Carlos Munoz Jr.

Dr. Carlos Muñoz 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. An educator, author, and activist, Munoz is also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley. After 37 years of teaching in higher education, he has gained international prominence as political scientist, historian, journalist, and public intellectual.

Dr. Muñoz was the founding chair of the first Chicano Studies department in the nation in 1968 at the California State University at Los Angeles and the founding chair of the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies (NACCS). He is a pioneer in the creation of undergraduate and graduate curricula in the disciplines of Ethnic Studies. He is the author of numerous pioneering works on the Mexican American political experience and on African American and Latino political coalitions. His book, Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement won the Gustavus Myers Book Award for "outstanding scholarship in the study of human rights in the Untied States." The first edition of the book underwent 12 printings and was a major resource for the PBS television series Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Muñoz was the senior consultant for the project and was also featured in the series. A revised and expanded second edition of the book with a new afterward that brings the imperative of multiracial democracy to a new level of clarity was published in 2007.

He is currently working on several new books: Diversity and The Challenge for a Multiracial Democracy In America, a biographical novel on The Life & Times of Dr. Ernesto Galarza (the first Mexican American nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature), and The Latino Experience in Major League Baseball. He has also begun work on his autobiography Victory is in the Struggle.

Dr. Muñoz is an acknowledged expert on the issues of ethnic and racial politics, multiculturalism and diversity, immigration, civil and human rights, and affirmative action. He has appeared on PBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and the Spanish-speaking UNIVISION and Tele Mundo. 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. Muñoz has been a central figure in the struggles for civil and human rights, social 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. Muñoz is a Vietnam Era Veteran and a member of the Veterans for Peace and is active in the larger Anti-Iraq War Movement.

In addition to the numerous academic honors he has been awarded during his academic career, Dr. Muñoz is also listed in Who’s Who in the West, Who’s Who Among Hispanic Americans, Who’s Who of Editors, Writers, and Poets, and in the Latino Encyclopedia. In 1996, he received the University of Michigan’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Rosa Parks Award. In 1999, Dr. Muñoz received the Scholar of the Year Award from the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies. In 2001, the American Political Science Association honored Dr. Muñoz for his "Seminal scholarly contributions to the study of Mexican American and Latino Politics." In 2005, Dr. Muñoz was honored by the Harvard Graduate School of Education for "educating others and inspiring them in the pursuit of their goals."

He is currently being honored in a traveling national exhibition tour as one of 28 "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 includes video, historical and contemporary photographs, and a graphic timeline developed by the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture. 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.

Dr. Muñoz has lectured at most of the prestigious universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan, Texas, and numerous less known state and community colleges throughout the nation. He has also been a keynote speaker for non-academic institutions including US Government agencies, nonprofit community agencies, public schools, and professional associations and groups. He has a well-known reputation as a dynamic and inspirational speaker.