President Obama awards history Professor Teofilo Ruiz the National Humanities Medal
Professor Teofilo Ruiz received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama earlier this month. The award recognized his lifelong academic studies and his commitment to teaching.
By Eitan Arom
Feb. 22, 2012 12:57 a.m.
As he shook hands with President Barack Obama, Teofilo Ruiz leaned in to give him a message: “Michelle rocks!”
The UCLA history professor and the president shared a laugh, and Obama proceeded to drape a red medal around his neck, both men smiling throughout.
Ruiz was one of nine scholars who received the National Humanities Medal in a ceremony that took place earlier this month at the White House. He received the award for “his inspired teaching and writing,” as well as “his long examination of how society has coped with terror,” according to a White House press release.
Following the ceremony, Ruiz, his wife and son proceeded downstairs to take a picture with the president and first lady Michelle Obama. During the ensuing banter, Ruiz invited the president to come to Los Angeles and offered to cook him a meal.
“It would be a very elaborate meal,” Ruiz said. “I’m a fairly dedicated cook. I would either do arroz con pollo (chicken and rice, cooked in beer) or lamb chops with kale.”
Though Ruiz has won many awards and grants, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, an exclusive research grant, none have quite measured up to this one, he said.
“Meeting the president raises the stakes very considerably,” he said. “I think this is probably the biggest award I will ever get in my life.”
Ruiz said that the award is important not only for the scholars that receive it but also for the study of the humanities.
“The humanities are under attack in this country and throughout the Western world,” he said. “So this is a way of saying that the humanities matter.”
While his research focuses on the history of medieval and early modern Spain, Ruiz’s most recent work, “The Terror of History,” deals with the human condition and the struggle to deal with terror through religion, materialism and aesthetics.
At the ceremony at the White House, Ruiz was acknowledged for providing “important lessons about the dark side of Western progress.”
In addition to his scholarship, Ruiz was proud that the award recognized his teaching and commitment to students, he said. Aaron Moreno, one of Ruiz’s graduate students, said the honor was well-deserved.
“The thing (Ruiz is) best at is getting students excited not only about history but also about learning,” Moreno said. “One of his mantras is that it’s not about the grade, it’s about the learning.”
Third-year history student Evan Friscia, who took Ruiz’s class on the history of the Iberian Peninsula, said the professor’s enthusiasm for teaching translates into his lecture style.
“He would take breaks, he would make jokes, he would interact with the students,” Friscia said. “I’ve never had a professor like that.”
Some of the stunts that Ruiz has performed in class include teaching for the first 20 minutes wearing a cape in a darkened lecture hall lit by candles.
On a different occasion, he wrote his name on the board as “Stephen Dedalus” and began to lecture about James Joyce’s novel, “Ulysses.” Upon being informed by the students that the class was actually a history course, he packed up and left.
“Then I pop into the class five minutes later and say, “˜First two lessons: Don’t believe anything you read, don’t believe anything you hear,'” Ruiz said.
Ruiz admits that his lecture style is anything but traditional.
“The teachers I admire the most were the ones who stood behind a lectern and delivered the magisterial lecture. But I don’t have that ability,” he said. “So what I do is I go crazy in the classroom. I convey that I am deeply engaged with what I am doing.”
Ruiz’s passion for teaching dates back to his upbringing in Cuba, where nine of his aunts were school teachers. During the uprising against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, Ruiz performed odd tasks for the revolution, acting as a courier for guns and painting revolutionary messages on walls, among other jobs.
“I was swept by the revolution,” he said. “It had a tremendous impact on my life and my upbringing and my point of view, and it still does.”
After he broke from the revolution, Ruiz was arrested and subsequently immigrated to the United States. Arriving in Miami, he had $45, three changes of clothing, a box of Cuban cigars and a copy of Jacob Burckhardt’s “The Age of Constantine the Great,” he said.
He moved to New York and applied for a teaching job at Washington Irving High School, where he was turned down because of his accent. Ruiz said the director who interviewed him told him to get a doctorate and teach in college, where his accent would not matter.
Ruiz came to UCLA in 1998, after teaching at Brooklyn College, the City University of New York Graduate Center, Princeton University, the University of Michigan and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.
Located on the sixth floor of Bunche Hall, Ruiz’s office is covered with books, papers and collected trinkets and artifacts that convey a personal connection to the history that he teaches. Nearly everybody that walks by his office stops simply to say hello or wish him well.
“I am right across from the bathroom, so they stop by,” Ruiz said.
David Myers, chair of the history department, said that Ruiz’s colleagues appreciate him for his kind and caring nature.
“He’s the most generous, ebullient, fun-loving colleague I know, plain and simple. Teo is a unique phenomenon in the annals of academia and the profession of history,” Myers said. “He’s an extraordinary scholar, a legendary teacher, and he’s the most devoted colleague and citizen of the university you could imagine.”
