Rate My Professor Jack Forbes

Jack Forbes served as an assistant professor of history at San Fernando Valley State College, now California State University, Northridge, in the early 1960s, marking the beginning of his distinguished academic career in the History department. He earned an associate degree in political science from Glendale College in 1953, a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Southern California in 1955, a master's degree in history from USC in 1956, and a doctorate in history and anthropology from USC in 1959. Forbes also taught at the University of Nevada, Reno during this period. His research specializations centered on Native American ethnohistory, the historical interactions between African Americans and Native Americans, indigenous cultures across the Americas, and critiques of colonialism and imperialism. Among his key publications are Apache, Navaho and Spaniard (1960, reprinted 1994), Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism (1978, reissued 1992 and 2008), Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples (1993), Only Approved Indians: Stories (1995), Red Blood: A Novel of the Life of a Powhatan Woman (1997), and The American Discovery of Europe (2007). These works established him as a pioneering scholar in interdisciplinary Native American studies.

In 1969, Forbes joined the University of California, Davis, where he was instrumental in founding the Native American Studies program—one of the first at a major university—developing it into a full department, and serving as its chairman until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1994, after which he continued teaching until 2009. He co-founded D-Q University, California's first tribal college, in 1971 near Davis, serving on its board and volunteering as a faculty member for over 25 years until its closure in 2005. Forbes held prestigious visiting appointments, including Fulbright Professor at the University of Warwick (1980-81), Tinbergen Chair at Erasmus University Rotterdam (1984), and visiting scholar at Oxford University and the University of Essex (1985-86). He delivered guest lectures across countries such as Russia, Japan, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Switzerland, and Norway. His contributions earned him the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1997, Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year in prose nonfiction in 1999, and Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas in 2009. Forbes's scholarship profoundly shaped Native American studies, advocating for indigenous self-determination, accurate multicultural histories, and the establishment of Native-led higher education institutions.