UC Berkeley dean recommends renaming law school named after racist lawyer

ASAM NEWS

BOALT SCHOOL OF LAW at the University of California, Berkeley is moving to ditch its name which has been connected to a racist past, reports the Recorder.
The law school is named for John Henry Boalt who is best known for playing a major role in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law in this country preventing an ethnic group from immigrating.

About 60 percent of Boalt current students and alumni supported dropping the name, while 40 percent argued passionately to retain it.

“I was moved by the many who wrote me expressing their discomfort with honoring someone who expressed vile racism, especially without anything to point to that would justify honoring him as an individual,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky who made the decision, reported the Los Angeles Times.

According to the Recorder, some 600 comments were received on this issue by the University. Chermerinsky can only remove the Boalt name from law school clubs and lecturer positions. It is up to the University chancellor to change the name of the building. 

Boalt, a Nevada attorney, never attended the university. The law school was named for him after his wife donated money to construct the law school building in 1906.

Berkeley lecturer and attorney Charles Reichmann floated the idea of a name change in 2017 in an op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"I think the relevant question was whether the Berkeley Law School of the 21st century wishes to honor someone whose greatest public legacy was working to exclude Chinese people from the United States, and whose only legacy to the law school was his money,” Reichmann said.

In a letter to students, faculty and alumni, Chernerinsky outlined his recommendations based on the findings of a committee that he created in 2017 to study the issue>

"1. We will recommend to the campus Building Name Review Committee that it de- name the wing of the building known as “Boalt Hall.” Removing the name of a building is ultimately a decision by the Chancellor and not one the law school can make on its own.

"2. There are many things within the law school that use the name Boalt. We will cease using the Boalt name for these. We encourage organizations within the law school to discontinue the use of the name “Boalt” in their organization names and activities. Many already have done this. For example, lecturer positions (as distinct from the professorships mentioned above) named for the Boalts will be renamed in honor of our recent deans: Jesse Choper, Herma Hill Kay, and Christopher Edley.

"3. We will take additional steps to ensure that Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt and her generosity continue to be recognized. We also will take steps to ensure that the racism underlying the Chinese Exclusion Act be remembered. I will provide more details about this in the months ahead."

Views From the Edge contributed to this report. 

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