SF Gate:
The name “Boalt Hall” is set to be removed Thursday from the University of California Berkeley’s law school after a yearslong process that determined, in essence, that the school should no longer honor a man whose most notable work was rooted in racist views.
“We have to remember the racism that John Boalt expressed,” Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school’s dean, told me recently. “But that doesn’t mean we honor him by putting his name on the building.”
The move to drop a name that has been used for decades by students and alumni of one of the country’s most prestigious law schools comes as institutions around the country are grappling with what to do with schools, buildings and chair positions that are named for people whose legacies don’t stand up to modern scrutiny.
