Luis Ricardo Fraga

Biography

Luis Ricardo Fraga is the Rev. Donald P. McNeill, C.S.C., Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership, Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He received his A.B. cum laude from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Rice University. His primary interests are in American politics where he specializes in Latino politics, the politics of race and ethnicity, immigration policy, educational politics, voting rights policy, and urban politics. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six books. His most recent co-edited book is Latinos and the 2016 Election: Latino Resistance and the Election of Donald Trump (Michigan State University Press 2020). He has two other recent co-authored books: Latinos in the New Millennium: An Almanac of Opinion, Behavior, and Policy Preferences (Cambridge University Press 2012) and Latino Lives in America: Making It Home (Temple University Press 2010). In 2010 he also published United States Government: Principles in Practice (Holt McDougal 2010), a high school textbook. His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, and The Journal of Politics. He is currently completing two coauthored book manuscripts: Invisible No More: Latino Identities in American Politics and America at Its Best: The 1975 Voting Rights Act.

He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford University and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. He has served as Vice President and as Secretary of the American Political Science Association. He has also served as President of the Western Political Science Association. He has received over twenty awards for his research, teaching, advising and mentoring. In 2011 President Barack Obama named him to the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics where he served as co-chair of the Postsecondary Education Subcommittee. Hispanic Business magazine named him one of the top “100 Influentials” in that same year. He received the Lifetime Achievement for Excellence in Community Service Award from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). In 2019 he received the Norton Long Career Achievement Award of the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

On leave Fall 2025 and Spring 2026