dean, Frank H. Wu, was honored Saturday as one of the “Best Lawyers under 40” during the National Asian Pacific Bar Association’s national convention in Dallas.

The Cleveland, Ohio-born Wu grew up in Metro Detroit. He earned a bachelor’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., in 1988, and a J.D. from the University of Michigan, where he graduated cum laude in 1991.

Wu assumed the helm of the law school July 15, becoming the youngest dean and the first Asian American to hold the position in the school’s history. The ninth dean of the law school, Wu, at 37, is one of the youngest deans in the United States. One of three Asian law school deans, he is the only one in Michigan and the only one of Chinese extraction.

When Wu became aware that he was being considered for the position, he wholeheartedly embraced it.

“As a candidate for the job, I emphasized that I wanted to be the Dean of Wayne, not just dean of a law school,” he said. “I have just always worked hard. No one has ever seen a dean like me and I intended to do things better.”

Wayne State, Wu said, was his first and only choice because of the unique opportunities the school offers as a premier urban research institution.

Wu taught for nine years at Howard University School of Law, where he taught civil procedure, immigration law, federal courts and evidence. He also directed the Clinical Law Center at the historically black university for two years.

While at Howard, Wu was a visiting professor at U-M’s law school; an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School; a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School, and he was also on the faculty of Deep Springs College, an all-male college in Deep Springs Valley, Calif. He practiced law for two years in San Francisco, and clerked for the late U.S. District Court Judge Frank J. Battisti in Cleveland.

Although his legal background is extensive, his years at Howard University, Wu said, most shaped his development as a lawyer and a scholar.

“The time I spent at Howard was a life-changing experience for me, and it was in my self-interest to learn about civil rights, to become involved in civil rights,” Wu said. “Going to Howard taught me the art of bridge building.”

And build bridges he did. Wu was the first Asian American on the faculty of Howard’s law school — something many people regarded as remarkable.

Wu, however, said that he is not unusual; educationally speaking, he has not treaded uncharted territory.

“I [am not] unique. Two generations ago, many Asian immigrants could be found teaching at historically black colleges,” he said. “After they received their doctorates, they found it easier to obtain employment there than at segregated white campuses. They staffed the math, science and engineering departments of the dozens of historically black colleges.”

Many of these scholars have retired, Wu said, but some are still senior faculty staff members.

This little-known fact about Asian Americans teaching at HBCUs has led many people to wonder aloud about why Wu chose to teach at Howard University.

Wu said many people asked questions like, “Why are you at Howard?” “What is it like to be a minority among minorities? How does it feel?”
He said they’d even ask, “Did you grow up in a black neighborhood?”

And on more than one occasion, Wu said, a person would look at him cautiously, pause and then stammer, “Are you — are you actually black?”

These questions caused him to mull over the emotionally charged issue of race itself.

“All of us see race inevitably, without even being awake to what is on our minds,” Wu said. “Race is the elephant in the room; the harder we try to pay no attention to race, like the elephant, the larger it looms.”
Wu explored race in America in his groundbreaking book, “Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White,” which won a 2002 Kiriyama Prize for notable books. He also co-authored a textbook called, “Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment,” which was published in 2001.

After spending many years away from Detroit, Wu, who grew up in the suburban enclaves of Dearborn, Livonia, Canton and Northville, is happy to be back home in the city he loves. His commitment to Detroit is unwavering, he said, and he wants to play an integral part in the city’s comeback.

“When I told people I was going back to Detroit to head the law school, they asked, ‘Why do you want to go there?’” he said. “I said, ‘Hey, that’s my hometown you’re insulting …’ There’s a Detroit in almost everyone’s history.”

Wu said that after decades of decline and population loss, the city is finally on the mend.

“Detroit is coming back,” he said.

“When I was born in 1967, tanks rolled down Woodward Avenue and four dozen people were killed,” he said, referring to rioting which claimed 43 lives over a three-day period, cost millions of dollars in property damage and made headlines around the world. The riots, he said, exacerbated white flight, hastened the erosion of the city’s tax base and contributed to a general sense of despair.

“It never did get better,” Wu said.

Now, he said, there is Ford Field, Comerica Park and the riverfront, which is being revitalized. After years of seeing block after block of abandoned houses, condominiums are springing up next to them — a good thing for Detroit, which “hasn’t had good press,” Wu said.
Wu believes in Detroit, and he has a vested interest in the city. He and his wife, Carol Izumi, the associate dean of Clinical Affairs at George Washington University, just purchased a home in the city’s upscale Lafayette Park section, where they will live with their two dogs, Buster and Ding Ding, and their bird, Walter. They appreciate Lafayette Park’s rich history and its economic and racial diversity.

“It’s important for me to live in the city,” he said. “It was important for me to do that, and we’ve lived up to that. Lafayette Park is a terrific community with a wonderful sense of community.”

Concerning Wayne State University and its role in the revitalization of the nation’s 10th largest city, Wu said the university and the law school will play an integral part in that.

“What makes a city great is seeing people walking around,” he said.

“We’ve got Hart Plaza, Eastern Michigan University, the sports stadiums and of course, Wayne State, where we attract people of all races, genders and ages. We’re where people come to, where they congregate. Wayne State is in the heart of the city.”

Wu, who intends to be the law school dean for the long haul, hopes to transform WSU’s law school into one “that ranks in the Top 50 of news ranking law schools.” Right now, he said, the school is not nationally known. Even in Grand Rapids, Mich., WSU’s name recognition is not widespread.

He plans to increase scholarships so that the school can attract “the best and the brightest students, because law schools have to compete in a way they’ve never had to before.”

In the coming academic year, Wu wants to recruit four more faculty members, a 15 percent increase over the current number of 29.
“I want to advance faculty representation. [The idea is to advance] the sense of stakeholding so that people will feel like they belong,” Wu said.

“I want to give students the opportunity to be able to realize the American dream.”