COMMENTARY
Chris Iijima's legacy lives on in law school
By Avi Soifer
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Chris Iijima, truly beloved as the director of the PreAdmission Program at the William S. Richardson School of Law and for countless other reasons as well, passed away six months ago after a valiant struggle against a rare blood disease. Yet, as in the song about Joe Hill, a legendary hero of the Industrial Workers of the World, people will say for many years ahead that Chris and the music of his life "never died."
There have been large celebrations of Chris' life and his multiple successes in Honolulu, Los Angeles and New York. He was a pioneer singer-songwriter in the Asian American community, probably most famous for his album, "Grain of Sand," recorded with Nobuko Miyamoto and Charlie Chin in the early 1970s, and for his many appearances around the nation on college campuses and in concert halls and coffee houses. Chris was also a first-rate activist, bartender, elementary school teacher and lawyer before he became a law professor. He was also the sweetest challenger of the status quo that we will ever know.
The job of leading the Law School PreAdmission Program at the University of Hawai'i turned out to be exactly what Chris Iijima most wanted to do. After Chris died, his wife, Jane Dickson Iijima, and his sons, Alan and Christopher, sent a message reporting that Chris had said over and over that he "had spent his whole life preparing" for this job at the law school. As they put it, "He loved teaching and loved laughing, singing, talking story, ranting and raving at his beloved students."
A brief description of this unique program will help explain how it could have such a hold on Chris, just as did with his remarkable predecessor, the late Judy Weightman. It also illuminates why the law school has decided to rename the program "Ulu Lehua."
Chris co-wrote a song with PreAd student Anthony Quan comparing the program to the lehua blossom of the native 'ohi'a tree, a tree that "blooms in the place where nothing grows." It seems fitting to name this program, training a cohort of experts who stand together, after a grove of 'ohi'a with beautifully diverse lehua flowers.
The Ulu Lehua Program (formerly known as PreAdmission) has been part of the law school's central mission from our earliest years. It directly addresses under-representation of disadvantaged groups in the law school population and in the Hawai'i bar. It brings diversity of experience and perspective to the law school and the legal community by seeking candidates for admission who have great promise to:
The program does not involve a separate application process, and it is quite different from and much more than an affirmative action program. Indeed, the law school committed its scarce resources to affording opportunity through the program beginning in 1974.
A large percentage of the student leaders at the law school over the years have been PreAdmission students, in activities ranging from service on the Law Review to founding and leading student organizations to graduating at the very top of the class. In addition, graduates of the program now can be found as leading judges and lawyers, political leaders and community activists throughout Hawai'i and across the Pacific.
The program is now being recognized as a national model. It demonstrates that "merit" and "diversity" are not separate, but intrinsic to each other. Given a chance and the commitment of resources, the success of our students embodies the idea that inclusion does not contradict quality, and that true excellence cannot be attained without it.
Chris liked to say that "the goal of teaching is to create collaboration between student and professor in which we learn from each other's understanding of the world — and ultimately change it for better." Chris was just this sort of great teacher. And in the student pledge he wrote, now taken by all our students as they begin their legal education at the William S. Richardson School of Law, the students assume the obligation to learn in order to serve others, and "above all, to endeavor to seek justice."
Okechukwu Amadi, chosen by his fellow students to be the student speaker at the law school's 2005 commencement, proudly and accurately described the PreAdmission Program as the embodiment of the law school's moral obligation. It exemplifies the challenge deep within the life and work, the music and laughter of Chris Iijima and of those he followed. As Chris wrote in one of his songs: "And peace will fill the valley, When justice is regained. And we'll dance beneath the waters of the Tuahine Rain."
Avi Soifer is dean and professor of law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai'i-Manoa. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.
