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News India Times – The Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund will honor journalist and TV host Fareed Zakaria with its 2012 Justice in Action Award at its annual Lunar New Year Gala on Feb. 8 at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers here.

According to the AALDEF website, the awards recognize exceptional individuals for their outstanding achievements and contributions in advancing justice and equality.

Two other leaders to be honored at the gala are Parkin Lee, vice president, chief legal officer, and secretary of The Rockefeller Group; and Jean Koh Peters, professor of law at Yale University.

Zakaria hosts CNN’s flagship foreign affairs show “GPS” and serves as editor-at-large of Time Magazine.

He is also a frequent columnist for the Washington Post and is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Post-American World” and its newly updated edition, “The Post-American World 2.0,” and “The Future of Freedom.” In 2010, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 global thinkers.

Juju Chang, Emmy Award-winning correspondent for ABC News Nightline and Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs and digital media professor at Columbia Journalism School, and the founder of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), will co-host the event.

More than 600 leaders from the civil rights, legal, business and arts communities are expected to attend the gala celebrating the Year of the Dragon. Since 1974, AALDEF has been protecting and promoting the civil rights of Asian Americans across the nation through litigation, advocacy, organizing, and community education.

All proceeds from the gala will go directly towards supporting AALDEF’s legal and educational programs in immigrant rights, economic justice for workers, voting rights and civic participation, affirmative action, language access to services, youth rights and educational equity, housing and environmental justice, Census policy and the elimination of hate violence, police misconduct, and human trafficking, the website said.