UC Hastings Law will rebrand after outcry over namesake - Reuters
REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
- Students, administrators and alumni debating name change since 2017
- Founder Serranus Hastings believed to have been involved in killing hundreds of Native Americans in the 1850s
(Reuters) - The University of California Hastings College of the Law will seek to change its name after years of debate over the legacy of namesake Serranus Hastings, a former California Supreme Court Justice who founded the school in 1878 and who orchestrated killings of Native Americans.
The law school’s board of directors voted Tuesday to authorize the school’s leaders to work with state legislators and other stakeholders to adopt a new name.
UC Hastings adjunct professor John Briscoe detailed Hastings’ actions against Native Americans in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed in 2017. Hastings promoted and financed “Indian-hunting raids” that killed at least 283 men, women and children in the 1850s, according to Benjamin Madley, a history professor at the University of California Los Angeles.
“We know that some members of our community are attached to the school’s name because of the College’s wonderful 143-year history, unrelated to Serranus Hastings,” board chairman Carl (Chip) Robertson said in a statement. “But this change is a critical step in addressing our founder’s role in Native Californian genocide.”
UC Hastings Law Dean David Faigman said he spent four years working with members of California’s Yuki People and other members of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, who were targeted in Hastings’ raids, and taking “restorative justice actions.” That included finding ways for law students to provide pro bono legal services to tribe members and founding an indigenous law center at the school. But further action is needed, he said.
“The time has come to recognize that changing the College’s name is an important step in that process,” Faigman said in a prepared statement.
A law school spokeswoman said Wednesday that January 2022 is the earliest that legislation could be introduced to change the school’s name. It’s too early to comment on potential new names, she added.
UC Hastings is not the only law school to grapple with a namesake's legacy. The University of California, Berkeley School of Law officially stripped the name Boalt Hall from its main building in 2020 over revelations that John Henry Boalt was a leading proponent of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The law was the nation’s first immigration ban on a specific group of people solely on the basis of race or nationality.
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source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/uc-hastings-law-will-rebrand-after-outcry-over-namesake-2021-11-03/
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