Janet Murguía

Part cheerleader, part activist, part visionary, you have since 2005 headed UnidosUS, formerly known as The National Council of La Raza—the country’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. Your three hundred community-based affiliates have helped more than one and a half million immigrants to apply for citizenship and have registered hundreds of thousands of voters. With passion and stamina, you have advanced your community’s causes through frequent media appearances and in testimony before Congress. At a time when it seems almost impossible to do so, you have worked effectively across the aisle. And at a time when it is unpopular to do so, you have been unafraid to call out publically your allies. Your work to remove barriers and expand opportunities has been inspired by the experience of your own family. Your parents arrived in this country with no money and little education; you have been named one of Washingtonian Magazine’s “100 Most Powerful Women in Washington.” The exhortation you have for your own community applies equally to our nation as a whole—that “a bright future awaits us if we dare to claim it.”

I hereby declare you recipient of the honorary degree Doctor of Laws, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.

June 3, 2018