New Honor for a Chicano Educator

Dr. Luis Leal has taught for 55 years on university campuses across the nation, currently at UC Santa Barbara, imparting to American students what might be called the Mexican version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. For this among other accomplishments, President Clinton awarded Leal, 90, the National Humanities Medal last week in a White House ceremony. The award honors persons whose work has deepened understanding of the humanities.

Born in Linares, Nuevo Leon, in northern Mexico, Leal received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1950. He taught there and at the University of Mississippi, Emory University and the University of Illinois from 1942 to 1976, when he retired in California.

But retirement did not stick, and he resumed teaching at UC Santa Barbara and other colleges.

He has written 16 books, hundreds of articles and reviews, edited 20 anthologies and made 69 contributions to encyclopedias. Among his disciples were major writers like the late Tomas Rivera, once chancellor of the University of California at Riverside.

In 1988 the National Assn. for Chicano Studies gave Leal its Scholar of the Year award. In 1991 he received the Aztec Eagle award, the highest honor offered by the Mexican government to non-Mexican citizens, and in 1995 UCSB established the Luis Leal Chair in Chicano Studies.

Leal is more than an academic. He is a caring man engaged in a personal crusade against ignorance who patiently educates people, using persuasion, emotion, intelligence and his personal example. Caption: Educator Luis Leal with earlier award, the Aztec Eagle.