Wang, Ling-Chi

A founder of Asian American Studies and the Ethnic Studies Ph.D. Program at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and a longtime community activist, Ling-Chi Wang has been at the center of almost every key Asian American social justice issue for almost five decades, leading many key battles against abuses of power and discriminatory practices and for equal access to employment and education, especially for racialized immigrants and linguistic minorities.

Born on Gulangyu Island in Fujian, China, in 1938, Wang came to the United States as an international student after graduating from high school in Hong Kong in 1957. Interested in the Old Testament, Greek mythology, and ancient civilizations, he attended Hope College in Michigan, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the graduate program in semitic languages and literature at the University of Chicago, where he met his wife, social worker Linda Leong. They spent the summer of 1966 in San Francisco Chinatown, where Leong had grown up. There, according to Wang, Leong opened his eyes to racial issues. Wang decided to transfer to UC Berkeley, and after the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) student strike resulted in the creation of the Asian American studies program, he taught its first Asian American studies class in 1969.

Through the decades, Wang spearheaded, strategized, and led many campaigns for fairness both on campus and in the community. On campus, he was at the center of the effort to establish the ethnic studies Ph.D. program and to create the American cultures requirement. He served on many important university policy committees. In 1992, he organized the inaugural Chinese diaspora conference and cofounded the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO), which includes Chinese scholars from all over the world, from Cuba to Madagascar. Wang chaired the Ethnic Studies Department, headed the Asian American studies program, and taught undergraduate and graduate classes until his retirement in 2006.

[Page 944]In the community, Wang pushed for federal litigation on behalf of San Francisco's Chinese American students whose equal access to educational opportunity required linguistically appropriate accommodation. The Lau v. Nichols (1974) decision resulted in bilingual programs being established for limited English-speaking students across the country. Wang also helped initiate a federal lawsuit that ended discrimination against noncitizens in government employment. In 1969, he cofounded Chinese for Affirmative Action, which challenged employment and education discrimination. In 1970, he cofounded the Chinatown Youth Center, an organization to help prevent juvenile delinquency among immigrant youths.

In 1973, Wang cofounded the Chinese American Voter Education Committee. His advocacy of Chinese American participation in U.S. political life and his criticisms of the Chinatown establishment, which wanted to keep Chinese Americans segregated from mainstream American life, brought death threats in 1968 and a contract on his life in 1971, ordered by a high-level Chinatown leader loyal to Taiwan's ruling party, the Kuo Min Tang, after he organized a petition drive and publicly advocated for the normalization of U.S. relations with mainland China. When journalist and U.S. citizen Henry Liu, who had published a critical biography of the president of Taiwan, was assassinated by Taiwan government thugs in California in 1984, Wang spearheaded the Committee to Obtain Justice for Henry Liu and waged a national media campaign to bring the assassins to justice in the United States. He supported Liu's widow's lawsuit against the Taiwan government and led a historic effort against foreign government attempts to silence and terrorize Asian Americans.

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