Jack Tchen, Gallatin Associate Professor and founding director of the Asian/Pacific/American Institute of New York University and co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America will receive the NYU MLK Jr. Humanitarian Award on February 9, 2012 as part of NYU’s MLK Week 2012.
The Award is presented annually to a humanitarian within the NYU community who embodies and exemplifies the characteristics promoted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- "a vision of peace, persistence in purpose, and inspirational action." The recipient must be an NYU alumnus or alumna, or a current NYU faculty or staff member.
Professor Tchen works on understanding the multiple presents, pasts, the futures of New York City, identity formations, trans-local cross-cultural communications, archives and epistemologies, and progressive pedagogy. He also works on decolonizing Eurocentric ideas, theories, and practices and making our cultural organizations and institutions more representative and democratic. He is author of the award-winning books New York before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882 and Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown, 1895-1905 . And he is co-principle investigator of "Asian Americas and Pacific Islanders Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight" produced with The College Board. He is currently co-chairing the effort at the Smithsonian Institution to form an Asian Pacific American Center.
More information on Jack Tchen
