San Antonio Mayor will visit the University of Notre Dame campus at 7 p.m. April 7 (Monday) in DeBartolo Hall, Room 101, for an event titled “American Politics in the 21st Century: Latino Civic Engagement.” Joining the mayor on stage will be his former Stanford faculty mentor . The two will discuss the mayor’s journey into the world of politics.

This is the third collaborative event of the American Politics series between , the Transformative Latino Leadership Lecture Series and the .

A 39-year-old San Antonio native, Castro is the youngest mayor of a Top 50 American city. First elected in 2009, Castro was re-elected to a third term in 2013. Throughout his tenure, Castro has focused on attracting well-paying jobs in 21st-century industries, positioning San Antonio to be a leader in the new energy economy and raising educational attainment across the spectrum.

One of his many community and education initiatives is SA2020, a community-wide nonprofit whose vision is to create a brainpower community that is the liveliest city in the nation. Under Castro’s leadership, the city established Café College, a one-stop center offering high-quality guidance on college admissions, financial aid and standardized test preparation to any student in the San Antonio area. Since opening in 2010, Café College has served more than 25,000 area students.

During his tenure, San Antonio ranked No. 1 on the Milken Institute’s Best-Performing Cities list, was graded A+ for doing business by Forbes and ranked as the nation’s No. 3 new tech hotspot by Forbes.

In March 2010, Castro was named to the World Economic Forum’s list of Young Global Leaders. Later that year, Time magazine placed him on its “40 under 40” list of rising stars in American politics.

Castro also is a member of the Inter-American Dialogue, is an Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellow and serves on the board of the LBJ Foundation. He earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University with honors and distinction in 1996 and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law 91��Ƶ in 2000. In 2001, at the age of 26, Castro became the youngest elected city councilman at that time in San Antonio history.

Luis Fraga

Luis Ricardo Fraga is associate vice provost for faculty advancement, Russell F. Stark University Professor, director of the Diversity Research Institute and professor of political science at the University of Washington.

His research and teaching interests are in Latino politics, the politics of race and ethnicity, immigration politics, education politics and voting rights policy. In 2011, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics and serves as co-chair of the Postsecondary Education Subcommittee. He was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential in the country by Hispanic Business Magazine. He has received 15 awards for his teaching, advising, mentoring and service. In 2012, he was recognized as a Champion of Catholic Education by the Fulcrum Foundation and in 2013 he was the first recipient of the Juan Diego Award for his work to establish the first Spanish-English, two-way immersion school in the Archdiocese of Seattle.

Fraga has authored and co-authored numerous books including “Latinos in the New Millennium: An Almanac of Opinion, Behavior, and Policy Preferences” (Cambridge University Press 2012) and “Latino Lives in America: Making It Home” (Temple 2010). He is currently completing the coauthored book “Invisible No More: Latino Identities in American Politics.”

This event is free and open to the public. Tickets are required to enter and will be available at the LaFortune box office at 1 p.m. on March 29 (Saturday). The limit is one ticket per person.

This event will be streamed .

Contact: Arnel Bulaoro, 574-631-6841, abulaoro@nd.edu

Three of the nation’s leading scholars on Latino voting patterns will participate in a panel discussion titled “American Politics in the 21st Century: The Latino Vote and the 2014 Elections” at 7 p.m. Wednesday (Feb. 5) at the University of Notre Dame’s McKenna Hall Auditorium. The event is sponsored by Lecture Series, the and the . The event is free and open to the public.

Notre Dame’s Christina Wolbrecht will moderate the three-person panel consisting of Michael Jones-Correa of Cornell University, Valerie Martinez-Ebers of the University of North Texas and Notre Dame’s .

Jones-Correa is a co-author of “Latinos in the New Millennium” (2012) and “Latino Lives in America: Making It Home” (2010), the author of “Between Two Nations: The Political Predicament of Latinos in New York City” (1998), the editor of “Governing American Cities: Inter-Ethnic Coalitions, Competition and Conflict” (2001) and co-editor of the forthcoming “Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation.” He was a co-principal investigator for the 2006 Latino National Survey. Jones-Correa has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, and was the team leader for the 2010-2013 theme project “Immigration: Settlement, Immigration and Membership” at the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell.

Martinez-Ebers is co-author of “Politicas: Latina Public Officials in Texas” (2008), “Making it Home: Latino Lives in America” (2010) and “Latinos in the New Millennium: an Almanac of Opinion, Behavior and Policy Preferences” (2012). She also edited “Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity and Religion: Identity Politics in America” (2009) and a co-principal investigator for the Latino National Survey. Martinez-Ebers is the editor of the American Political Science Review.

Ramirez is the author of “Mobilizing Opportunities: The Evolving Latino Electorate and the Future of American Politics” (2013). His broad research interests include political behavior, state and local politics, and the politics of race and ethnicity. He is principal investigator of a longitudinal study of gendered career paths among Latina/o elected officials since 1990 and co-editor of “Transforming Politics, Transforming America: The Political and Civic Incorporation of Immigrants in the United States.” His recent writings include “Mobilization en Español: Spanish-language Radio and the Activation of Political Identities,” “Transnational Stakeholders: Latin American Migrant Transnationalism and Civic Engagement in the United States,” "Why California Matters: How California Latinos Influence the Presidential Election,” “Political Protest, Ethnic Media and Latino Naturalization” and “Latinos during the 2006 Immigration Protest Rallies.”

Wolbrecht is the author of “The Politics of Women’s Rights: Parties, Positions, and Change” (2000), which received the 2001 Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the Political Organizations and Parties Section of the APSA, and co-editor of “The Politics of Democratic Inclusion” (2005) and “Political Women and American Democracy” (2008). She is currently engaged in several collaborative projects: using new ecological inference techniques to investigate women’s voting behavior after suffrage, examining the impact of public policy debates on attitudes about homosexuality, and explaining the changing positions of the American political parties on education policy.

The event will be televised by C-SPAN as part of its February programming.

Contact: Arnel Bulaoro, 574-631-9475, abulaoro@nd.edu