Professor Carrasco is proud to be the Faculty Fellow of the Harvard Men’s Basketball Team. He holds the Neil L. Rudenstine Endowed Chair in the Study of Latin America in the Harvard Divinity School and the Department of Anthropology. He descends from several generations of Mexican American teachers and his father was the first Mexican American to be a head basketball coach at a major university in the U.S, American University in Washington, D.C. Carrasco grew up playing basketball and witnessed the contested racial integration of college basketball in Washington D.C. when African Americans Dick Wells, Willie Jones and James Howell broke the color line (1956-60) and led Coach Carrasco’s teams to three Mason-Dixon and Eastern Regional championships.
Professor Carrasco is an award winning teacher and author, has participated in public dialogues about race, Latinos, the new demography and a new democracy with Cornel West, Toni Morrison and Samuel P. Huntington. Carrasco recently appeared in two documentaries, Gary Glassman’s “Native America” and in Timothy Greenfield Sanders’ film, “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I AM.” He is the Editor in Chief of the award winning Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. He received the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest decoration awarded by the Mexican government to foreign nationals and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He actively supports Coach Tommy Amaker’s “Teach, Lead, Serve” educational philosophy.
