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| Hastings |
The case wended its way through the courts and last week, the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from lower court decisions that had approved the change in name.
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/02/no-hastings.html for Part 1. Type "Hastings" into the search engine for this blog for various earlier postings about this issue.
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| Hastings |
The law “ ‘authorized’ S.C. Hastings to found the law college” in his name but did not bind the state to keep his name attached permanently and was “not cast in covenanting language,” Ulmer said in a ruling dismissing the lawsuit.
While the 1878 law committed Serranus Hastings to pay the state $100,000 to establish the school, Ulmer said, there was no evidence that the payment was intended to keep his name on the school. He also rejected a claim that the change violated the California Constitution, which requires UC to remain “free of all political or sectarian influence.” The 2022 state law that changed the name was passed in response to a request by the law school’s own policymaking board, Ulmer said, and the case “therefore does not present the situation where the Legislature is attempting to dictate University policy.” ...
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| Hastings |
From Reuters: Descendants of Serranus Hastings suing over the name change of the former University of California Hastings College of the Law cleared a hurdle on Monday when a California appeals court tossed a bid brought by school officials who tried to block the lawsuit. The California appeals court affirmed the dismissal of a motion brought by law school officials who are seeking to end litigation over the school’s name. Their anti-SLAPP motion argued that the name change was a protected public activity.
The decision by the California Court of Appeal for the First District in San Francisco allows the case to proceed at the trial court level.
John DiPaolo, general counsel for the school now named University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, said that school officials remain confident that they have "full legal rights" to remove the Hastings name. The school had been known as the University of California Hastings College of the Law since its 1878 founding until earlier this year when it was renamed. State lawmakers passed a bill in 2022 to change the name at the request of the law school after officials spent years weighing the legacy of namesake Serranus Hastings.
Hastings was a California Supreme Court justice whose financial support established the law school. But historians have said he also orchestrated killings of Native Americans in order to remove them from ranch land he purchased in Northern California...
Full story at https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/former-hastings-law-school-loses-appeal-block-suit-over-name-change-2023-06-06/.
If you haven't followed this tale, you can find references using the search option on this blog and putting in "Hastings." Or just go to:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-more-complete-explanation-of-hastings.html.
Instead of letting law schools go fully
test-optional as planned, the deans want the American Bar Association’s Section
of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to modify the rule to enable
schools to admit up to 25% of new students without a standardized test score.
The deans' proposal represents a compromise between
the existing rule, which lets schools admit up to 10% of the class without such
scores, and the ABA's plan to eliminate the standardized test requirement
altogether by 2025 in a bid to give schools more flexibility in how they choose
students.
The council of the ABA’s legal education section,
which oversees law school accreditation standards, is slated to discuss the
dean’s proposal when it meets on Friday in Chicago…
Full story at https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/with-lsat-poised-elimination-law-deans-call-compromise-2023-05-09/.
Among the signatories are the deans of the law schools at UC-Irvine and
UC-Berkeley, as well as the UC College of Law (formerly UC-Hastings).
===
PS: The governor's May Revise budget proposal will be released later this morning. We will provide an analysis as soon as possible. It was said at the recent "town hall" concerning the effects of the student-worker strike that the governor - while not willing to provide UC with more money to deal with the settlement costs - will provide what was proposed in January. However, it was an off-hand remark so we will have to wait and see what the actual proposal today will be.
US News made some methodological changes and came out with a preliminary ranking which was then challenged. It has now released its final rankings:
UC-Berkeley #10
UCLA #14
UC-Irvine #35
UC College of Law (formerly Hastings) #60 tie
UC-Davis #60 tie
Note: Stanford and Yale tied for #1.
Source: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/law-rankings.
Statement of Chancellor & Dean David Faigman:
The new rankings methodology announced earlier... by U.S. News & World Report... in a recent email to law school deans fails to address many of the most fundamental flaws with its ranking system and, in many ways, compounds them. As a result, UC Law SF (formerly UC Hastings Law) will no longer provide institutional data to US News for use in its law school rankings, at least until such time as US News truly addresses the concerns that we and other law schools have long shared with them.
