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by Katy Davidson"People treat me differently when they find out I'm a professor," said Elliott Young, whose appearance could resemble that of a Lewis & Clark undergraduate.
However, Young, the 30-year-old history and Latin American studies professor who slipped onto the LC scene this year after Todd Little-Siebold's stormy departure, has shown his youthful appearance can be deceiving. Underneath the skin, Young is truly an experienced individual in knowledge, travel, and determination.
Young said he first discovered LC when he was getting his doctorate at the University of Texas in Austin. While looking for a job after graduation, he visited LC and got a "good impression of the way students interacted with the faculty."
Young grew up and went to school in New York City, then decided to attend college at Princeton. He said his interest in Latin America was originally piqued during his undergraduate years because of all the military imbalance occurring in El Salvador and Nicaragua at the time. Young lived in Nicaragua during 1989-90 to work on a development project and did his thesis about Paraguay.
"Latin American history was a way to get a better perspective on the United States," he said. Young said his interest in the relationship between Latin America and the US eventually led him to focus his studies on the borders.
After he graduated from Princeton, Young worked in Brooklyn as a labor organizer, then was fired because he tried to set up a union within the union.
He went from this job to a year of teaching high school in Brooklyn, as well. "Very little of that job seemed to be about education. It was more about policing," Young said. "I'm not a very good cop." Young said he found his niche in teaching college students because they are self-motivated; there is not a lot of emphasis on discipline.
Young said some of his most life-altering experiences happened during his travels in Latin America. "Living in Mexico was a big shock coming from New York City," he said.
He has become well known for his work with the Zapatistas, the autonomist democratic indigenous group which begun in Chiapas. He was living and working in Mexico when the movement began in 1994-95, so he said "to ignore what was going on seemed crazy." Young said he would leave the archives where he was studying about the revolutions of the early 1900s, then walk outside and see history in the making.
Though much of his free time is spent on his political activities, Young also watches movies, fixes up his new house, and plays with his dog "Perdido." He said it has been an advantage for him fit in visually with the students. He said he also likes being called "Elliott" instead of "Dr. Young" because his father is a doctor and he thinks people are talking about his dad when they call him by his formal title.
Young is an "eternal optimist about the possibility for change," but he believes people must come together to make create that change. "Things are definitely changing," he said. "This is not the end of history. Systems come and go. I encourage people to join and make those changes."
