Professor Don T. Nakanishi, director of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, received the Yale Medal on Nov. 14.
The Yale Honor is the highest honor awarded to alumni by the Association of Yale Alumni.
According to a Yale University statement, Nakanishi is one of 267 individuals who have ever received the Yale Medal since its initiation in 1952.
All previous recipients have incontestably supported the university by upholding its ideals and performing outstanding service, according to the statement.
In addition to his work at UCLA, Nakanishi has been heavily involved in promoting ethnic relations and leading numerous diversity efforts for the betterment of Yale.
Since graduating in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in intensive political science, he’s worked for the Yale Admissions Office and been an active board member of the Association of Yale Alumni, among various other contributions.
“It’s my way of giving back to Yale,” he said as he shrugged.
Nakanishi won a scholarship to Yale as a senior graduating from Theodore Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, where he was born and raised.
Since the high school was, at the time, 80 percent Latin American, 10 percent African American, and 10 percent Asian American, it was at an early stage that he began to notice racial tension and first become interested in diversity, he said.
“This country was going through this transformation on so many different levels of challenging long-standing assumptions and practices. Institutions were being caught up in all of that as well.”
Nakanishi said he remembers a headline in the student newspaper that read “Yale Admits Most Diverse Class Ever.” He stumbled over their definition of diverse, with only seven Latin Americans, seven African-Americans, and seven Asian-Americans in his class.
He said he was encouraged, however, by a new admissions director who “was starting to shake things up, and serious about trying to diversify the school.”
Nakanishi himself went on to accelerate Yale’s movement toward ethnic diversification at a quick rate. As an undergraduate, he co-founded the Yale Asian American Students Association and the top journal in the realm of Asian-American studies, Amerasia Journal.
His contributions to a better understanding of ethnic and social relations would not end after he went on to earn a doctorate degree in political science at Harvard,
“I wanted to provide opportunities similar to what was given to me,” Nakanishi said of his efforts in recruitment. “I’ve been very strongly motivated to try to continue to make Yale a better place with respect to the diversity of its students, the diversity of its academic programs, and the diversity of its faculty.”
For the last 30 years, he’s served as Yale’s general chair of recruitment in southern California.
He said he is surprised about the intense levels college applications and admissions have recently reached and the various talents and interests offered by students applying.
Nakanishi has been able to teach and work closely with this new generation of diversified students at the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, which was called “the leading program of its kind in the nation” in the Yale statement.
Assistant Director Melany Dela Cruz-Viesca credited Nakanishi for the institution’s exponential growth.
The center has grown to include about 45 faculty experts, and it represents 25 different departments, Nakanishi said.
“They’re everywhere,” he smiled.
Nakanishi humbly attributed the success of the center to a large local Asian population in which research projects and field studies can be performed, and where he can send students for internships and training to become leaders in the community.
“This center became the largest and most prominent Asian studies program in the country in the context of this very large Asian community,” Nakanishi said. “That’s a reflection of the support that we’ve been privileged to have.”
His influence on the Asian American Studies community on campus has been monumental, as he’s been Director of the Center for over half its life.
In a retirement announcement sent out by Vice Chancellor of Graduate Studies Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, it was noted that a colleague dubbed Nakanishi “a high impact leader who combines a powerful and clear vision with an extraordinary ability to bring out the best in others.”
Nakanishi plans to retire next year and colleagues have said they are sad to see him go.
“It’s definitely bittersweet, and it’s going to be challenge for the next director to fill these big shoes. Don has left a legacy,” Dela Cruz-Viesca said.
He hopes to work in the East Los Angeles community in which he grew up, however, and study and promote ethnic diversity there.
He said he continues to be motivated by the progress our country and local area are making towards better understanding interracial relations. Like the controversial years during which he attended Yale, he believes that recent political shifts have contributed to a different approach to ethnicity.
Nakanishi is an appreciator of diversity in politics, education, and individual pursuits. He said he’s accomplished some of the goals at UCLA that he set for himself when he was an undergraduate at Yale.
“The reason I went into academics was that I found passion in the sort of research that I do, the sort of teaching I do, the kinds of activities I engage in. I think it’s important to really pursue your interests and things that really do mean a lot to you,” he said. “I didn’t think that one could’ve foreseen a future in studying Asian American politics, for example. But the reason I went into academics was that I got tremendous fulfillment, and that was the more important thing.”
Follow the Daily Bruin on twitter for breaking news alerts.