César Cruz is a gang violence prevention advocate[1] and Dean of Secondary Schools Program at Harvard University.
[5] On May 1, 1992, he was one of 65 people arrested marching on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge after the acquittal of officers charged with beating Rodney King.
[9] Cruz was later part of a 26-day hunger strike in 2004, which resulted in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger agreeing to refinance the West Contra Costa Unified School District's high interest loans.
[10] He was keynote speaker for the Cesar Chavez Convocation at UC Santa Cruz in 2014 and Hermanos Unidos National Conference Archived 2018-04-10 at the Wayback Machine[11] at California State University, Fullerton in 2017.
[12][13] Research at Homeboy Industries, a job skills program in the Los Angeles area for gang members, served as his Harvard doctoral capstone work.