Cat Cardenas

For the last 20 years, Dr. Felipe Hinojosa has dedicated his life to the study of history. But earlier this year, he actually helped make it. In July 2023, the South Texas native was appointed the first John and Nancy Jackson Endowed Chair for Baylor in Latin America, a milestone that made him the university’s first historian of Latino history. It’s an especially remarkable accomplishment when you consider that Hinojosa nearly talked himself out of the job… twice. After delivering a keynote address at a conference for the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education in February 2023, Hinojosa was approached by Baylor University administrators who wanted to encourage him to apply to the newly opened endowed chair position. At the time, he had been a professor of history at Texas A&M for 14 years and had published two books on the intersection of faith and Latino activism.