Professor Camp was born in Colfax, Washington, to Ortho O. Camp, a small businessman, and Helen Camp, a counselor. He was a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps He and his wife, librarian Emily Ellen Morse married October 1, 1966. They have two children: Christopher, Alexander.[3]
Camp graduated with both a bachelor's degree (1963–66) and a master's degree in International Affairs (1966–67) from George Washington University and completed a doctorate degree in Comparative Politics and History at the University of Arizona (1967–70).[2] He tracks his interest in Mexican topics back to his years growing up among Mexican immigrants in Orange, a small citrus farming community outside Los Angeles.[7]
He started his academic career at Central College in Iowa and later joined the Department of Political Science at Tulane University in 1991. He has also worked as a visiting scholar at El Colegio de México, as a fellow and member of the advisory board of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and as an adjunct fellow of the Mexico Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Over the course of his studies he has received a Fulbright Fellowship on three occasions, two major grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and a Howard Heinz Foundation fellowship.[5]
