Directors
Seonaid McArthur
Director 1972-1985
Seonaid McArthur joined the California History Center staff in 1972, just after earning her MA degree. She managed the Center’s activities—along with overseeing a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Her connection to the CHC and the college remained strong until 1984, when her husband’s career as a TWA pilot took them to the Midwest shortly after their son was born.
After a fulfilling career in art history, she has settled back in her hometown of La Jolla, where she is actively involved in historic preservation at La Jolla Historical Society.
James C. Williams
Director 1985-1993
James C. Williams is Emeritus Professor of History at De Anza College, Cupertino, California. He received his Ph.D. in the History of Technology and Public Historical Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1985.
He has published numerous articles in the history of technology and public history, and his book Energy and the Making of Modern California (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 1997) won an American Society for State and Local History book award as “the definitive comprehensive history of the role that a wide variety of energy resources played in making California.”
As a practicing public historian, he managed the California History Center Foundation for several years, served as a consultant to corporations and local governments in issues dealing with the history of technology, environmental and toxic waste, and cultural resources management and historic preservation.
Excerpt from Academia.edu profile
Kathleen Peregrin
Director 1993-2000
Tom Izu
Director 2000-2019
Tom Izu directed CHC's work in promoting local, regional and state history through publications, exhibits, oral history projects and courses, and the operation of a research library and archives. During his tenure with the center, he launched a civil liberties project inspired by the lessons learned from the World War II experience of Japanese Americans. He continues to serve its board as an advisor.
While a staff member of the college (1994 to 2001), Izu also served as a project director for the campus’ Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI) US Department of Education grant funded program.
In addition, Izu has had extensive experience working in the San Jose Japanese American community, having served as the Executive Director of the Yu-Ai Kai Senior Center (1980s – early 1990s), and on the boards of numerous other Japantown community organizations. He was the first chairperson of the Nihonmachi Outreach Committee (1980), which was involved in the campaign for redress during the 1980s for the Japanese American WWII mass incarceration.
He currently (2025) serves on the Advisory Board of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, helping to lead various grant funded projects with a special focus on public programming
that connects the community’s experience with other communities of color, especially
in regard to cultural and civil liberties concerns. One such project for which he
is a co-director is an augmented reality community art project, “The Hidden Histories of San Jose Japantown” (2020). It explores the stories of the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino American
communities and their overlapping histories and connections in the
making of modern day Japantown.
His current activism includes being the co-founder of San Jose Nikkei Resisters, a grassroots, social change and advocacy organization for South Bay Japanese Americans, which is currently working on solidarity projects that include organizing Asian Americans to respond to anti-Asian harassment and violence as well as supporting the African American reparations movement. He also serves as a volunteer chapter leader for the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the ACLU of Northern California.
Lori Clinchard
Director 2019-2025
Lori Clinchard is the Humanities Department Chair at DeAnza College and Faculty Director of the California History Center. She received her Ph.D. in Humanities, with a concentration in Transformative Learning and Change, from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her research interests are
creativity, consciousness, and the pedagogy of experiential learning. Through FHDA’s Mellon Foundation-supported Center for Applied Humanities, she is developing an interview series to engage with artists and philosophers on the challenging questions arising out of the AI era.
She is a 4th generation Bay Area native, currently living in Santa Cruz. She has been teaching since 2001, and has been full-time at De Anza since 2005. She lived for 12 years in Taos, New Mexico, and 1 year in France, and still enjoys speaking French and Spanish. She loves the De Anza students, and wants her classes to give students opportunities to know themselves more deeply, to learn in ways that are meaningful to them, and to discover and respect what they already know.