Latino Heritage Month Keynote Lecture Carlos Munoz
| Date/Time: | Saturday, 15 Oct 2011 at 8:00 pm |
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| Location: | Great Hall, Memorial Union |
| Cost: | Free |
| Contact: | |
| Phone: | 515-294-9934 |
| Channel: | Lecture Series |
| Categories: | Diversity Lectures |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Dr. Carlos Munoz, Jr. was born in the "segundo barrio" in El Paso, Texas, and raised in the barrios of East Los Angeles, California. He is the son of poor working class Mexican immigrants. He earned his AA from Los Angeles City Community College, his BA with honors in Political Science from California State University at Los Angeles and his PhD in Government from the Claremont Graduate School.
Dr. Munoz has appeared on PBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and the Spanish-speaking UNIVISION and Tele Mundo. He has also been interviewed numerous times on Pacifica Radio and National Public Radio stations. He is a syndicated columnist with the Progressive Media Project. His newspaper columns are distributed nationally by the Knight-Ridder news wire service and have appeared online on Latino.com and on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service (Europe & Latin America).
As a scholar-activist, Dr. Munoz has been a central figure in the struggles for civil and human rights, social and economic justice, and peace in the United States and abroad since he was a student activist in the 1960s. He played a prominent leadership role as a founder of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Since then he has served as a leading organizer of various multiracial coalitions, including the Faculty for Human Rights in Central America, Faculty Against Apartheid in South Africa, and The Rainbow Coalition. In 1988, he was a key advisor to the Jesse Jackson Presidential campaign. He served on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and is a co-founder of the Institute for Multiracial Justice in San Francisco, California. He also co-founded Latinos Unidos, a grassroots community organization in Berkeley, California. Dr. Munoz is a Vietnam War Era Veteran and is a member of the Veterans for Peace and is active in the Anti-Iraq & Afghanistan War Movement. He is also active in the Immigrant Rights Movement.
In 1996, he received the University of Michigan's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Rosa Parks Award. In 1999, Dr. Munoz received the Scholar of the Year Award from the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies. In 2001, the American Political Science Association honored Dr. Munoz for his "Seminal scholarly contributions to the study of Mexican American and Latino Politics." In 2005, Dr. Munoz was honored by the Harvard Graduate School of Education for "Educating others and inspiring them in the Pursuit of their Goals." In 2007, the National Black Student Conference honored him with their "Pioneer Visionary Award".
In 2003 he was honored in a traveling national exhibition tour as one of 12 "civil rights activists who accomplished extraordinary deeds that changed the face of the nation and gave birth to the Modern Civil Rights Movement." The exhibition is entitled "The Long Walk to Freedom." It was organized by Community Works and funded by The National Endowment for the Arts, The California Arts Council, and the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library.
In 2008 Dr. Munoz was honored as one of the "Americans Who Tell the Truth. Those with the courage, honesty, tolerance, generosity, wisdom and compassion that have made our country strong". Other "truth tellers" who have been honored in the past include Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez.
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This lecture was made possible in part by the generosity of F. Wendell Miller, who left his entire estate jointly to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Mr. Miller, who died in 1995 at age 97, was born in Altoona, Illinois, grew up in Rockwell City, graduated from Grinnell College and Harvard Law School and practiced law in Des Moines and Chicago before returning to Rockwell City to manage his family's farm holdings and to practice law. His will helped to establish the F. Wendell Miller Trust, the annual earnings on which, in part, helped to support this activity.