The oldest and largest lawschool in the West will be getting a new leader as of July 1, 2010, when Howard University’s Frank H. Wu will become the dean at U.C. Hastings in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin.
Frank’s no stranger to the bay area, having taught at Stanfoo and also having worked for Mofo (that’s the nickname for San Francisco’s historic white-shoe law firm Morrison and Foerster, srsly) representing tenants against landlords pro bono back in the 1990′s.
Meet Frank Wu:
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Per SFGate:
“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.”
“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.”
Bon courage, Frank Wu.
All the deets after the jump.
*How about partially racially-motivated instead? If you kill somebody with a baseball bat in San Francisco these days and then admit it to the cops, you’re going to do some hard time, no doubt. But back in the day if you and your stepson killed somebody with a baseball bat in Detroit, Michigan, well, you might have been able to walk with probation and a $30/week restitution plan. It all had to do with a runaway judge and some county prosecutors who made a plea bargain deal and then no-showed the sentencing hearing, and later on, some feds who got caught committing prosecutorial misconduct. Why do voters support mandatory minimum sentencing and three-strikes type laws in the aughts? Because of cases like that of Vincent Chin in the 1980′s. Just saying.
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