Baylor Appoints Felipe Hinojosa, Ph.D., as Inaugural Jackson Family Chair for Baylor in Latin America

Contact: Lori Fogleman, Baylor University Media & Public Relations, 254-709-5959
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WACO, Texas (July 12, 2023) – Baylor University announced today the appointment of Felipe Hinojosa, Ph.D., as the inaugural Jackson Family Chair for Baylor in Latin America, expanding Baylor’s international footprint and providing additional leadership to advance the priorities of the Baylor in Latin America initiative. Hinojosa comes to Baylor from Texas A&M, where he serves as professor of history, assistant provost for Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) initiatives and director for the Carlos H. Cantu Hispanic Education & Opportunity Endowment. His appointment as The Jackson Family Chair is effective Aug. 1.

“I’m thrilled to join Baylor University and my brilliant colleagues in the History department,” Hinojosa said. “I’m looking forward to joining conversations at Baylor that cross disciplinary borders and help us think collectively and critically about important questions on immigration, race, citizenship, politics and religion.”

Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Hinojosa earned a B.A. in English from Fresno Pacific University, an M.A. in history from the University of Texas Pan American and his Ph.D. from the University of Houston in 2009. He joined the faculty at Texas A&M in 2009. A civil rights historian, Hinojosa’s research focuses on Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, American religion, race and ethnicity and social movements. Growing up as the son of a Mennonite pastor in the Texas/Mexico borderlands, Hinojosa was exposed to the power of the Gospels and how communities can harness religion and politics at the grassroots level to do good and implement change.

“I am incredibly excited about Dr. Hinojosa’s appointment as The Jackson Family Chair,” Provost Nancy Brickhouse, Ph.D., said. “Given his expertise as a Mexican-American historian, he will also provide added leadership to our Baylor in Latin America initiative. He will help the Department of History at Baylor with its increasing influence on scholarship on Latin American history.”

Hinojosa’s first book, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) was awarded the 2015 Américo Paredes Book Award for the best book in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies by the Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College. His book, Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio (University of Texas Press, 2021), received the 2022 Outstanding Book Award by the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education. He is working on a third book about the Latino civil rights movement and its impact in a post-World War II America. He also served as co-editor of Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics Since 1945 (NYU Press, 2022).

Hinojosa serves on the advisory board for the interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed and online moderated forum Latinx Talk. His work has appeared in Zócalo Public Square, Western Historical Quarterly, American Catholic Studies, Mennonite Quarterly Review and in edited collections on Latina/o studies.

In addition to Texas A&M, Hinojosa has held academic positions at Emory University, South Texas College, UTPA and Houston. From 2009 to 2021, he served on the Board of Directors for Goshen College, a private liberal arts college and Hispanic-Serving Institution affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA in Goshen, Indiana. He also is a member of several professional academic organizations, including the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, American Studies Association and American Academy of Religion.

"We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Hinojosa to the Department of History," said Julie deGraffenried, Ph.D., department chair and associate professor of history at Baylor. "He is a dynamic scholar and committed teacher who will be a gift to our students, faculty, staff, campus and community. Not only will our undergraduate and graduate students have greater opportunities to study with an expert in Latino & Chicano history, but our campus-wide initiative, Baylor in Latin America, will benefit from his vision and leadership in thinking about Latin America from a hemispheric perspective. We are so grateful to the Jackson Family for making this possible."

The Jackson Family Chair for Baylor in Latin America position was established through a $1.5 million gift from John (B.B.A. ’79) and Nancy (B.S.Ed. ’79) Jackson as part of the Give Light Campaign’s Foster Academic Challenge matching grant program. The Foster Academic Challenge generated significant support from alumni and donors to create 14 new endowed chairs, including The Jackson Family Chair to advance R1-level research at Baylor, a preeminent Christian Research 1 university.

One of five key initiatives within Illuminate, the University’s strategic plan, Baylor in Latin America is intended to facilitate meaningful collaboration across content areas and disciplines that will help improve conditions in high-impact areas within Texas and Latin America in the areas of health and disease prevention; business development and international trade; human capital formation and education; immigration, migration and human trafficking; congregational development; democratic governance and economics; and culture and the arts.

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