He studied in hallowed halls of academia. His highly respected research takes him halfway around the globe into societies both foreign and familiar. In his newest role, he leads the largest school of a research university less than two decades old but soaring in reputation and influence.
Yet if you ask Leo Arriola about his journey, he uses a surprising word.
“I’m accidental in every possible way,” he said. “Professor. Administrator. Statistically, I shouldn’t be in this position.”
As he said this, Arriola smiled — something he does a lot. It’s a welcoming smile, an invitation to appreciate, as he certainly does, the remarkable trajectory of his life.
“He’s very charismatic, very motivating,” said a longtime colleague. “He’s someone you want to be around.”
Today, Arriola is the new dean of UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. He came to the Central Valley from UC Berkeley, where he was a senior associate dean in the Social Sciences Division. He is a respected political scientist and a world authority on African governments, the churn of power in multiethnic societies and the struggle for women’s rights. For eight years he served as director of Berkeley’s Center for African Studies.
But to understand the word Arriola uses to describe himself — to sense the profound gratitude he holds for people who stepped up and helped him arrive at where he is today — we need to go back three decades.
A Child of South Gate
In the early 1990s, Arriola was a high school kid in South Gate, a city in southeast Los Angeles tucked between Downey and Huntington Park. The region, called the Gateway Cities, is among the most densely populated in the United States. His school, South Gate High, was forced into a year-round schedule to bear enrollment twice that of its original capacity.
About three-quarters of South Gate’s residents are Hispanic. In the early 1990s the poverty rate was three times higher than the U.S. average. Median household income hovered around $20,000.
In April of 1992, the year Arriola graduated from high school, the riots triggered by the acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King erupted across south central and southeast Los Angeles. He remembers skies black with smoke and armored National Guard vehicles on the streets.
“It felt like my community was tearing itself apart,” he said. The lessons of a diverse democracy’s fragility resonated in his research decades later.
Even for a bright student, life in the Gateway offered a narrow path to a successful college education. Only about one in 10 adult residents of South Gate achieved a bachelor’s degree, according to U.S. Census data. Young people with potential needed a supportive gesture or a challenge to act.
Arriola said that’s exactly what happened.
When he was the editor of the high school newspaper, his adviser, Marilyn Lund, let him take home one of the paper’s Mac laptops on weekends. In his senior year, a counselor, Shirley Shelly, urged him to aim high with his college applications. He was accepted to Claremont McKenna College, a nationally respected private liberal arts institution.
(Side note: Claremont McKenna ranked fifth in this year’s Wall Street Journal latest college rankings, the same list that placed UC Merced 18th overall and first in social mobility.)
His senior thesis at Claremont McKenna attracted the attention of Professor Phillip Koldewyn, who urged him to pursue graduate studies. Soon after that, with a bachelor’s degree in history and international relations in hand along with magna cum laude honors, he was bound for Princeton University.
Love and Support From a Single Parent
Arriola earned a master’s degree in international relations from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs.
“All along, people planted ideas in my head that I never would have come up with myself,” Arriola said. “So those are all accidental kinds of things. I have such gratitude because someone always gave me a helping hand at critical moments in my trajectory.”
All along the way, Arriola had the love and support of his mother, Silvia, who raised Arriola as a single parent. At age 13, she came to the United States from Mexico. At first, she made money by cleaning homes and restaurants. A few years later, she attended night school to learn English and attain the skills to use a computer and work as a secretary. Arriola was born when she was 18.
“She didn’t have the opportunity for a public education. I was profoundly lucky growing up in L.A. to have opportunities she didn’t as a child,” Arriola said.
Silvia Arriola fostered in her son a commitment to keep pushing forward. “I had to because I had no options,” he said. “My mother had this expression she would say in Spanish — I’m going to translate it roughly – ‘You have to work hard because don’t have a mattress to fall on.’”