The new methodology US News sketched will not reflect the true excellence of a school like UC Law SF. That is because US News apparently plans to continue to apply a single cookie-cutter formula to the nation’s wide variety of law schools, without actually measuring the degree to which law schools achieve their core mission elements and without properly standardizing to account for variations in student populations, geographic regions, or law schools’ success in placement in specific law job markets. Also, by continuing to emphasize entering metrics, the method US News announced doubles down on the rankings penalty imposed on schools that prioritize diversity and access. Finally, by continuing to assign precise numeric rankings, US News continues to suggest, incorrectly in our view, that meaningful distinctions can be made between schools that earn a few more or less points based on the limited factors US News now includes in its formula. Simply reducing the number of data points the rankings consider and varying how they are weighted does nothing to address these fundamental problems...
Full statement at https://www.uchastings.edu/2023/01/06/uc-law-sf-will-opt-out-of-u-s-news-participation/.
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https://ia904700.us.archive.org/34/items/new-year-outlook/uc%20law%20sf%20us%20news.mp3
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| Hastings |
The Jan. 1 scrubbing of the name “UC Hastings College of the Law” — challenged in court by descendants of its founder, Serranus Hastings — can proceed as planned, a judge ruled Friday in San Francisco. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer Jr. denied the descendants’ request for a preliminary injunction, which means the storied public law school that opened in 1878 will become “UC College of the Law, San Francisco” ... The full lawsuit by the descendants to reverse the renaming can still proceed.
The new name may sound vanilla, but it succeeds in severing ties with the 19th century Hastings, a wealthy rancher and former chief justice of the California Supreme Court who historians say sponsored massacres of thousands of Native people, including ancestors of today’s Round Valley and Yuki tribes. Four of Hastings’ great-great-great grandchildren, other descendants and a small group of alumni sued the law school in October, disputing not only that the founder was a racist, but also the school’s legal right to change the name without paying a massive penalty — $1.7 billion.
Separately, the descendants filed a request to block the school from changing its name on Jan. 1, pending the outcome of its lawsuit. Hastings founded the University of California’s first law school with $100,000 in gold and a deal that included a new state law requiring that the college “shall forever be known” as the Hastings College of the Law. If not, the state would have to pay back the $100,000, plus interest. Family members who filed their lawsuit on Oct. 4 said they figured the rate to 7% a year, for a tidy $1.7 billion.
On Friday, Ulmer sided with the college and the state in regarding the 1878 law not as an inviolable contract, but as a statute that lawmakers can rescind... “The Act is not couched in the terms of a contract,” Ulmer wrote...
Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Judge-halts-attempt-by-descendants-to-reverse-17686249.php.
The bottom line here is that the lawsuit continues - and potentially could go on for a long time - but the name change is in place.
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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/12/despite-lawsuit-to-block-it-uc-hastings.html.
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https://ia904700.us.archive.org/34/items/new-year-outlook/hastings%20explain.mp3
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| Click on image to clarify. |
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| Hastings |
Yesterday, we posted about seemingly-endless litigation concerning the Hawaiian telescope.* Today, from Reuters, comes word that the legal battle regarding changing the name of UC-Hastings may go on for awhile:
A lawsuit that aims to block the renaming of the University of California Hastings College of Law violates the San Francisco school’s free speech rights, school officials told the state court judge overseeing the case on Wednesday. Hastings' motion to dismiss the lawsuit is the latest development in a five-year debate over the school’s name, which honors Serranus Hastings, a former California Supreme Court justice. Hastings, who founded the school in 1878, is accused by historians of orchestrating killings of Native Americans in order to remove them from ranch land he purchased in Northern California.
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Sept. 30 signed a bill authorizing the school to be renamed as the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. The following week, six Hastings descendants and a group of alumni sued, claiming he was not involved in killings and that any name change breaches an agreement California made with Hastings when he gave $100,000 in gold to establish a school named after him.
The law school invoked California’s “anti-SLAPP” law in its filing on Wednesday. “Plaintiffs’ claims against the College Defendants arise from classic protected activity,” it said, asserting that all of the school’s public actions pertaining to the name change and its interactions with state lawmakers are protected under free speech laws.
Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer with the Dhillon Law Group who is representing the plaintiffs, said Thursday that her clients will oppose the school’s motion in court and that a hearing is expected in December... The law school is represented by a team of lawyers from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, headed by partner Theodore Boutrous...
Full story at https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/californias-hastings-law-school-says-free-speech-bars-lawsuit-over-name-change-2022-11-03/.
