Lyrianne González is a César Chávez Fellow in Latinx studies at Dartmouth College.
Lyrianne González was on her way to a conference of historians when she first learned that she had been chosen for the César Chávez Fellowship in Latinx studies at Dartmouth College.
“I was just happy and excited when I got the call,” González recalled of the phone call she took at an airport while awaiting a flight to Chicago for the Organization of American Historians’ 2025 conference, where she was set to give a talk about how race affected mid-20th century Mexican and Caribbean guestworkers.
“This is a longstanding fellowship that is seen as very prestigious within our field,” González said.
But in the wake of The New York Times investigation that alleges the late César Chávez – a central figure in the farmworkers movement of the 1960s and 1970s – molested children and raped United Farmworkers co-founder Dolores Huerta, González joined faculty at Dartmouth’s Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies in an effort to get the César Chávez fellowship renamed.
“This news is incredibly disturbing and difficult,” González, who is a fifth-year History Ph.D. candidate minoring in Latino Studies at Cornell University, said in a videoconference interview with The EDU Ledger regarding the Chávez scandal. “It is very important that the name is changed very soon.”
González – whose grandfather picked cotton and various produce through the Bracero program of 1942 – grew up in a home where her mother taught her that Chávez was not the face of Mexican American and farmworkers' rights that he was often made out to be. She came to see Chávez as a problematic and divisive figure who viewed braceros, such as her grandfather, and undocumented immigrant workers as threats who drove down wages and were being used by growers to break strikes.
González says she hopes the César Chávez fellowship at Dartmouth – and other buildings, streets, and the like that were named in honor of Chávez – can be renamed in ways that “still maintain representation of Latinx or farmworker history.” She’s seen recent instances where streets named after Chávez, for example, were simply reverted to their old names.
Dartmouth officials did not respond to a request for comment about the status of the request to rename the fellowship.
The effort to rename the César Chávez fellowship at Dartmouth is just one of a myriad of such episodes that have unfolded on campuses, schools and communities throughout the U.S. since the Chávez scandal broke on March 18.
For instance, campus officials at Fresno State University promptly covered and then ultimately removed a César Chávez statue that once stood in the Fresno State Peace Garden.
The Chicana/o studies department at UCLA voted to remove César E. Chávez from its name, although renaming power belongs to the chancellor, and University of California System President James B. Millikin can choose to rename UCLA properties and programs.
Campus efforts to scrub Chávez’s name and likeness come at a time when the nation remains locked in a bitter and longstanding debate about which historical figures are worthy of public honor and which ones need to be knocked off their pedestals – literally and figuratively.
The Chávez scandal also comes at a time when revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein child sexual abuse case continue to dominate the news.
Matthew J. Garcia, who is the Ralph and Richard Lazarus Professor of History, Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies, and Human Relations at Dartmouth – and also Lyrianne González’s advisor – says he believes the survivor stories of victims in the Epstein case and the #MeToo movement helped embolden victims in the Chávez case to share their stories.
Garcia, who authored the 2012 book “From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement,” says he connected whistleblowers in the Chávez case to The New York Times, telling them, “something needs to be done.”
“I think there’s something in the air, our culture, where we’re reevaluating men’s access to women,” Garcia said. “And I think this is part of it. And I think it should be part of the conversation.”
Garcia said he supports the renaming of the Chávez fellowship at Dartmouth.
“We think it’s a liability for these young scholars to go out into the market carrying that name,” Garcia says. “We also know he does not represent the values of our department.”
González says she trusts that people will not equate her scholarship with the namesake of the fellowship, but she’s not necessarily waiting for formal action to stop identifying as a Chávez fellow.
"I think even now, I can change the name to just represent the department and my position,” González said.
