UT Austin Rethinks Awards Process After Latino Award To George P. Bush Sparks Uproar
*The University of Texas MALS program isn’t taking back the award they gave to George P. Bush, but they are saying it was a “forward choice” and they’re rethinking the process. VL
By Roque Planas, Huffington Post Latino Voices.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The newly formed Mexican-American and Latino/a Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin is rethinking the way it gives out awards after there was a public uproar over the school bestowing its inaugural award for Latino leadership to George P. Bush.
Speaking on a panel here at the Latin American Studies Association’s annual gathering on Friday, [tweet_dis]MALS Director Nicole Guidotti-Hernández defended the decision to give the award to Bush, the first Hispanic to serve as Texas Land Commissioner[/tweet_dis]. The award was presented in March on behalf of MALS and UT Austin’s Center for Mexican American Studies.
“It was a forward-thinking choice and it made a lot of people angry and we understand that,” Guidotti-Hernandez said. “We were trying to be provocative and we were trying to reach across the aisle.”
But she also acknowledged the decision was jarring for some alumni and Chicano leaders who helped establish the field of Mexican-American and Latin American studies at UT Austin, a university where some faculty and students identify strongly with the immigrant rights cause and identify with activist politics.
[pullquote]As the award still stands, many of us will have to agree to disagree.-UT MALS Director Nicole Guidotti-Hernández
[/pullquote] “As the award still stands, many of us will have to agree to disagree,” Guidotti-Hernandez said, later adding, “We need to pull back and say maybe the process was flawed. Maybe the recipient was not the right person, so where do we go from here?”Instead of the three-person panel that decided to give the award to Bush this year, Guidotti-Hernandez said she’s recommending future award recipients be decided by a six-person panel composed of the department’s chair, director, a faculty member, an affiliate from the Center for Mexican American Studies, a student leader and a member of the community.
Bush — the son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and his Mexican-born wife Columba — has emerged as a leading Hispanic political figure in Texas, where the Republican National Committee has ramped up Latino outreach efforts since 2012. Juan Hernandez, a co-founder of Hispanic Republicans of Texas, a group that aims …
This article was originally published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.
[Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr]
