Lasting Memories

Ronald Hilton
1912-Feb. 20, 2007
Stanford, California

Ronald Hilton, a Stanford University professor emeritus of Romance languages who founded journals to follow world affairs, died at his campus home Feb. 20. He was 95. Hilton retired from teaching in 1976.

He founded the California Institute of International Studies in 1965 and began publishing and editing its journal, World Affairs Report, a quarterly featuring essays and articles on world events.

Earlier, he founded the Institute of Hispanic American and Luso-Brazilian Studies at Stanford in 1948 which published the monthly Hispanic American Report, one of the first journals about events in Latin-American countries.

Hilton was born in England and spent much of his 20s in Spain in the time leading up to that country's civil war. "I was evacuated (in 1936) during the early days of the civil war, in which some of my best friends were killed on the right or on the left," he once wrote. "I am one of the very few people who lived through the Republican period and who knew most of the leading intellectuals."

Hilton returned to England and received a master's degree from Oxford University in 1936. He moved to California in 1937 after winning a Commonwealth Fund Scholarship to study at the University of California-Berkeley.

He began his teaching career at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and joined the Stanford faculty in 1942.

After Hilton returned from a research trip to Guatemala, his journal, Hispanic American Report, published a story in November 1960 about U.S. plans to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro, which was attempted in the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. But the media never picked up on the plans of the pending invasion.

Hilton also edited several books, including "Who's Who in Latin America."

He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Mary; a daughter, Mary Huyck of Greenwich, Conn.; and three grandchildren.