From a recent announcement circulated via email:
The 2020-2021 Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award honoring Emeriti Professors in the University of California system has been awarded to Professor Emeritus of Political Science Wayne Cornelius (UC San Diego) and Edward A. Dickson Professor Emeritus of History Carlos E. Cortés (UC Riverside). UC Emeriti Professors Cornelius and Cortés are the forty-sixth and forty-seventh recipients of the Constantine Panunzio Award. Both awardees have especially long and notable records of research, teaching, and service to the University of California, their disciplines, and their communities. The late Dr. Panunzio, a Professor of Sociology at UCLA for many years, has been described as the architect of the UC Retirement System and was particularly active in improving pensions and stipends for his fellow Emeriti. The award bearing his name was established in 1983 and includes a $5,000 prize.
Wayne Cornelius, UC San Diego, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, retired in 2009. He joined the UCSD faculty in 1979 and was named Distinguished Professor of Political Science in 1997. He has long been a pre-eminent scholar in Mexican studies and a pioneering researcher on Mexican migration to the United States, and involved in the founding of several important academic institutes, notably UC MEXUS and the Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program at UCSD, for which he still serves as faculty director. In Cornelius’ years after retirement he continued his superb research, visionary program development, invaluable service and application of his professional expertise and research to critical social and political issues, as well as continued to teach and take students to rural Mexico to conduct fieldwork until 2015.
Professor Emeritus Cornelius has been highly productive since retirement, including 56 publications, 13 edited books, in addition to several works written for general audiences. His public national outreach has included 104 op-ed pieces (in major US & Mexican papers); segments on PBS News Hour and CBS “60 Minutes”; and more recently his devotion to high school education. Since retirement he has also turned to global health issues and become part of the core faculty in the Global Public Health Division of the UCSD Medical School; thus he has published in medical journals as well as continuing his interdisciplinary work in the social sciences.
Cornelius’ expertise on immigration policy has been long sought-out by public officials and presidential administrations. He was a policy advisor to both candidates Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden during the 2020 election cycle; has testified before Congress and was more recently an advisor to President Biden’s transition team on U.S. immigration and asylum policy. He is a true public intellectual with a real-word impact. In 2012, Mexican President Filipe Calderon awarded Cornelius the Orden Mexicana del Águila Azteca – Mexico’s highest honor for non-citizens.
In 2020, already ten years into retirement, he received the Kalman Silvert Award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement by the 13,000 members of the Latin American Studies Association.
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Carlos Cortés, UC Riverside, Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professor of History, retired in 1994. In more than a quarter century since his formal “retirement,” Carlos Cortés has continued his deep engagement with issues of diversity and multiculturalism in scholarship, popular writings, public activism, and cultural and educational contributions aimed at children. It has been more than two decades since his path-breaking book, The Children are Watching: How the Media teach about Diversity (Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 2000), which was a major theoretical contribution to the literature in both education and media studies. In 2002, it was followed by publication of The Making and Remaking of a Multiculturalist (Teachers College Press), which has been called “an important contribution to the educational literature on diversity and education.”
In 2012, Cortés published a family memoir, Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before its Time, which was adapted into a one-person play - A Conversation with Alana: One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage – which he has performed over 150 times around the country. This extraordinary productivity includes his book of poetry, Fourth Quarter: Reflections of a Cranky Old Man (2016) and a novel, Scouts’ Honor, now under review. As part of his outreach to young people, Professor Emeritus Cortés has long worked with Nickelodeon, the Children’s Television Network – most notably as creative and cultural advisor for the hit pre-school animated series Dora the Explorer. According to the Executive Producer, Cortés helped to weave Latino culture and bilingualism into a series that became an international success. For this work, he received the Image Award in 2009 from the NAACP.
Addressing issues of Free Speech and Diversity, Professor Emeritus Cortés’ university, institutional and public service has continued to be extraordinary to the present day. He has consulted for federal, state and county programs, and over 250 school districts, as well as given scores of public lectures at universities, schools, and public institutions. Among his many accolades include honorary doctorates (College of Wooster; DePaul University) and the Carlos Cortés Diversity and Inclusion Award established by the City of Riverside. In 2018, he became one of the inaugural Fellows of UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, and in 2020, Cortés was appointed Co-Director of the Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism curriculum at the UC Riverside’s School of Medicine where he has brought energy and passion to his teaching.
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Please join all of us on the Committee in congratulating Emeriti Professors Wayne Cornelius and Carlos Cortés on receiving the 2020-2021 Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award.
Sincerely,
Michael S. Levine
Chair, Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award Selection Committee
Vice Chancellor, Academic Personnel
