He received his Ph. D. in Romance Linguistics from the University of Washington and now he is Professor Emeritus of the Ph. D. Program in Hispanic Studies, Graduate Center of The City University of New York (CUNY) and Co-Chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Latin America. He was awarded the Congressional Medal and the Order of Merit of Peru, the Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the National Universities of Athens (Greece), Federico Villarreal and Enrique Guzmán y Valle of Peru. Furthermore he is numerary member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language and the Academia Peruana de la Lengua. He is also corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Spain (RAE) and of the Academia Cubana de la Lengua. Likewise he is honorary professor of the Universities of San Marcos and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. For several years he was President of the International Linguistic Association (ILA), Chairman of the Council, International League for Human Rights (Consultant Agency with the United Nations). member of its Board of Regents and its Representative to the United Nations. He was also Minister Counselor of the Peruvian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and member of the Joint Committee on Latin-American Studies of the Social Sciences Research Council of the Council of Learned Societies. Since 1976 he is editor of the Boletín of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, and since 1984 coeditor of Word, quarterly journal of the ILA. Some of his numerous books are Entre dos fuegos. Reminiscencias de Europa y Asia (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2009); Una vida agónica. V. R. Haya de la Torre (2007); Entre dos fuegos. Reminiscencias de las Américas y Asia (2005); Modernidad y culturas americanas. Antenor Orrego (2004) ; and Manuel Seoane. Páginas escogidas (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2003); besides Latinoamérica: su civilización y su cultura, 4th ed. (Boston: Thompson & Heinle, 2008; Korean version, Seul, Korea, 2000; & Chinese Translation by Bai Fengsen, Zhao Deming, et al. Beijing, 1990); APRA and the Democratic Challenge in Peru (New York: The Bildner Center, CUNY., 1988), Opciones políticas peruanas, 2nd ed. (Trujillo: Normas Legales, Peru, 1987), and Poética e ideología en Mariátegui (Madrid: Porrúa Turanzas, 1983). He is also coauthor of the Frequency Dictionary of Spanish Words (La Hague-London-Paris: Mouton, 1964) and the Collins Spanish Dictionary. Unabridged (New York: Harper/Collins, 1990).