Free Republic

Ronald Takaki, who made it his life’s work to rewrite American history to include Asian-Americans and other ethnic groups excluded from traditional accounts and who helped start the first doctoral program in ethnic studies in the United States, died Tuesday in his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 70. The cause was suicide, said his son Troy. He battled multiple sclerosis for years. “He struggled, and then he gave up,” his son said. Mr. Takaki, whose Japanese grandfather immigrated to Hawaii in the 19th century and worked on a sugarcane plantation, became a leading scholar of ethnicity and multiculturalism in...

NEWARK — The fourth annual American Muslim Voice peace convention brought many speakers of various backgrounds to provide a blueprint for protecting civil rights in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era. Visitors at the Chandni Restaurant in Newark on Sunday evening cheered and listened to guest speakers, such as anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, Muslim convert Brandon Mayfield and Ron Takaki, an ethnic studies professor at University of California,Berkeley. The conventions theme was building a beloved community, which included topics such as Fighting for the American Constitution and America, One Nation under God? These topics were discussed by a group of panelists...