RENAMING PRINCIPLES | Harvard's Questions

Old Harvard Law School arms,
with Royall badges,
wheat sheaves or garbs.

 July 26, 2021—The "Rhodes Must Fall" initiative has provoked discussion at Oxford. A parallel debate is taking place in other universities.

The Harvard Law School, for example, before 2016 had wheat sheaves or "garbs" in its coat of arms (Azure three garbs or a chief of Gules three open books argent garnished or the word VE-RI-TAS sable) because of its association with Isaac Royall, Jr., who endowed the first Harvard Law School professorship. 

The Royall wealth was based in part on the family's engagement in the slave trade. Worse, Royall's father "treated his slaves with extreme cruelty, including burning 77 people to death," according to a Law School statement. Martha Minow, dean of the Law School, formed a special committee to study the use of the arms to represent the school and make recommendations.

An early history of the issue is on a heraldry blog [http://blog.appletonstudios.com/2015/12/heraldic-controversy-in-cambridge.html] a that references Steve Annear, Boston Globe, December 7, 2015. [http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/12/01/harvard-law-school-forms-committee-examine-use-crest-tied-slave-ownership/1JR7OwiLIsPc3BxRUiH6yH/story.html].

The student initiative at the Harvard Law School, called Royall Must Fall, urged the Law School to change the seal. It arose from decisions in some southern states to remove the Confederate battle flag from certain public venues because of its use by those opposed to equal rights for Blacks in  since the 1960s.

The three wheat sheaves ("garbs") are the arms of Isaac Royall, Jr. as found on a baptismal basin donated by him to St. Michael’s Church in Bristol, Rhode Island; on his bookplate; on a two-handled cup in the possession of the First [Congregational] Church of Medford, Massachusett; and on the tomb of Isaac Royall and his father, William Royall, in Dorchester, Massachusetts (Bolton’s American Armory, Charles Knowles Bolton, The F.W. Faxon Company, Boston, 1927, pp. 142-143). [Bolton’s work, which heraldic scholars have noted has many errors in it, is the only work in which Annear found these arms.] The Royall family owned slaves on a plantation in Antigua and Barbuda as well as their house in Medford. 

After a months-long deliberative process, a Law School committee recommended in March 2016 that Harvard change the seal. Later that month, the Corporation—the University’s highest governing body— accepted the proposal to remove the Royall badges [incorrectly called "crests," which are the adornments above the helmet in a full achievement of a coat of arms] from the Law School’s official seal. At the time, Law School spokesperson Robb London told The Crimson the school would select a new seal by 2017, in time for the school’s bicentennial celebration.

Two years later, a Crimson article by Aidan F. Ryan (aidan.ryan@thecrimson.com. Twitter @AidanRyanNH) reported on the status of the removal. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/4/24/hls-continues-no-seal/ 

At the end of that celebration, but the school remained seal-less. In an interview in 2018, Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82 said administrators have focused on the school’s capital campaign and the bicentennial and will adopt a new seal later. “It’s been a very busy year,” Manning said. “We want to think about what is a fair and effective process for identifying a new seal.”

Tthe Law School worked quickly to remove the Royall badges from campus and from Law School websites. The endeavor was mostly successful, but the seal was still visible at some locations on the Law School campus in 2017. The three wheatsheaves of the Royall coat of arms remained in at least one location on campus—the door of a Harvard-owned property at 10 Mt. Auburn St.

“As soon as the Corporation accepted the recommendation to retire the shield, the School undertook an effort to remove all known instances of it from campus locations, print materials, licensed products and web content," said Matthew Gruber, Dean of Administration. 

Amanda M. Lee, former president of the Law School student government, wrote in an email that the absence of an official seal has not generated much concern among the student body, but some students “had concerns that the diploma might have a blank seal.” Manning confirmed diplomas will bear the University’s “Veritas” seal.

The university in 2021 has meanwhile created an alumni focus group to assist The University's Committee to Articulate Principles Involved in Renaming, chaired by Drew Faust. Here are the Committee's questions in July 2021:

- How do buildings, landmarks, and other named entities factor into your personal experience and sense of belonging at Harvard? Please offer examples.

- What factors and University values are most important to consider when deciding whether to rename an entity on campus? How should we take account of and balance both a namesake’s positive contributions and their failures and flaws? How do we understand these in light of the era in which the namesake lived? In light of the era in which a name was bestowed?

- How should we ensure that renaming does not result in erasing past history? What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of removing a name versus contextualizing the history of the namesake? What factors would you consider in determining whether to do one or the other?

RHODES: Oxford Monument-Trashing (Comment)

Plaque that Oriel is planning to remove, under pressure from
the "Rhodes Must Fall" campaign. It was placed by Alfred
Mosely, whose bio is in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906).