His next academic stop would be Stanford University for a Ph.D. in political science. But before that happened, while still at Princeton, he took a side trip that changed everything — a one-year fellowship through Tuskegee University to work in Senegal. He was placed in an office operated by the United Nations that provided training for civil servants from across Africa.
So Different, Yet So Alike
He was the only American in the office, working with people who had lived through coups, civil wars and political upheaval as decades of European colonization released its grip on the continent.
The son of a Mexican immigrant — he said the biggest culture shock of his life was in his first days at Claremont McKenna because hardly anyone spoke Spanish — found himself drawn to a world seven time zones from Southern California where nearly everything was different but humanity was interchangeable.
“It reinforced in me that, at our core, people are the same. We have the same motivations, the same desires,” Arriola said. “I wanted to keep going back to Africa. And you know, that’s exactly what happened.”
In more than 15 years of research, he has been to 13 African nations and written about seven of them. His award-winning work has been published in flagship political science journals and in books published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press.
His earliest work investigated the intricacies of patronage and atrocities of violence in the name of keeping or wresting away political power. He published papers about building coalitions in multiethnic societies and suppressing political dissent. A 2013 book, “Multiethnic Coalitions in Africa,” was named the year’s best by the African politics group of the American Political Science Association.
Arriola’s recent work includes inquiries into women’s paths to political office and their struggles for social equality. This year, he co-edited and co-wrote “Policymakers’ Abortion Preferences,” in which Zambia exemplifies the effort to broaden access to legal abortion in a patriarchal and economically unequal nation.
It reinforced in me that, at our core, people are the same. We have the same motivations, the same desires. I wanted to keep going back to Africa. And you know, that’s exactly what happened.”
“In poor countries with restricted access to safe abortions, many women resort to unsafe methods. That's why you have high maternal mortality in many of these countries,” Arriola said. “In a country like Zambia, which is considered more liberal by regional standards, you used to have to get three doctor’s signatures to get an abortion. How was the average woman going to satisfy those legal demands?”
At Berkeley, Focusing on 'Win-Win'
Arriola joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2007. A dozen years later he became an associate dean of the Social Sciences Division, working on faculty merit and promotion cases, allocating academic funding across departments and supervising interdisciplinary programs. In that role, he worked closely in the dean’s office with Holli Strauss, assistant dean for finance and administration.
“We worked on anything that went through the dean’s office, from soup to nuts,” said Strauss, the co-worker who described Arriola as motivating and charismatic. “It could be policy. It could be external relations. It could be an HR matter or the budget.”
When opposing opinions arose on an important issue, Strauss said Arriola would focus on the “win-win” — zeroing in on common goals and how to achieve them. Along the way, he strove to be transparent and share information to help people make informed decisions.
“After you meet with Leo you’re ready to go,” said Strauss, who earlier this year became UC’s executive director of systemwide human relations finance and administration. “You’re ready to take on whatever you’ve been talking about and he’s ready to be your partner.”
Arriola’s first few weeks at UC Merced reinforced his early impressions of the campus community’s dedication to student success.
“They understand the assignment,” he said. “People believe UC Merced can do something special for the Central Valley.”
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Betsy Dumont said she is “excited about Leo’s experience and clear vision for supporting SSHA faculty, staff and students. His fresh perspective is a fantastic contribution to the Deans’ Council and will benefit the whole campus.”
Rebecca Smith, assistant dean for personnel for the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, said she is “absolutely thrilled” to have Arriola as SSHA dean.
“His energy and enthusiasm are infectious, and his ideas for advancing SSHA, while respecting its past, have clear and attainable goals.”
Dalia Magaña Villalobos, a professor of Spanish linguistics, said Arriola’s commitment to inclusivity and equity will inspire the university and its surrounding community. Public Health Professor Sidra Goldman-Mellor said the new dean will balance SSHA’s research and teaching missions as the university strives to earn Carnegie R1 research status.
Arriola himself offered a clear goal: “I want SSHA to be the liberal arts college of the Central Valley. Whatever town or city you come from, this is where you can learn to better understand yourself and your place in this world.”
