Fellow Academic Backs Professor in Age Bias Suit

A retired UC San Diego historian on Tuesday praised Chicano activist and Cal State Northridge professor Rodolfo Acuna, saying UC Santa Barbara should have hired him.

Testifying in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, where Acuna is pressing an age-discrimination suit against UC for rejecting his employment application, Ramon Eduardo Ruiz credited Acuna’s 1972 book “Occupied America” with “opening the national debate on the Chicano experience” and said it had been an unprecedented effort requiring tremendous research.

“Most historians never do that. They take on little monographs,” said Ruiz, who chaired the history department at UC San Diego and has himself written 13 books.

But during his brief testimony late Tuesday as Acuna’s first witness, Ruiz said nothing about Acuna’s age, now 63, and what role it might have played in the rejection of his job application.

Acuna claims that age was a key factor in the decision by UC Santa Barbara to deny his application for a senior professor’s post, and that his “age of 59” was noted several times in committee reports that recommended against hiring him.