For decades, Cesar Chavez has been honored at UC Berkeley as a symbol of resistance, dignity and Latinx political power. Now, new sexual abuse allegations are prompting faculty to reexamine that legacy and to ask what happens when a movement's hero becomes an apparent source of harm.
In response, Berkeley Social Sciences and Chicanx Latinx Studies Program faculty are supporting UC Berkeley's efforts to review the naming of the Cesar Chavez Student Center, and faculty are reframing the conversation around accountability, representation and public memory.
The push at Berkeley is part of a wider reckoning unfolding across California, where state lawmakers are seeking to rename Cesar Chavez Day to Farmworkers Day, and other institutions are confronting how to reconcile with a historical figure who is deeply tied to the state.
Berkeley Social Sciences and Chicanx Latinx Studies Program faculty say the allegations have triggered urgent conversations about leadership, accountability and how history is told.
"This was news to me and to every single person I have spoken to whether they were oral history interviewees or labor scholars," said Christian Paiz, an Ethnic Studies professor whose research focuses on the United Farm Workers. "Historians have largely recognized Chavez's failures and shortcomings, but sexual abuse and rape were not part of such recognition. Even the historians who have written acerbic biographies of Chavez did not cover this."
Paiz said the reaction among his students has been intense and varied.
"A range of reactions: devastation, despair and rage of a man abusing women and children," he said. "There is some disbelief and shock. Some of them grew up in farmworker communities, where Chavez was the only symbol of Latinx Civil Rights. They are reeling from the news."
Lorena Oropeza, Ethnic Studies chair and professor of Chicanx Latinx Studies, described serious accusations against Chavez as both stark and difficult to reconcile.
"Cesar Chavez, as leader of the UFW, brought national attention to Mexican Americans for the first time in our nation's history," she said. "He played an indisputable role in organizing a group of workers that had been impossible to organize beforehand. But Chavez acted in despicable ways that targeted women, the younger the better."
Sociology Professor Cristina Mora, who was a first-generation Latinx student at Cal, said the allegations come at a particularly "fraught" moment for the Latinx community as the ICE raids have stoked fear and disrupted the lives of those in the community.
"It compounds the pain. There is a deep betrayal that is felt by many, including myself," she said. "But it also provides an opportunity to come heal together. We need to reassure our students that despite these issues happening, they still belong here and we still value them."
In their support of campus efforts to rename the student center, Berkeley Social Sciences faculty members sent a letter to UC Berkeley leadership stating: "We firmly believe this renaming must not become an opportunity to erase Latinx spaces or contributions, but rather a meaningful opportunity to center the UCB Latinx community's healing and affirm its continued presence on campus."
Laura Perez, Chicanx Latinx Studies professor and chair of the Latinx Research Center, said removing the name of an individual accused of heinous crimes from a campus building will make it safer for students who may feel traumatized by it.
"It greatly matters that Chavez no longer be honored in the naming of our campus student center given that sexual violence and rape are widespread on college campuses," she said. "To remove Chavez's name from the student center signals that UC Berkeley continues its commitment to making the campus a safer place for youth, women and the LGBTQ+ communities."
University officials said they will soon begin the process of reviewing the naming of the student center. The campus has a denaming process and a separate renaming process.
"We are aware of the serious allegations that have been reported regarding Cesar Chavez," UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore said. "Like many in the community, we are deeply troubled by these reports."
Gilmore noted that UC Berkeley has an established committee that evaluates building names when new information comes to light. "We have used this process multiple times over the years," she said.
Paiz said this moment exposes a deeper issue in how history has been told, taught and remembered.
"One of the key problems is that we have focused too much on this man," Paiz said. "As we move forward, I would hope that history recognizes ordinary people involved in the farmworkers movement. The movement is more than Chavez."
Perez framed the moment as part of a wider push toward accountability.
"As we work as a society towards greater democracy, social justice and respect for each other, we are able to more clearly see, name and hold accountable highly visible figures in our society for their behavior when it is at odds with the values we claim to hold," she said.
Paiz said that there is "an attempt in California to reckon broadly on how we teach history," citing a state mandate on the teaching of Ethnic Studies.
"This is an opportunity for us to reflect on our history as Californians and Americans," Paiz said. "And that history should include more than who leaders and heroes are. It should include why the richest country in the world still has people who are hungry."
He encouraged Berkeley leaders to also respond to the moment by creating more opportunities for undergraduate and graduate research, so that student scholars can continue examining the complexities of history.
Moments like this, Oropeza said, present opportunities for continued scholarship at the Chicanx Latinx Studies Program to examine the complexities of Latinx history.
"I think Chicanx Latinx Studies is the best place to fearlessly grapple with the complexity of history and society while keeping a sharp focus on racial injustice," she said. "If we were only to provide a one-dimensional, bright-eyed understanding of the experience of Latinidad within the United States, why bother with obtaining PhDs or conducting path-breaking research?"
