Francisco E. Balderrama

Francisco E. Balderrama is Professor of Chicano Studies and History at California State University Los Angeles where he was selected as Outstanding University Professor in 1997. Previously, Balderrama served as Chair of Chicano Studies from 1984 to 1993 and 1997 to 1999. He also has held faculty and administrative appointments at Texas Tech University, Adams State College, and The Claremont Colleges. Professor Balderrama is a Chicano Historian with special interest in the American West particularly California and Los Angeles. He offers a variety of courses in Chicano History for the Chicano Studies Department and teaches classes on Los Angeles, California, and the American West for the History Department. Balderrama holds a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola University and both a Master of Arts and Doctorate from University of California, Los Angeles. Balderrama's research program focuses on the Mexican community during the early 20th century with particular attention to relations with the Mexican nation. He is co-author with Raymond Rodriguez of Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930's (University of New Mexico Press, 1995 and revised edition, 2006). The Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights has proclaimed Decade of Betrayal as an outstanding work on intolerance in North America. Balderrama also has written ln Defense of La Raza: The Los Angeles Mexican Consulate and Community, 1929-1936. (University of Arizona Press, 1982). ln addition, his work has appeared in Encyclopedia of the American West, Historians of the American Frontier: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, Encyclopedia of the History of Chicago, Radical History and A Guide to the History of California. Furthermore, Balderrama has completed a term as a managing editor of Ethnohistory: Journal of the Ethnohistory Association.

Balderrama is recipient of the UCLA Doctoral Advancement fellowship, Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, and the Ford Foundation Senior Post Doctoral Fellowship. Among his professional awards are the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lectureship at the University of Arkansas and the Senior Fulbright Lectureship in American lmmigration History at the University of Rome, ltaly. The Ford Foundation, Western Association of Colleges and Universities, Fund for the lmprovement of Post Secondary Education, and the Educational Testing Service have retained Balderrama as a consultant and reviewer. He also has given expert testimony for the California State Senate Select Committee for Citizen Participation.