Juan González

During a career of more than 35 years, Juan González has become one of the nation’s best-known Latino journalists. A staff columnist for New York’s Daily News since 1987, he has also been co-host for the past 18 years of Democracy Now!, a daily morning news show that airs on more than 1,300 public and community radio stations in the US and Latin America.

Gonzalez’s investigative reports on urban affairs, the labor movement, the environment, race relations and political troubles in Latin America have won widespread recognition, including two George Polk awards for commentary and a 2004 Leadership Award from the National Hispanic Heritage Foundation.

He has authored four books, including Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. First published 15 years ago, Harvest has become one of the most popular introductions to Latino history on US college campuses, and a documentary feature film based on the book and narrated by González was released in 2012.

Among his three other books are, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, and Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. He is currently completing a study of the new populist movements that have come to power in various American cities.

One of the original founders of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), González served as the association’s president from 2002-2004 and was elected to its Hall of Fame in 2008.

Even before he entered journalism, González distinguished himself as a leader of the Young Lords, a militant civil rights organization of the late 1960s, and of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights in the 1970s.

Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, he was raised in East Harlem and Brooklyn, New York. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University, has been a visiting professor in public policy at Brooklyn College.

Andrés Bello Chair In Latin American Cultures And Civilizations

Officially inaugurated in December, 2001, the Andrés Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations was established at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, thanks to an extraordinary gift from the CITGO Petroleum Corporation, the American subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela. The endowed Chair honors one of the greatest political and intellectual figures of the American hemisphere, the Venezuelan-born humanist, poet, scholar, diplomat, and public intellectual Andrés Bello (1781-1865). Essayist, historian, and linguistic and legal scholar, Bello wrote poetry, history, legal works, and was a remarkable scholar of the Spanish language. As a philologist, he compiled one of the most important Spanish modern grammars for the Americas. Andrés Bello is also remembered as the founder of the University of Chile and a great promulgator Chile’s Civil Code.

The Chair allows the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center to bring to NYU leading scholars of Latin American culture as visiting professors and researchers, and to support conferences and public lectures centered on the Andrés Bello Professorship.

In addition to being a major educational and scholarly resource, the Andrés Bello Chair is a sign of New York University’s longstanding commitment to promoting interdisciplinary research and teaching on contemporary Latin America cultures and civilizations.

ATRIUM: Voices from the KJCC

In April 2022, NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center turned 25. To commemorate this milestone, we produced ATRIUM: Voices from the KJCC, an oral history project that captures memories of the KJCC through the recorded testimonies of our past Chairs going as far back as the ’80s, before the Center was as we know it today: a robust cultural and educational institution that hosts both the Andrés Bello and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chairs.

Below we present a historic reel with the voices of some of our interviewees for the project:

You can also watch the individual interviews of the series here.

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In Residence

Juan González

Past Events