Hector Delgado While attending Temple University, Hector Delgado shelved his bat and cleats and picked up a picket sign. “Sports tend to inoculate you from the rest of the world,” says Delgado, who was attending Temple on a baseball scholarship. Although quitting was hard because sports had been an important part of his life, Delgado said was more aware of the world around him as a result. Delgado soon got involved in the progressive paper on campus, writing columns of counter culture and the Spanish-American War.  Having become much more politicized, Delgado applied for conscientious objector status in the Vietnam War. His application was accepted. “It was a feeling many of us had,” he says. “We didn’t want to be a part of that machine.” His political activism, Delgado says, is a result of going to school in the 1960s. “It was contagious to some degree,” he says. He has been politically active since in many community organizations, primarily having to do with education, the status of Puerto Rico as well as issues of racism. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 1984, he helped form, the Free South Africa Coordinating Committee to help fight apartheid. “We all should be concerned not just about ourselves, but the larger community, the world,” Delgado says. “We have a responsibility to take it one step further and think about the consequences of what we say and do.” Delgado completed all of the requirements for a doctorate in education at Rutgers University, except for his dissertation, for lack of mentoring and because of his participation in a myriad of community and political organizations. However, over a decade later he completed his masters and Ph.D. in sociology at Michigan. Issues of social inequality, race and ethnicity and institutional inequality are among those that interest Delgado in the field. He says he has always liked to argue and discuss issues. Delgado likes getting his students to ask important questions. He believes the more a person reads and thinks the more informed that person can be and will make better decisions. The greater good is the interest. “Socially, you can make a difference by getting in the classroom and making students think critically about the world around them,” Delgado says. “To me, that’s the most important thing the faculty can do.” Delgado is the author of New Immigrants, Old Unions: Organizing Undocumented Workers in Los Angeles, a cutting-edge book that helped spur other works on immigrant workers. He has written numerous articles and presented papers at conferences on the subject and is the co-author of an article on race relations training in organizations. As an active member of the American Sociological Association Latino/a section, he often writes review articles for journals or papers for presentations. At one point he served as chair for the Latino/a section of the Association. Not as politically active as he once was, Delgado spends most of his time teaching, writing, serving on committees, and talking and having fun with his two sons. “My most treasured time is the time I spend with my family.” RETURN TO FACULTY LISTmailto:delgadoh@ulv.edu?subject=HELLOHome.htmlshapeimage_1_link_1
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