Professor Emeritus Ling-Chi Wang retired in 2007 after almost 40 years of dedicated service to the university. He was instrumental in establishing the Asian American Studies program and taught its first course in 1969. He received his MA from the University of Chicago and his PhD from UC Berkeley. His research interests include Chinese American and Chinese diaspora studies, and he helped found the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas. As a civil rights activist and ethnologist, Professor Wang has been at the forefront of almost every major civil rights struggle of the Asian American community. He worked in language education rights advocacy for more than four decades, advocating for language immersion programs, and the inclusion of Asian languages by the Educational Testing Services. He served as a chief strategist in the struggle for bilingual education that eventually led to the 1974 Supreme Court Lau vs. Nichols Decision, which greatly enhanced educational opportunities for all immigrants. He also played a key role as strategist and advisor to the family of Taiwanese American scientist Wen Ho Lee in getting Dr. Lee released and exonerated from the espionage charge. Most recently, Professor Wang spearheaded a campaign that led to the building of a San Francisco community college branch in San Francisco Chinatown, where Chinatown restaurant and garment workers can take ESL classes in and near the communities where they work and live. On campus, Professor Wang helped create the Ethnic Studies graduate program and UC Berkeley’s American Cultures requirement. He is also the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. This endowment honors his innumerable contributions to campus, the fields of Asian American Studies and Chinese diaspora studies, and the Asian American community.

The Chinese American Studies Endowment (click here)