Imanol Ordorika Sacristán

Since 2007 Imanol Ordorika is General Director for Institutional Assessment (Director General de Evaluación Institucional) at UNAM. Here has been in charge of the design and development of the Mexican Universities Comparative Study.

During the 2000 presidential electoral campaign, Ordorika was appointed spokesperson and campaign head of communications for left wing candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. After the elections and the 2001 PRD congress Ordorika abandoned this party and exercised a strong critique against its bureaucratic trends and centrist political positions.

Ordorika obtained Master in Arts degrees in education (1993) and sociology (1998) as well as a Ph.D degree in social sciences and education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education (1999). He has been a full professor at UNAM since 2002. Ordorika is a faculty member and higher education specialist in Mexico and abroad. He has written extensively on power relations and politics within postsecondary institutions, faculty and student movements, higher education policy and on the impact of globalization on colleges and universities. In 2004 Ordorika received the Frank Talbott Jr. Visiting University Chair from the University of Virginia and in 2006 he was awarded the Alfonso Reyes Chaire des Etudes Mexicaines by the University of Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle). He is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and attained the highest level (III) of the National Researchers System (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores).

Ordorika majored in physics at the Facultad de Ciencias in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1991. It is during his student days in the 1980s that he became a militant of the Mexican revolutionary left (izquierda revolucionaria) through the Comité Estudiantil de Solidaridad Obrero Campesina (CESOC) and as a member of Revista Punto Critico, a marxist organization and journal founded by the leaders of the 1968 Mexican student movement, and later Convergencia Comunista 7 de enero (CC7). He became an important student leader and representative to UNAM's University Council and gained national prominence with the creation of the Consejo Estudiantil Universitario in 1986.

He was one of the founder and leaders of newly formed left wing party Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), led by Cárdenas. Ordorika was a member of PRD's National Committee from 1990 to 1995. In 1994 he ran as this party's candidate for Federal Congress in Mexico City district XXII.

In 1988 Ordorika, Santos and Imaz led Mexican university students to support Cuauhtemoc Cardenas' independent presidential candidacy against the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional's Carlos Salinas. For this purpose they created the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) notably featuring Adolfo Gilly, Salvador Martínez della Rocca, Enrique González Rojo, Raul Alvarez Garin and others.

As a student member of the Council first, and with the Consejo Estudiantil, starting on October 31, 1986, Ordorika rejected structural adjustment policies affecting Mexican universities and, more concretely, attempts to increase tuition, restrictive student selection policies and standardized testing, proposed by rector Jorge Carpizo McGregor, at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Ordorika participated in public debates (diálogos públicos) between UNAM administrators and student leaders at the Che Guevara/Justo Sierra auditorium, transmitted live by university radio and featured prominently by the Mexican media in January 1987. During the student strike in February he was one of the selected spokespersons until CEU defeated Carpizo's structural adjustment reforms.

Ordorika started his studies in physics at Facultad de Ciencias in 1974, but after 15 years he failed and joined CEU. In 1989 he became adjunct professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas at UNAM. From 1988 to 1990 he was elected member of the organizing committee for the University Congress at this university. In 1990, he was elected faculty representative to the University Congress. From 2004 to 2008 he was faculty representative to the university senate at UNAM.

Imanol Ordorika Sacristán (born in Mexico City, October 31, 1958) is a Mexican social activist, political leader, academic and intellectual. He was one of the initiators and principal leaders of the Consejo Estudiantil Universitario (University Student Council) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM), with Carlos Imaz Gispert and Antonio Santos Romero, from 1986 to 1990. A founder and prominent member of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) until 2001. Professor of social sciences and education at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Ordorika is an active participant in the Mexican political debate as well as an Op-ed writer for La Jornada and other Mexican media.

Imanol Ordorika Sacristan was born in Mexico City on October 31, 1958. His father is the renown Mexican architect Imanol Ordorika Bengoechea (1931-1988) and Maria Josefa Sacristan (born 1936). Both of his parents originally hail from Spain; his father was born in Lekeitio, Biscay, while his mother was born in Madrid. Ordorika is the grandson of renown economist and politician Antonio Sacristán Colás. His parents and grandparents established in Mexico as refugees from the Spanish Civil War since 1939. As part of a progressive family he became acquainted with the ideals of Spanish left wing republicanism, with the Cuban Revolution, and with the 1968 Mexican student movement, since his early childhood.