Obituary: Professor Ronald Takaki, Helped Pioneer Ethnic Studies

[MountainLaurel]

If you've never read any of his works, check them out.

Ronald Takaki, 70, a descendant of Japanese plantation workers who helped change the way universities teach U.S. history by bringing in minority viewpoints, has died.

Dr. Takaki, a retired professor at the University of California at Berkeley, killed himself May 26 at his home in Berkeley after a 15-year battle with multiple sclerosis, his son Troy Takaki told Agence France-Presse.

Dr. Takaki joined Berkeley in 1971 and spearheaded its then-new ethnic studies department. Two decades later, Berkeley required students to take a multicultural course, a decision soon replicated at many U.S. universities but which was also fiercely criticized by those who assailed "political correctness."

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Dr. Takaki was nominated for the Pulitzer Price for his 1989 book, "Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans."

In one of his more provocative books, "Iron Cages," Dr. Takaki offered a different narrative of the 19th-century United States: one of whites seizing Indian and Mexican land, then exploiting black and Asian labor and, once the frontier closed, taking aggression overseas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052903312.html