Harvard Law School dean asks to change the school’s shield because of its ties to slavery

A committee at Harvard Law School has recommended that the shield that has long been used as a symbol should be retired, because it is the family crest of a slaveholder and does not reflect the values of the school. The shield is a powerful symbol: For decades, it has represented one of the world’s most prestigious institutions, and for many alumni, their pride in the school and their accomplishments. But it has come to represent, for some, money earned from slavery and cruelty. The shield of the Harvard Law School The decision rests with the Harvard Corporation, but Martha Minow, the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law, endorsed the committee’s recommendation and said the school’s bicentennial in 2017 might provide a good opportunity to choose a new symbol. The shield was designed in the 1930s based on the family crest of Isaac Royall Jr., the man whose bequest endowed Harvard’s first law professorship.
The connection has been discussed in recent years, since a professor unearthed the family’s history while writing a book about the school. But a group of law students brought urgency to the issue this fall with demands that the shield be changed. Their efforts echoed protests at universities worldwide over historical statues and symbols decried as racist. From Princeton to the University of Mississippi to Yale, students have demanded long-held traditions be changed, redefining the legacy of benefactors such as President Woodrow Wilson and John C. Calhoun and rejecting banners and titles such as the Confederate flag and “masters” of houses because of their connotation of slavery The demonstrations gained intensity along with national protests over many other racial issues this past year. But many continued to argue against changing traditions, some because they saw it as empty political correctness, others because they worried it would amount to erasing history. [Why some students say Harvard Law School’s crest is a “source of shame"] [South African protesters deface statue seen as symbol of white supremacy] Law students began a group called “Royall Must Fall” in part as a way to support students in Cape Town and London who were calling for the removal of a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, and to work to change the symbols on their own campus. The shield has not always been prominent, but now it’s all over, on buildings and doormats and letterheads. “At a place like Harvard Law School at least, I think it’s nonsense that we can’t find something better,” third-year law student Alexander J. Clayborne said in an interview with The Washington Post in November. A student group called Reclaim Harvard Law has been protesting this winter, meeting with the dean and, in mid-February, occupying a fireside lounge and demanding that the lounge be renamed Belinda Hall in honor of Belinda Royall “who, in 1783, at 63 years old, petitioned the Commonwealth of Massachusetts asserting her right to compensation for her years of enslavement.” Belinda was enslaved by the Royall family. Students with Reclaim Harvard Law did not immediately return requests for comment Friday.

Washington Post