A self-trained historian who was part of a teaching tandem behind the first college-level, Chinese American course in this country has died.
Philip P. Choy, 90, died at his San Francisco home last week after a short illness.
In fall 1969, Choy, along with the late Him Mark Lai, created and taught a Chinese American history course at what was then San Francisco State College. Neither was formally trained as a scholar, but both left immeasurable footprints on the institution and on modern-day, Asian American studies.
At the time of Choy’s death, the university website still listed him as adjunct faculty in Asian American studies.
“The College of Ethnic Studies at SF State was founded by practical and theoretical geniuses whose vision transformed higher education nationally,” said Dr. Kenneth Monteiro, dean of the university’s ethnic studies college and a tenured university faculty member since 1987. “Phil Choy was one of those humble geniuses. The field, and I, personally, will miss him.”
The 1969 Chinese American course, along with others focused on race, ethnicity and identity, was offered in response to the student-led strike of more than four months on the San Francisco State campus, the longest campus strike in U.S. history.
The institution’s nationally renowned College of Ethnic Studies was what eventually resulted from the strike, which ended in spring 1969. Because ethnic studies as a discipline was barely in its infancy in the late ’60s, the course taught by Choy and Lai was housed under the institution’s history department.
