BERKELEY Inspire

Today, Carla is the Peder Sather Professor in the History Department after serving as executive dean of the College of Letters & Science from 2014 to 2019 and dean of the Division of Social Sciences from 2009 to 2019. After graduating from Berkeley Law in 1990, Renata is now a law partner at Sullivan and Cromwell LLP in Washington, D.C. In 2023, Carla and Renata endowed the Hesse Family Fund for the College of Letters & Science with their combined gifts totaling $250,000 to provide enrichment support for the undergraduate academic experience.

“The university has been very important to our family,” said Renata, who also gave to honor Carla’s multi-decade impact at Berkeley. “I’ve always thought of Cal as the quintessential public university for our family in particular and probably for many others. It gave our parents a leg up and an opportunity to get an amazing education, even though they didn’t have any money.”

Carla and Renata’s parents met in the 1940s while attending UC Berkeley. Their mother, Sarah Hazan Hesse, earned her undergraduate degree in English in 1950, and their father, Siegfried Hesse, received his law degree the same year. Together, they raised their children — Carla, Renata, Erik, and Andrea — in Berkeley. Erik obtained his Berkeley undergraduate degree in psychology in 1981 and later taught that discipline at the university. In 2018, Andrea’s daughter, Sophia, completed her political science studies to become the Hesses’ fourth generation and 10th family member to earn a Berkeley degree.

Celebrating UC Berkeley’s impact on the Hesse family

Sarah came to UC Berkeley from an immigrant family in Los Angeles. Carla shared, “When I tell the story, I say that my parents’ union is the story of Cal, the weaving of the old Californians — the Old Blues — with newcomers. Berkeley has these very old roots in the 19th century, and it’s constantly being infused and energized in new ways from all over the world.”

Carla sees the endowment as a tribute to their mother and the university’s enduring impact on their family. With over 30 years of service to UC Berkeley, Carla has also encouraged other relatives to give to the endowment to increase its potential to help students thrive through improvements in areas such as academic advising, mentoring, undergraduate research opportunities, and smaller, more engaging classroom experiences.

“The gift is in recognition of our mother’s experience as an undergraduate here because it changed her life,” said Carla, “Since Renata had been giving to the (Berkeley) law school, both on her own behalf and in memory of our father, we decided to honor our mother and the transformative Berkeley undergraduate experiences she and others — most of them women — in our family had.”

Four of Carla and Renata’s paternal great-aunts ventured north to Berkeley in the first few decades of the last century to earn their degrees when it was less common for women to attend college. The first of these trailblazing women, Emma Viola Hesse, graduated from UC Berkeley in 1910, and the others followed in close succession: Louise L. Hesse, L&S Class of 1919; Frances M. Hesse, L&S Class of 1922; Vesta F. Hesse, L&S Class of 1924; and Alice E. Hesse, L&S Class of 1928. Vesta became a noted California botanist, and UC Berkeley’s Jepson Herbarium houses her collection. The final two generations of Hesses with Berkeley degrees followed Siegfried and Sarah: Erik Hesse, L&S Class of 1981; Renata Hesse, Berkeley Law, Class of 1990; and most recently, Sophia Hesse Sanfilippo, L&S Class of 2018.

“Our family owes so much to this campus,” Carla said. “It was our parents’ leap into the middle class. It gave our great aunts the skills they needed to survive in a pioneer world as school teachers, chicken farmers, missionaries, and members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp during World War II, among other things.”

L&S Executive Dean Jenna Johnson-Hanks appreciates the Hesse family’s unwavering commitment to uplifting the world’s No. 1 public university.

“The Hesse family both exemplifies Berkeley’s excellence and has profoundly contributed to that excellence over multiple generations,” Johnson-Hanks said. “Renata and Carla show this so clearly: Renata as an alum and friend of the campus, and Carla as an intellectual leader here.”

Finding their way back to Berkeley

After graduating from Berkeley High School, Carla earned her bachelor’s degrees in French literature and history from UC Santa Cruz and her master’s and Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in New Jersey. Likewise seeking new perspectives, Renata left the West Coast to earn her bachelor’s degree in political science at Wellesley College in Massachusetts before returning to receive her J.D. from Berkeley Law.

Carla initially stayed in New Jersey to teach at Rutgers University from 1987 to 1989, but an enticing opportunity in California soon presented itself. Tom Laqueur, a professor emeritus of history at UC Berkeley and now Carla’s husband, recruited her to join the Berkeley faculty.

“You feel like you have died and gone to heaven to get a job at Berkeley, given the infrequent openings for academics in the humanistic and social science disciplines,” said Carla. “No one imagines you will do anything for 30 years when they start.”

After 20 years of teaching and a distinguished research career, Carla accepted the opportunity to serve as dean of the Division of Social Sciences. Five years later, she also became the executive dean of the College of Letters & Science. Carla worked tirelessly to strengthen the foundation of Berkeley’s largest College, including establishing an external advisory board, overseeing record-breaking fundraising campaigns, and creating the Social Sciences Matrix — an institute on campus for cross-disciplinary social science research to generate effective solutions to global challenges.

While Carla’s time as an L&S executive featured many accomplishments, one of her proudest moments was securing the placement of the College of Letters & Science sign on both Durant Hall and Dwinelle Hall on the Berkeley campus.

“Space is identity,” Carla said. “With all of the other entities on campus, you knew you were there when you were there. That wasn’t true here. Nobody knew where L&S was. It was just this ether-like thing.”

Passion for impacting students’ lives

Even though Carla’s natural trajectory would have been to pursue a prominent position at the university in senior administration, she decided to focus on teaching after she finished her leadership roles in the College of Letters & Science in 2019. With her full-time return to the classroom, Carla continues to play an integral role in changing lives at a place she sees as the country’s most powerful engine of upward mobility.

“I wish for everybody to find something that feels meaningful and gratifying to them,” Carla said. “One of the things I love about this place is its sense of mission and purpose. Working here feels like the one thing I do besides finding ways to provide funds directly to meaningful causes that make a difference in the world. A lot of staff and faculty feel that way about this place. The love of the institution and its mission is magical.”

Carla’s essential goals for her students include helping them find their voices, making up their minds about issues, and not deferring to authority. To support these objectives, Carla frequently asks her students to write sonnets, a poetic form originating during the 13th century, the period she teaches.

“The longer I teach, the more I know how important it is that they learn both on paper and in spoken conversation that they feel empowered to speak and that they speak in a language and in a way that is true to them,” Carla said.

Sparked by Carla and Renata’s generous support and the Hesse family’s inspirational legacy, more UC Berkeley students will be able to discover their voice and passion in a nurturing and enriching College of Letters & Science environment.