Howard Jordán is an educator, attorney, journalist, and political activist. He is a tenured Professor and former Chair of the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx and teaches Public Administration, Criminal Justice and Legal Studies.
He has a distinguished record of public service. From 1987 to 1991, he served as Executive Director of the New York State Assembly Task Force on Immigration, a 25-Assembly member commission addressing regional immigration issues. He also worked as: Legislative Assistant to former New York Governor Mario Cuomo's Advisory Committee on Hispanic Affairs; at Harlem Legal Services, Inc.; and the law firm of Franco & Anderson. He is a graduate of Yale University and New York Law School. During 1996-97, he was a Charles Revson Fellow at Columbia University, researching the “relationships between communities of color.”
Howard Jordán has also been a long-time contributor to the New York alternative media. He was the Editorial Page Editor of The Latino News, the first effort to establish a Latino interest English language newspaper in New York. For several years he appeared as a regular columnist for Hoy, a Spanish daily and as a bi-monthly guest contributor to New York Newsday. In 1994 he co-founded along with political scientist Angelo Falcon, Critica: A Journal on Puerto Rican Politics and Policy, and served as its first managing editor. For the last ten years he was the host of The Jordan Journal on WBAI-99.5FM in New York City.
Jordan has an extensive history of activism. In the early eighties he was a founder of Latinos United for Political Action (LUPA), an organization dedicated to electing progressives to political office. Along with the late Richie Perez, he was also a founder of the Latino Coalition for Racial Justice, committed to combating police brutality in New York. In 1987, he chaired The Latino Rights Project, an organization dedicated to servicing victims of racial violence and police misconduct.
During his college years Jordan directed Despierta Boricua, the Puerto Rican student organization at Yale University and today continues this work as a member of the Latino Yale Alumni Association (LYAA). He is also active in the Afro-Latino movement in New York assisting in promoting and recognizing the African heritage of Latino communities.
During the height of racial apartheid in South Africa, Jordán founded Latinos for A Free South Africa, bringing together Latinos of every stripe to combat this invidious segregation. As Director of the NYS Assembly Immigration Task Force he also spearheaded the release of the first report on Dominican immigrants in the United States and organized the first Puerto Rican-Dominican Dialogue in New York, sponsored by the National Institute for Latino Policy and Alianza Dominicana (at that time the largest Dominican social service agency in the United States).
As he reflects back on his life and modest contributions, Jordan’s greatest source of pride is his ongoing efforts to build bridges between diverse communities. He often remarks, “Our enemy is disunity and divisiveness --- the key to any real change --- un cambio de verdad --- is the ability of our communities and their progressive leadership to transcend their particular arena of struggle and join in a broader movement for social justice.”
