On October 25th, Hunter College and the Department of Film and Media Studies held a memorial for Blanca Vázquez, a long-serving adjunct professor in the department who understood that, done right, education is a subversive act. Knowledge empowers people, and an analytic mind can be a weapon in the fight against injustice.
Professor Vázquez began teaching at Hunter in 2005, and in 2018 she was recognized with the prestigious Hunter College Insdorf Presidential Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching. In the classroom, she was energetic and engaged, meeting students where they were, as dedicated to understanding their realities as she was to teaching. She was also the founder and editor of the Puerto Rican academic journal CENTRO, a devoted PSC CUNY organizer for the rights of part-time CUNY faculty, and a co-director of the Aronson Awards for Social Journalism.
Prof. Vázquez joined the Aronson Awards committee in 2006, and was instrumental in guiding its decision-making for the rest of her time at Hunter. Along with faculty including David Alm, Tami Gold, Sissel McCarthy, and Peter Parisi, as well as others outside of Hunter, Vázquez read hundreds of long, investigative articles and series to select a small number of winners each year. They represented outlets ranging from the New York Times and the The New Yorker to small, alternative newsweeklies around the country.
Prof. Vázquez migrated from Puerto Rico in the 1950s and grew up in Brooklyn with her mother and three sisters. Her father drove a cab, and her mother worked in a factory. As a student at City College, during an era of global anti-colonial struggles, heavy protesting against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and campus takeovers defending a then tuition-free City University of New York, Vázquez’s consciousness of class struggle and the colonialism that had displaced hundreds of thousands of families like hers from Puerto Rico took shape.
Her relationship with Hunter College began in the 1970s with the struggle to create the Center for Puerto Rican Studies – a fight she participated in with hundreds of CUNY students and faculty. Vázquez often spoke about this experience as the foundation of her revolutionary spirit.
Out of this struggle, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies was born. In 1987 Vázquez became the founding editor of CENTRO, an academic journal devoted to Puerto Rican Studies, and served in this role until 1997. Under her leadership the journal became the only US publication specifically devoted to the Puerto Rican lived experience.
Prof. Vázquez retired from teaching in 2020, but remained a presence in the department through her tireless commitment to Hunter students.
This article was adapted from a post following Professor Vázquez’s death in June.
