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Paul T. Takagi honored.

Article Excerpt
ON APRIL 19, 2008, THE ASSOCIATION FOR ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES HONORED Professor (Emeritus) Paul Takagi with a Lifetime Achievement Award during its Chicago conference on Where Is the Heart of AsianAmerica? American Identity and Exceptionalism in an Age of Globalization and Imperialism." Paul rose to address the 250 to 300 people who had assembled for the ceremony. "The last time I spoke before a group this large," he said, "was when I taught a radical criminology class in Berkeley. The guys in back lit up joints." Laughter erupted. He did not segue, as he often did, to the stresses induced by the Vietnam War draft, and the troubling options these young men faced of resisting and going to jail, or leaving friends and family behind for a new life in Canada, a country that did not want them. Instead, Paul discussed an innovative approach to senior care for Asians, such as the community-based Kokoro Assisted Living Center in San Francisco, and Kimochi, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the well-being of seniors in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is one of the more lasting and unheralded legacies of Asian American activism, with both referring to the heart and spirit.

In July 2007, on the University of California Berkeley campus, Paul also had been honored as the inaugural recipient of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency's Gerhard Mueller Award. Dr. Barry Krisberg, the NCCD's president since 1983, explained that the award recognizes outstanding contributions to criminology that bring a global perspective to U.S. justice policy and advance human rights. Gerhard Mueller (1926-2006) was a pioneering force in international criminal law,...

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