Phil Tajitsu Nash

University of Maryland

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.