EEOC vice chair to speak

Paul M. Igasaki, vice chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, will give the keynote address at the law school‘s annual LEO Banquet on Saturday, April 8.

LEO — the Legal Educational Opportunities Program — is celebrating its 32nd year of providing academic and networking support to minority students throughout their careers at the Law School.

Releated resource: Program brochure

The LEO Banquet brings together minority alumni from around the country who are now distinguished legal professionals with current and prospective students. Igasaki’s speech, titled “Civil Rights: A Personal Journey,” begins about 7:45 p.m. at the Concourse Hotel, 1 W. Dayton St.

Igasaki will meet with prospective and current UW law students Saturday, 11 a.m.-noon at the law school building, and will be available to meet the public at noon Saturday in the building’s atrium.

Igasaki was initially nominated as an EEOC member by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate in 1994. From January-October 1998, he served as acting chairman, and he was confirmed for a second term as vice chair in October 1998 — the first Asian-American to serve in these positions at EEOC. His visit to Madison coincides with Asian-American Heritage Month.

Igasaki is the architect of the agency’s strategies for handling charges more efficiently and for targeting cases that will have the greatest impact on job discrimination. As acting chair, Igasaki won a 1999 budget increase for the under-funded agency.

Igasaki is not new to the civil rights arena. Before appointment, he was executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, a San Francisco-based civil rights organization. He served also as Washington, D.C. representative of the Japanese American Citizens League, a national civil rights organization, working on such issues as the Civil Rights Act, immigration reforms, and funding for the Japanese American redress program.

As community liaison with the City of Chicago’s Human Relations Commission, Igasaki provided management and legal counsel to the city’s civil rights agency and served as Mayor Harold Washington’s liaison to Asian American communities.

Born and raised in the Chicago area, he has served as president of the Chicago Japanese American Citizens League, with various committees of the American Bar Association, on the board of directors of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, on the executive committee of the State Bar of California Legal Services Section, on the executive committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and as vice president and founder of the Chicago Asian Bar Association.

An attorney in California and Illinois, Igasaki received his law degree from the University of California at Davis, and his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.