Harry Pachon Is Remembered for His Advocacy for Latinos From Within Academe

About 25 minutes into the news show on the evening of November 7, a somber-faced anchor announced, “California’s academic community is in mourning.” Professor Harry P. Pachon, a political scientist, had died.
    The Noticiero is the most-watched national evening news broadcast in many American cities because of its reach with Spanish-language audiences. The show that Monday was a crisp rundown of major news stories as usual: the Michael Jackson-death trial, elections in Nicaragua and Guatemala, a Republican presidential minidrama. But the entire final segment of the show was a long tribute to a deceased academic.
    A professor of public policy at the University of Southern California when he died of complications of pneumonia and Parkinson’s disease at 66, on November 4, Mr. Pachon might not have merited that star treatment if he were judged in narrow academic terms. But, his career unfolded in a manner and at a moment that generated extraordinary influence and even a measure of celebrity for a man known to his friends as a retiring, private person with a soft voice and a gentle manner.
    Mr. Pachon was a scholar-advocate who used the tools of social science to help define an entire era of public discourse. His work illuminated policy issues related to the Hispanic population during four decades in which that population grew from about 10 million to nearly 50 million. And, he accomplished this as a lonely mission, as one of a very small number of Latinos who both made it to the upper reaches of the academy and committed their careers to a cause.
    “We were part of a generation who knew we had been blessed,” said Félix Gutiérrez, a colleague of Mr. Pachon’s at the University of Southern California who had known him since they were both at the California State University at Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Graduating from college was already a major accomplishment for Latinos of modest means then, and earning a doctorate involved truly rarified dreaming. “There were not many colleagues, not a cohort, and so when we got our Ph.D.’s it wasn’t as if we were becoming part of a community, “recalled Mr. Gutiérrez, a professor of journalism and ethnic studies.
    The way forward for scholars like Mr. Pachon, said Mr. Gutiérrez, was “to become an academic outside the academy” and “to find collaborators in the profession you were studying.” Not surprisingly then, Mr. Pachon launched his career in Washington, as a top aide to Rep. Edward R. Roybal, a Democrat who was a pioneer of Latino political representation in California.
    The primary vehicle for Mr. Pachon’s success was institution building. He was the co-founder in 1976 of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and in 1993 he became president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, a research project that promotes informed policymaking on issues affecting Latinos. He helped bring both organizations to national prominence by developing research products that were readily accessible to policymakers, corporate leaders and the news media.
    With the policy institute, he returned to the academy: first to Claremont Graduate University and then to the University of Southern California in 2003. He led the institute until last year.
    Mr. Pachon quite explicitly dedicated himself to the advancement of Latinos, but he was not a partisan figure or a fiery ethnic advocate. For example, he was at Cal State’s Los Angeles campus as an undergraduate and a master’s student when East Los Angeles was the capital of the Chicano movement. It was an era of marches and demonstrations, but Mr. Pachon is not associated with those tumultuous events, and in his later life he relied on much more conventional political tactics.
    As a scholar, he was preoccupied with Latino voting patterns, and as an activist he promoted naturalization and voter registration. He is widely credited with having helped boost Latino political representation in California both by working to increase the electorate and by devising effective means to mobilize it.
    His strategies often involved public education, helping Latinos understand their rights and make use of resources available to them. So, in promoting college attendance for Latinos, his research highlighted disparities even as he also worked to increase knowledge of scholarship opportunities. Similarly, in the first half of the 2000s, before the Great Recession, he promoted a vision of a rising Latino middle class and the need for more information to speed the move into homeownership.
    It was as if, having watched the Latino population grow, Mr. Pachon was confident that Latinos could realize their aspirations if they were given a fair chance. Having been a scholar, albeit a lonely one at first, he put his faith in knowledge.
    The anchor on the Univision news, Jorge Ramos, summarized Mr. Pachon’s career succinctly: “He understood earlier than many others the importance of Latinos and the power of their votes-Harry Pachon.”
Roberto Suro is a professor of journalism and public policy at the University of Southern California and the current director of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute.