What's in a name?

As readers are likely to know, there has been much debate over the names of historical figures that appear on buildings and schools at universities around the country. We have noted the efforts in other blog postings to rename the Hastings School of Law, for example, which is administered by the UC Regents.* The law school at UC-Berkeley is no longer known as Boalt Hall, yet another example.** 

UCLA created the Chancellor’s Campus Honorary Naming Advisory Committee to look at policy with regard to naming and unnaming buildings and other spaces. Its full report - dated June 28th - is now available at https://ucla.app.box.com/v/Naming-Committee-Report-Review. Since the unnaming process tends to be more controversial than initial naming, the observations of the Committee for unnaming are reproduced below:

•Interests in stability and respect for past processes and judgments create a presumption in favor of retaining honorific namings. The burden of coming forward with evidence of inconsistency between the activities and/or speech of the honoree and the purposes and principles underlying honorific namings should be on the proposer. A thorough campus process, including all appropriate research, should precede any recommendation regarding unnaming.

•Difficult cases will involve individuals or groups that have engaged in worthy and admirable activities but also deeds or words that may be inconsistent with the purposes and principles established for honorific namings. In evaluating such cases, the Naming Committee should engage in a measured assessment of the prominence and centrality of the different aspects of the honoree’s life and contributions, weighing them in relation to one another. An isolated or occasional incident should not normally justify an unnaming for an honoree whose activities and contributions are otherwise overwhelmingly positive. Similarly, a single worthy act should not normally justify continuing an honorific naming for someone or some group that has caused considerable and serious harm.

•Difficult cases will also involve individuals or groups whose activities and/or speech, though conventional at the time they occurred, are now understood as offensive and harmful. We acknowledge that language and acceptable conduct change over time, and the judgments we make today may be controversial in the future. Thus, we should be mindful of the context in which any honoree acted and spoke. That said, unnaming would be more appropriate if the conduct or speech we now find morally repugnant was deemed objectionable by a significant element of society at that time. And unnaming may be less appropriate where the individual involved actively sought to atone and make amends for the objectionable conduct at some point during their lifetime.

•While the honoree’s own social context is relevant, so is the present-day impact of an honorific naming. Unnaming is more justified if the name creates a harmful environment that undermines the ability of current students, faculty or staff to teach, learn, work and live in the UCLA community. The centrality of the building or outdoor space to UCLA life and community and to the identity and experience of students, staff or faculty should be taken into account in determining whether the name creates such an environment.

•Retaining the name and contextualizing it through plaques, exhibitions and/or events should always be an alternative under consideration. Whether or not an unnaming occurs, the concerns that were raised and the reasons for removing or keeping the name should be documented, preserved and accessible.

A curious feature of the report - which after all deals with names - is that no authors' names appear in the report. Separately, we learn that the committee was chaired by Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications Mary Osako from https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/update-on-honorific-building-and-space-naming-efforts/. The full list of names (below) appears in https://namingcommittee.ucla.edu/.

Mary Osako (Chair), Vice Chancellor, Strategic Communications

Jessica Alexander, President, Staff Assembly (2020-21)

Peter Angelis, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Housing and Hospitality

Stephen Aron, Professor of History (2020-21)

Jessica Cattelino, Chair, Academic Senate; Professor of Anthropology

Ana Esquivel, President-elect, Staff Assembly (2021-22)

Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca), Professor of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies Interdepartmental Program; Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs

Carole Goldberg, Jonathan D. Varat Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita

Peter Hendrickson, Associate Vice Chancellor, Design and Construction

Musibau Francis Jimoh, President, Graduate Students Association (2021-22)

Joy Kruger, President, Staff Assembly (2021-22)

Vickie Mays, Professor of Psychology and Health Services; Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Black Life

Alicia Miñana de Lovelace, UCLA Foundation Board Member

David Myers, Professor and Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History; Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy

Johnathan Perkins, Special Assistant to the VC Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Naomi Riley, President, Undergraduate Students Association Council (2020-21)

Jean Paul Santos, President, Graduate Students Association (2020-21)

D’Artagnan Scorza, President, UCLA Alumni Association

Eileen Strempel, Inaugural Dean, Herb Alpert School of Music

Rhea Turteltaub, Vice Chancellor, External Affairs

Abel Valenzuela Jr., Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, Urban Planning, and Labor Studies; Director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Breeze Velazquez, President, Undergraduate Students Association Council (2021-22)

David Yoo, Vice Provost, Institute of American Cultures; Professor of Asian American Studies and History

Anne Marie Burke, Executive Director, Strategic Communications, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture (Subcommittee on Memorialization)

Amy Landau, Director of Education and Interpretation, Fowler Museum (Subcommittee on Memorialization)

Taleen Ananian, Associate Director, Internal Communications, UCLA Strategic Communications (Staff)

Robert Cox, Senior Project Manager, UCLA Strategic Communications (Staff)

Michael Dirda, Director of Executive and Internal Communications, UCLA Strategic Communications (Staff)

Pamela Liu, Senior Project Manager, UCLA Strategic Communications (Staff)

Shilo Munk, Chief of Staff, UCLA Strategic Communications (Staff)

Susan White, Associate Director, Special Events and Protocol, UCLA Strategic Communications (Staff)

The report includes a thank you to an advisory Subcommittee on Principles and Criteria to Rename and Name Spaces, chaired by Carole Goldberg, Jonathan D. Varat Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita, and to all Bruins who attended community hearing sessions and provided their input. (page 13) Another document - a set of PowerPoint slides - at https://ucla.app.box.com/s/zii7hkvacpda9twu0zo7s8yrzhmf1kqe refers to another advisory subcommittee consisting of:

D'Artagnan Scorza, president, UCLA Alumni Association Board of Directors, 2021-22

Anne Marie Burke, executive director, Strategic Communications, UCLA School of the Arts & Architecture

David K. Yoo, vice provost, UCLA Institute of American Cultures

Amy Landau, director of education and interpretation, Fowler Museum

Taleen Ananian, association director, Internal Communications

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*The most recent post on Hastings is at:

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-hastings-name-change-issue.html.

**http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/01/berkeley-law-un-boalted.html.