May 11, 2000

ERNESTO CORTES NAMED SMU HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENT

DALLAS (SMU) — Civic activist Ernesto Cortés Jr. will receive the honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Southern Methodist University during its 85th annual commencement ceremony at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, May 20, in Moody Coliseum.

To honor the achievements of Cortés, the university will host a symposium that is free and open to the public.

"Speaking Truth to Power: A Symposium on the Achievements of Ernesto Cortés" will be from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Friday, May 19, in the Underwood Law Library Walsh Classroom 6550 Hillcrest Ave. An afternoon tea with Cortés, hosted by Dedman College Dean Jasper Neel and the SMU Chaplain’s office, will follow the symposium in the lobby area of Underwood Law Library. This symposium is co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Department of Political Science, the Ethnic Studies Program and the William P. Clements Jr. Center for Southwest Studies.

Panelists at the Cortés symposium include Tom Luce, Dallas attorney and 2012 Olympic Bid Committee Chair; The Rev. Minerva Carcaño, director of the Mexican American Program at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology; Mary Beth Rogers, author and Austin public television station president who wrote a book about Cortés titled Cold Anger, A Story of Faith and Power Politics and William Julius Wilson, Harvard sociologist who wrote The Declining Significance of Race and The Bridge over the Racial Divide.

Cortés has dedicated his life to public service and the common good by working to make government more responsive to the poor and politically disenfranchised. He has contributed to the political empowerment of low-income and disadvantaged people as a grass-roots community activist, labor organizer, founder of Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) and Southwest Regional Director of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a non-profit organization that networks community-based organizations committed to revitalizing local democracies. The purpose is to help ordinary people develop the competence, confidence and leadership to participate in the affairs of their local governments.

Equitable public school funding, school restructuring to improve student learning, indigent health care, job training and economic development for higher-wage jobs are all issues for which Cortés has provided leadership. He has become a widely imitated international model of leadership to solve social problems through local self-help.

A native of San Antonio, Cortés graduated from Texas A&M University at the age of 19. With a credo of "Never, ever, do for people what they can do for themselves," his life’s work has been to help citizens organize to improve their communities. Cortés has received numerous awards for his work, including several fellowships in recognition of his accomplishments in the field of community organizing. In 1984, the MacArthur Foundation named him a MacArthur Fellow. In 1993, he taught as a fellow in the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Most recently, he completed a year-long fellowship as a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Other honorary degree recipients are chemist, educator and University of Texas President Larry Faulkner, Doctor of Science; Peruvian priest and Father of Liberation Theology Gustavo Gutiérrez, Doctor of Divinity; and Dallas philanthropist and civic leader Nancy Lee Blackburn Hamon, Doctor of Arts.

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Click here to read about all the SMU 2000 Honorary Degree Recipients

Click here to read about Commencement 2000

Click here to read more about Larry Faulkner

Click here to read more about Gustavo Gutiérrez

Click here to read more about Nancy Lee Blackburn Hamon