Oct. 17 | Planting the Seeds of Latino Diversity on the Farm
In person and online. Free and open to the public. Registration required.
Thursday, October 17, 2024
4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Stanford Humanities Center
Levinthal Hall
424 Santa Teresa Street
Stanford
If you were to leaf through the pages of Stanford Quad beginning in the 1890s through the mid-1960s, you would have to look very closely to find the faces of students of color pictured among the many thousands of their white classmates. Since its origins, Stanford—much to its credit—admitted Asian, Native, African American, and Latino students, but their numbers were infinitesimally small. The racial and ethnic diversity of Stanford's student body began to change, however, when the first small cohort of students of color were admitted in the late 1960s. During the 1970s and 1980s, the university's commitment to diversifying its student body helped foster the growth of vibrant communities of color on campus, forever changing the university’s student demographics and the university in general. Stanford historian Al Camarillo will share personal stories about how one of these groups, Chicanas-os/Latinas-os, contributed to changing the campus culturally and academically.
Camarillo's presentation will draw on his recently published book, Compton in My Soul - A Life in Pursuit of Racial Equality (Stanford University Press), to recount stories of how a "Mexican kid" from Compton landed a faculty position at Stanford in 1975 and devoted decades to helping the university to become a more racially/ethnically inclusive institution. He will reflect on his 43-year career at the university from multiple perspectives – teacher/mentor, resident fellow in undergraduate dorms, associate dean for undergraduate studies, director of research centers, and special assistant to the provost for faculty diversity. He will also frame his comments by referencing Frank Sotomayor’s (MA, Class of ’67) book, The Dawning of Diversity – How Chicanos Helped Change Stanford University (West by Southwest Press, 2022). Sotomayor’s book recounts, for the first time, the experiences of Mexican Americans who entered the Farm in fall of 1969 and those who followed in their footsteps in subsequent decades.
Al Camarillo is the Leon Sloss Jr. Memorial Professor and Professor of American History, Emeritus. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the field of Mexican American history and Chicano studies (he is the first Mexican American in the nation’s history to receive a Ph.D. in U.S. history with a specialization in Chicano history). He received his B.A. and Ph.D. in history from UCLA. He has published and edited/co-edited eight books and dozens of articles on the history of Mexican Americans and other communities of color. He is the only faculty member in the history of Stanford to receive six of the highest awards for excellence in teaching and service to the university. Camarillo is the past president of the Organization of American Historians, the nation's largest membership association for historians of the United States, and former president of the American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch.
This program is co-sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center.
Copies of the books, Compton in My Soul - A Life in Pursuit of Racial Equality and The Dawning of Diversity – How Chicanos Helped Change Stanford University, will be available for purchase at the event.