Tetsuo "Tets" Najita (奈地田 哲夫, Najita Tetsuo, March 30, 1936 – January 11, 2021) was an American historian.
A nisei, [1] Najita was raised in Hawaii. He graduated from Grinnell College in 1958, and was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. [2] [3] While in Grinnell, he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. [4] Najita completed a doctorate at Harvard University in 1965. [5]
Upon finishing his studies, Najita began teaching at Carleton College. [6] He left Carleton in 1966, [6] [7] and became an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin. [8] In 1969, Najita joined the University of Chicago faculty, [9] and was later named a Robert S. Ingersolll Distinguished Service Professor in History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations. [10]
Over the course of his career, Najita received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981, [11] and was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993. [12] Grinnell College honored Najita with an alumni award in 1998. [2] Five years after his retirement from the institution, the University of Chicago inaugurated the Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture series in 2007. [13]
Najita died at his home in Kamuela, Hawaii, on 11 January 2021, after a long illness. [14]