Program Director
Dr. Carlos Muñoz, Jr.
Phone: 510-642-9134
Email: cmjr@berkeley.edu
Dr. Carlos Muñoz, Jr. is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley. After 40 years of teaching in higher education, he has gained international prominence as a 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. As a scholar-activist, Dr. Muñoz 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 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.
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." In 2008, he was honored as one of the "Americans Who Tell the Truth".
Dr. Muñoz has lectured at many 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 non-profit community agencies, public schools, and professional associations and groups. He has a well-known reputation as a dynamic and inspirational speaker.