The University of California Hastings College of the Law's Board of Directors this week voted unanimously to remove Hastings from the law school's name and replace it with San Francisco because of its founder's genocidal acts against Native Americans in the 1850s.
The name change for the school, founded in 1878 by former California Supreme Court chief justice and state attorney general Serranus Hastings, will require approval by the state Legislature and signature by Gov. Gavin Newsom to become the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, or UC Law SF for short. The change could come as soon as January.
The school's chancellor David Faigman in 2017 had organized a Hastings Legacy Review Committee to investigate Hastings' legacy. A resulting report Faigman released in 2020 detailed hunting expeditions that resulted in the deaths or dislocation of hundreds of Yuki Indians as Hastings took possession of large parts of Eden Valley and Round Valley in Mendocino County.
Last November, the school's Board of Directors authorized its school leadership to work with state legislators to change the name, and the school has held several meetings on the topic since then.
In a letter to the school community that Faigman sent July 27, he said roughly 78 percent supported removing the Hastings name, and of those people, 67 supported a geographic name.
Faigman wrote that he fully supported the name change to include San Francisco, saying the law school “is an integral part of the city in which it has resided for 144 years,” and pointing to some of its famous graduates such as Vice President Kamala Harris and former San Francisco mayors Willie Brown and George Moscone.
The school has also worked with members of affected tribes in the area, including the Yuki, on restorative actions including founding an Indigenous Law Center and creating a public memorial to the Yuki people at its campus near San Francisco's Civic Center. Faigman said he and the board of directors also support naming a prominent campus space such as the library with an Indigenous-language name.
“I am excited about the pending name change, which comes at an exciting time in our law school's history. The foundation of the college, the heart, the spirit, and the excellence will remain,” Faigman wrote.
Wasn’t Mission San Francisco established by San Junipero Serra, the Great Enslaver of indigenous people?
How about calling it Grizzly Bear College of Law after the apex predator species extirpated by yanqui conqistadores and memorialized on our state flag?
Or Cantil-Sakauye College of Law to honor California’s Latinx Indo-Pacific roots and AAPI BIPOC people of menses (like Kamala)?
Stop, for the love of G-D, just stop. Don’t you have anything better to due than forelock tug and navel gaze about non issues? Who cares about this stuff?
Amusing article.
Things must be going pretty good for self absorbed board administrators and chancellors to have these trivial matters to make hay out of.
Voters were able to punish thru Recall the misguided malcontents on the Public School Board when they tried to prioritize ‘Name Changes’ and historical mural destruction as their top priorities over education standards and in person learning for K-12 students.
Will Hastings Alumni also have the backbone to reject these virtue signaling buffoons efforts?
and withhold donations and endowments?
A bigger laugh is naming Kamala Harris, along with Willie Brown, as “famous” graduates – at least they left out the “Famous for What” descriptors.
Maybe upon the “Name Changing” they can reflect on the erasing of history through the “Passage of Time” as so eloquently conveyed by the master of words VP Kamala Harris:
“…talking about the significance of the passage of time, right.
The significance of the passage of time, so when you think about it
there is great significance to passage of time,”
Harris said.
“There is such great significance to the passage of time when you think of
a day in the life of our children.”
The diseased behavior in the state flares again. [sigh]
Sounds like a fantastic way to respect those who lost their livelihood to that man. I don’t see why there are so many neg comments if it’s as unimportant as they make it seem. Stay in your lane if it doesn’t pertain to you.