Phil Tajitsu Nash, Esq.

Bio

Phil Tajitsu Nash teaches in the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), and serves as Co-President of the Board of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). He previously served as Founding Executive Director of the Asian American Justice Center (AAJC), Curator of the Asian Pacific American Program at the Smithsonian Institution’s 2010 Folklife Festival, and columnist for the N.Y. Nichibei and Asian Week newspapers.

Nash has taught law, urban studies, and APA history, art, oral history, and public policy classes at UMCP, Yale, New York University, The City College of New York, and CUNY and Georgetown law schools. He also is affiliated with the University of Maryland Latin American Studies Center, based on a Study Abroad class he has taught bringing students to an Indigenous community in the Brazilian Amazon, his research on Japanese Brazilians, and his decades of work with Native Americans in North America and Brazil on human rights, culture, and language issues.

Education

B.A. NYU
J.D. Rutgers School of Law - Newark

Research, Publications, Professional Activities

Japanese American Legacy Lawyers (November 2023)

"Thank You, Corky Lee: The Unofficial Photographer Laureate of Asian Americans." Exhibition curated by Sojin Kim and Phil Tajitsu Nash at the Chinese American Museum in DC. (July 2023 - January 2024)

The Origin Story of AAPI Nonprofits in DC (2023)

50 Years of Asian American Community Lawyering (2023)

Webinar: Black Lives Matter and Japanese Latin Americans (2022)

Celebrating Korematsu Day in New Jersey (New Jersey Law Journal, January 16, 2023)

Forty Years Since Law School: An Asian-American attorney reflects on four decades in the law (New Jersey Law Journal, April 13, 2022)

Viral Voting: AALDEF Adapts to 2020 and Beyond (Harvard Asian American Policy Review, April 16, 2021)

Yellow Pearl: Celebrating the Birth of the Asian American Movement (Smithsonian APA Center and AAAS, April 7, 2021) (Archived)

A Tribute to Corky Lee and the Fight for “Photographic Justice” (Smithsonian Folklife, February 3, 2021)

Punctuated Equilibrium: Now Everyone is an Immigrant (CUNY Forum, July 2020)

Challenging the New Culture of Silence: From a Teacher Activist (CUNY Forum, June 2020)

Language and Cultural preservation work with the Wauja community in the Brazilian Amazon (November 2016)

Freedom from the Four Prisons: Evolution of a Course and a Teacher, CUNY Forum (Fall 2015-Winter 2016)

Keynote - Local Lives, Global Ties: A New Old Model for East Coast Asian American Studies (May 2016)

March on Washington: A History of Asian Pacific Americans’ Growing Political Power in the Nation’s Capital, Harvard APA Public Policy Review (2010)

Asian Pacific American Program at the 2010 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, produced in cooperation with the University of Maryland Asian Pacific American Program and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Phil Tajitsu Nash, Curator. (2010)

Courses

AAST421: Asian American Public Policy