Kenji Hakuta is the Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University and Co-Chair of the Understanding Language Initiative. He has been at Stanford since 1989, except for three years when he left to serve the new University of California at Merced as its Founding Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts. His work focuses on the education of English Language Learners, second language acquisition, and education policy and practice, and he is the author of many research papers and books on language, bilingualism, and education. Hakuta is an elected Member of the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.