Note from yours truly: "A team of lawyers from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, headed by partner Theodore Boutrous" does not come cheaply. UC seems to be expecting a big battle. Here is an excerpt from Boutrous' profile at the Federalist Society:
Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., a partner in the Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, is Co-Chair of the firm’s Appellate and Constitutional Law Group, its Crisis Management Group, and the Transnational Litigation and Foreign Judgments Group. He is a member of the firm’s Executive and Management Committees.
Mr. Boutrous has represented clients in the federal and state appellate courts throughout the nation in a wide spectrum of cases, including punitive damages, class action, securities, employment, environmental, insurance, product liability, antitrust, business torts, privacy, arbitration, criminal and constitutional litigation. He is responsible for the nationwide appellate strategy for several major companies, and has successfully persuaded courts to overturn some of the largest jury verdicts and class actions in history...
Full profile at https://fedsoc.org/contributors/theodore-boutrous.
Boutrous, it might be noted, is the lead defense attorney for the City of Santa Monica in a lawsuit regarding an attempt to require the City to have district rather than at-large elections. He is defending the City's at-large system. That case, currently at the California Supreme Court, has involved many millions of dollars in legal fees, although the City will not reveal the costs.
The Federalist Society also provides a profile of Harmeet Dhillon:
Harmeet Dhillon is a nationally recognized lawyer, trusted boardroom advisor, and passionate advocate for individual, corporate and institutional clients across numerous industries and walks of life. Her focus is in commercial litigation, employment law, First Amendmentrights, and election law matters...
Ms. Dhillon has developed a niche practice in representing clients across California in election and campaign law matters, ranging from general compliance and ethics representation for partisan and non-partisan contenders to ballot description contests and intellectual property matters pertaining to campaign communications. She is regularly retained by candidates and campaigns for advice on complex legal issues...
Full profile at https://fedsoc.org/contributors/harmeet-dhillon.
You will see Dhillon's name from time to time in connection with conservative issues including quite recently:
Facing a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee, former president Donald Trump has signed a new lawyer to represent him: Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican lawyer whose California-based practice caters to right-wing clients, especially high-profile culture war provocateurs... In his choice of Dhillon, Trump has signed up a lawyer with legal skill, connections to major GOP figures and serious MAGA bona fides. Her firm has experience representing other top Trumpworld figures regarding Jan. 6 committee demands. And Dhillon has lengthy credentials in right-wing activism and name recognition in conservative circles...
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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/11/back-to-court.html.
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| Hastings |
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill into law ordering the re-naming of the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. Under Assembly Bill 1936, by Assemblyman James Ramos, D-Highland, the college’s new name will be University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco, or UC Law, San Francisco for short. The bill also outlines several initiatives for the college to pursue, including renaming the law library with a Native language name and annually reading a statement of the atrocities that the school’s founder, Serranus Hastings, committed against the Yuki people in the 19th century. The measure will also provide collaborative opportunities for Round Valley tribal students to debate and gain writing experience, according to the governor’s office...
Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article266275741.html.
Section 2(b) of the new law states:
It is the intent of the Legislature to ensure that the College achieves all of the following:
(1) Assists in the formation of a nonprofit organization, as described in subsection (c) of Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code, in association with, and jointly governed by, Yuki descendants selected by the government of the Round Valley Indian Tribes to provide an organizational structure to raise capital, organize pro bono legal assistance and other support, and assist tribal leadership with federal, state, and county matters, water and property rights, economic development, and efforts to meet the social needs of the community. The College’s responsibilities extend only to assisting in the formation of the nonprofit organization, and will not otherwise involve its governance or the ongoing operations of the organization.
(2) Seeks to organize, through the College’s Indigenous Law Center or other administrative offices, as appropriate, pro bono legal assistance and other support, and assist tribal leadership with federal, state, and county matters, water and property rights, economic development, tribal courts, and efforts to meet the social and security needs of the community.
(3) Works with interested public and private parties or entities to develop scholarship assistance for duly admitted law students at the college that are members of Round Valley Indian Tribes, a federally recognized tribal government. These funds may be used to offset tuition, housing costs, and other incidentals for Round Valley Indian Tribes tribal members admitted to the law school.
(4) Dedicates a permanent and public memorial, and other displays, as appropriate, to the Yuki people at an appropriate location on its campus, with display panels, historical explanations, and cultural presentations. This memorial should acknowledge and atone for the historical traumas suffered by the Yuki people.
(5) Provides a fully functional, interactive public internet website to allow dissemination of the College’s approach, to seek public input, and to keep the public advised of historical, academic, and programmatic work to address the broader issues and the restorative justice agenda. A page on this internet website shall be dedicated to the College’s work with Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Yuki people.
(6) Establishes clinical or experiential educational programs for its students, one that may serve as a model for other law schools, to address the specific needs of the residents of the Round Valley, including the possibility of a center for pro bono legal assistance in tribal legal matters and public law assistance that could be staffed with student interns, faculty leadership, and pro bono contributors.
(7) Collaborates with Governor Newsom’s Tribal Advisor to engage with, and contribute to, that office and the newly formed Truth and Healing Council, which is working to clarify the historical record of mistreatment, violence, and neglect of Native Americans in California.
(8) Assists in the organization of pro bono attorneys with a connection to the College to assist in mutually agreed upon goals and objectives.
(9) Assists tribal leaders, where possible, with other community needs, such as making connections to the College’s award-winning moot court program, preservation of the Yuki legacy with an emphasis on youth, preservation of tribal oral traditions and stories, and advancement in teaching and preserving native languages.
(10) Assists, as appropriate, with the legal aspects of establishing a museum or cultural center in the Round Valley, and a project for the protection of sacred sites and repatriation of artifacts and human remains.
(11) Highlights the injustices of the past by bringing attention to the public at large and the College’s community with a lecture series, guest speakers, and tribal elders, dealing with “Righting the Wrongs.”
(12) Supports collaboration by assisting tribal members to obtain grant opportunities from public and private sources, including identifying grants for economic development.
(13) Establishes an Indian Law Program and related academic and educational programs at the College, available to all students interested in studying Indian Law. The goal of these programs is the encouragement of scholarship, educational growth, opportunity and support for students, and recruitment of qualified individuals from the Round Valley Tribes or Yuki descendants for legal education and career opportunities in law.
(14) Assists, as appropriate to the work of a law school, with the revitalization and preservation of Yuki history and language efforts.
(15) Provides academic support, as needed, to Round Valley Indian Tribes students attending the College.
(16) Creates a working group consisting of members of the College’s Restorative Justice Advisory Board and members of the Yuki Indian Committee to define the content to be placed in the commemorative space reserved for this purpose at the College.
(17) Assists tribal leadership with understanding the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (25 U.S.C. Sec. 3001 et seq.) and the California Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 2001 (Chapter 5 (commencing with Section 8010) of Part 2 of Division 7 of the Health and Safety Code) laws.
(18) Engages in ongoing relationship building between the Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Yuki people, submitting reports to the Legislature, and the Assembly Select Committee on Native American Affairs.
(19) An annual apology on a date to be determined by the Round Valley Indian Tribes, a federally recognized tribal government, its designees of the Yuki Indian Committee, and the College to attest to and acknowledge the social justice components achieved and ongoing efforts.
(20) Grants a seat on the College’s commemorative committee to a representative of the Yuki people. The College shall create a subcommittee of the commemorative committee with Yuki Indian representation.
(21) The College and the Board of Directors provides resources for restorative justice to the extent required by law, and, when not required by law, assists in restorative justice policies.
Full text at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1936.
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https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/hastings%20name%20change.mp3
Board of Directors for UC Hastings College of Law Votes to Rename School
Alaina Lancaster, The Recorder, 7-27-22
The Board of Directors for University of California, Hastings College of the Law voted to decouple the founder of the school from its name, in recognition of his reported role in financing and ordering the removal of native people that resulted in the genocide of several hundred Yuki Indians in Northeast Mendocino County. On Wednesday, the school’s board of directors unanimously voted to rename the school College of the Law, San Francisco, following the recommendation of a committee charged with considering new names. Following the vote, the legislature will consider legislation that will eliminate the name of Serranus Hastings, California’s first chief justice, whom historians have tied to the genocide of Yuki Indians in 1859 and 1860, two decades before he founded the law school.
Source: https://www.law.com/therecorder/2022/07/27/uc-hastings-board-of-directors-votes-to-rename-school/.
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.
By Karen Sloan, Reuters, 5-18-22
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Summary
The school expects 15 to 18 Native American students to qualify for new scholarship program in the next two or three years
Fewer than 1% of law students nationwide are Native American
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The University of California Berkeley School of Law is aiming to increase its Native American enrollment by picking up the tab for students’ tuition. The school said this week that it will cover all tuition for current and future students who are both California residents and members of federally registered tribes. Administrators said they hope the program will make Berkeley Law a destination for Native American students and help the school expand its Indian Law offerings.*
Berkeley is the latest elite law school to eliminate tuition for at least some underrepresented students. Both Yale Law School and Stanford Law School recently said they will erase tuition for students from low-income families.
Native Americans comprised fewer than 1% of first-year law students nationwide this academic year, and Berkeley had only one in its new class, according to American Bar Association data. Native Americans make up just 0.4% of all lawyers nationally, the ABA figures show. “Chipping away at the barriers to attendance—and cost is huge—is one part of changing this,” said Kristen Theis-Alvarez, Berkeley Law’s dean of admission and financial aid, in a statement on the school's new program.
The University of California system said in April that would provide financial aid to cover tuition and student fees for the state’s Native American students. But that program only covers about $14,000 of the $59,000 per-student cost of Berkeley's J.D. program, so the law school will funnel existing financial aid to cover the remaining $45,000 annual tuition. Berkeley Law officials said they hope to expand the program to Native American students from federally recognized tribes who aren’t California residents.
The program will start in the fall, and a spokeswoman said the school anticipates that between 15 and 18 students will participate in the next two to three years. The program is projected to cost between $300,000 and $500,000 a year initially. Meanwhile, the nearby University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco is in the process of adopting a new name following a public outcry over its namesake’s history of violence against Native Americans. Serranus Hastings, a former California Supreme Court Justice who founded the school in 1878, financed and promoted “Indian-hunting raids” that are believed to have killed at least 283 men, women and children in the 1850s.
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*As noted in a prior blog post, UC hopes to circumvent the Prop 209 ban on affirmative action in California by dealing only with federally-recognized tribes which have a degree of sovereignty, according to UC president Drake. See:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/05/looking-ahead.html.
Presumably, the same logic would apply if the US Supreme Court bans affirmative action in admissions in the upcoming Harvard and U of North Carolina decisions.
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| From left, UC President Clark Kerr, Lillian Dykstra (widow of Clarence Dykstra), Chairman of the UC Board of Regents Donald McLaughlin and UCLA Chancellor Vern Knudsen are greatly pleased with the architectural model for the new residence hall. |
It takes awhile to get to the bottom line, but a new Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) publication points to $135 million in proposed state spending on new UC housing, $35 million for UCLA and $100 million for UC-San Diego. UC originally requested $597 million for various projects but some were found to be of lower priority or ineligible. (The figure omits a request by Hastings Law School.)
Details at https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2022/4589/Student-Housing-040822.pdf.
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| Serranus Clinton Hastings |
A New Name for California’s Oldest Law School? It’s Not Easy.
The University of California, Hastings College of the Law has decided to dissociate itself from its founder for his role in massacres of Native Americans.
By Thomas Fuller, March 17, 2022
When a New York Times article last year detailed the involvement of the founder of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in state-sponsored massacres of Indigenous Californians, an outcry ensued. The law school’s board swiftly and unanimously agreed to change the school’s name. But in the months since, university administrators have learned that deleting a tainted name might be the easy part. Choosing a new one is proving to be a fraught and costly process. There is disagreement on what the new name should be, a debate that encapsulates an era in America in which we are reassessing our history, reanalyzing our heroes and trying to agree on who should be honored by institutions — and who should not.
A small but vocal group of people at Hastings believe that the university should keep its name after all. “It seems like it would make more sense to use the money for things that would be more beneficial,” said Marsha N. Cohen, a professor at the law school who has also worked in the admissions office. (A spokeswoman for the law school, Liz Moore, says it will cost at least $2 million to $3 million to change the name on building signage, email and web addresses, stationery, brochures and more.) The law school’s board has proposed that the new name should be the University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco, according to David Faigman, the chancellor and dean.
“San Francisco is a world-class city, well known for dynamism and innovation — qualities that distinguish our law school as well,” Faigman said in a written answer to my questions. “The San Francisco name also conveys the useful information of where we are located and aligns us with the naming convention of every other campus of the University of California.”
A group of Yuki tribe members is pushing back on that name. It was Yuki Indians who were massacred in campaigns in the mid-1800s that historians say were bankrolled and masterminded by Serranus Hastings, the founder of the law school. Some members of the Yuki tribe are urging Hastings to rename the school with a name from the Yuki language. Steve Brown, the president of the Round Valley Yuki committee, proposes “Powen’om,” which means “one people.”
“I want payback,” Brown told me. “You can call it reparations or social justice or whatever. I want our name on there.” Brown and other Yuki tribe members say the massacres did much more than decimate the Yuki populations. The area now suffers poverty and drug abuse. “Our futures were stolen,” he said.
The massacres occurred in the Round and Eden Valleys in Mendocino County. Today the Round Valley Indian Tribes are an amalgam of seven distinct tribes, including the Yuki, that was created after a coerced 19th-century relocation by the U.S. government. This creates a challenge for the law school as it seeks to change the name and put together a package of reparations and restorative justice initiatives. Who should be the school’s interlocutors? The Yuki or the legally recognized Round Valley Indian Tribe? The university has decided to deal with both. The leadership of the Round Valley Indian Tribes met on Wednesday to discuss the name but did not reach a decision, Brown said. Ultimately it is up to the California Legislature to choose the name. The law school says a lobbying firm that it retains in Sacramento will be involved in pushing through the legislation...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/us/new-name-california-law-school.html.
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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/11/hastings-or-not-hastings-part-2.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/10/hastings-or-not-hastings.html.
Leading law school seeks to remove genocidal founder's name
AP 11-2-21
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The University of California Hastings College of the Law will work on removing the name of its founder, who sponsored massacres of Native Americans in the 1850s, the board of directors voted Tuesday. The vote authorizes one of the nation's leading law schools to work with state lawmakers and others to change the institution's name.
Hastings Law School was founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, a wealthy rancher and former chief justice of the California Supreme Court. Its graduates include Vice President Kamala Harris and former California Assemblyman and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. But historians say the school's founder helped orchestrate and finance campaigns by white settlers in Mendocino County to kill and enslave members of the Yuki Indian tribe at a time when California law had legalized lynch mob attacks on Indians along with kidnapping and forced servitude in what some state leaders openly called a war of extermination. The expeditions arranged by Hastings resulted in the deaths of 300 Yuki, and the government reimbursed him for expenses, including ammunition. The attacks were part of a three-year series of slaughters and kidnappings by settlers known as the Round Valley Settler Massacres that by some estimates claimed at least 1,000 Indian lives.
The school began to investigate Hastings’ legacy in 2017 and has been working on “restorative justice” initiatives including a free legal aid program for the Yuki and other tribes, founding an Indigenous Law Center and creating a campus memorial to the Yuki people. “That work has raised our awareness of the wrongs committed by the college’s namesake and the ongoing pain they cause, and our decision is that we can no longer associate our great institution with his name,” said Carl Robertson, who chairs the Board of Directors.
“I’m not terribly proud of carrying the Hastings name on my law license. There is no forgiveness in this,” Willie Brown said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In 2020, the law school at the University of California, Berkeley stripped itself of a 19th century namesake who espoused racist views that led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. John Boalt’s name was removed from a school building after a three-year process...
Joseph Cotchett, a trial lawyer and alumnus who has donated about $10 million to the school, told the Chronicle that if the Hastings name remained, he would pull his name from its newly opened Cotchett Law Center. “I will do everything in my power as a 55-year alumnus of Hastings to change the name, and to honor the Indian tribes that were massacred and were taken advantage of,” Cotchett said...
Full story at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/leading-law-school-seeks-to-remove-genocidal-founders-name/ar-AAQfPdo.
Full story at https://www.nytimes.
https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/10/hastings-or-not-hastings.html.
Apparently, he has now changed his mind:
...The dean and chancellor of the school, David Faigman, had previously argued forcefully for retaining the name, but... he now [sees] the name change as a “necessary step.” ... Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/us/hastings-law-name-change.html. |
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-law-partners-of-hastings-boalt.html.
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| Hastings |
The namesake of the University of California Hastings College of the Law, according to historians, financed and promoted "Indian-hunting expeditions," in which wealthy men hunted Native Americans for sport in the mid-19th century. Now, an adjunct professor is calling for the San Francisco law school to take a comprehensive look at Hastings' legacy and reconsider whether his name belongs on the school.