Dec. 25, 2015–Earlier this year, in April, a statue of Cecil Rhodes was removed from the University of Capetown in South Africa.

Rhodes is the man after whom were named Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford and Rhodes University in South Africa.

Rhodes built the British African empire "from Capetown to Cairo". He was described by his contemporaries at the peak of his power in 1895 as the "Colossus" of Africa and the "King of Diamonds". (The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the wonders of the ancient Greek world, is ironically being rebuilt as the latter-day Rhodes monuments are moved and threatened with obliteration.)

Based on quotes from his writing, Rhodes could be described fairly as a racist. At the end of 1895 he helped start the Second Boer War (1899-1902) by supporting the disastrous attack by Sir Leander Starr Jameson on the Dutch-speaking Boers in the Transvaal. African tribespeople were killed in large numbers in the process of the creation of Rhodes' empire.

The campaign against Rhodes' memory has spread from Capetown to Britain and the United States. A petition to Oriel College has a goal of 2,500 signatures and is about 80 percent there.

The petition quotes Rhodes using bitter language that should offend anyone. So do some of the advocates for the petition. Jack Renshaw of Cambridge, for example, calls Rhodes a "racist shit".

The New York Times today notes that Oriel College is responding to this campaign, called "Rhodes Must Fall". The College has reportedly started a process with the Oxford City authorities to remove a plaque honoring Rhodes and has opened discussion on the fate of a statue of Rhodes (see below).

The plaque, shown above right, was erected in 1906 by Alfred Mosely on property that the College owns. Mosely's bio appears in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) as follows:

English financier; born at Clifton 1855. He was educated at the Bristol Grammar School, and afterward went to South Africa, where he became one of the earliest settlers in Kimberley [capital of the Northern Cape Province in central South Africa]. He equipped at his own expense the Princess Christian Base Hospital near Cape Town for the relief of the sick and wounded during the South-African war. In 1902 he conducted an industrial commission from England to the United States to study the cause of American trade prosperity, and in 1903 he headed a similar commission to study American methods of education. He was made a C.M.G. in 1900. Written by: Joseph Jacobs, Victor Rousseau Emanuel.

Rhodes attended Oriel College in 1873, for one term. It took him eight more years of study and multiple return visits to Oxford before he received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in 1881. Meanwhile he founded the De Beers diamond company and then became Premier of the Cape Colony, as it then was called, in 1890-96. His term was ended by his support of an ill-fated attack on the Transvaal (the "Jameson Raid") that in subsequent years led to the Second Boer War. He initiated the practice of apartheid ("apartness" in the Dutch language of the Colony) that was continued in 1934 when South Africa became independent of Britain (i.e., when the Boers essentially took over), and ended in 1994 when South Africa became independent of minority rule by Europeans.

Daily Mail: Oriel College Engaged in "Craven Surrender"

The challenge to monuments of Rhodes may be summarized by a statement by doctoral student Brian Kwoba:

Cecil Rhodes is the Hitler of southern Africa. Would anyone countenance a statue to Hitler?

Rhodes has also been called the George Washington of southern Africa, which should give Americans pause. On December 24, Tony Abbott, former prime minister of Australia and one-time Rhodes Scholar, responded, in line with many other published comments:

Oxford would damage its standing as a great university if it were to substitute moral vanity for fair-minded inquiry.

,

Statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College.
Its future is being debated.

Oriel's dons, however, have responded to student protests at Rhodes' racist words and actions and have posted a statement disclaiming Rhodes' views and giving notice that the college plans to remove the plaque. Removal of the statue is a more complex issue, and Oriel says it will initiate a "listening exercise" to gather views, because the statue

can be seen as an uncritical celebration of a controversial figure, and the colonialism and the oppression of black communities he represents.

The American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, Elliot Gerson, expressed a hope that the statue not be removed:

Our values today are opposed to the views of the world held by Rhodes, and much of his generation, but his bequest is forever deserving of respect.

Meanwhile, Oriel College is described today by the Daily Mail as engaged in “craven surrender” to a "PC Mob".

Sir Michael Howard, an Honorary Fellow of Oriel and former Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford calls the campaign an "attempt to rewrite the history of the college and the university" and "fanatical iconoclasm", comparable to the destruction of historical sites by ISIS in Syria.

Comment

An alumnus of Oriel College, Jonathan Craven, wrote to me about this early on and I have obtained his permission to quote him, since he seems to speak for others:

Horrified. If political correctness is a prerequisite for being a donor to the college they can count me out of the 1326 Society. I've started writing a fuller explanation of why I feel this way which I'll be sending the college as part of their listening process; I'll probably post it in the blog as well since I'm interested to hear what my classmates think about it. I'm happy to see already though that a lot of people much more eloquent and influential than me have already begun making these arguments, so I am fairly confident that the statue will remain in the end. Erasing all traces of anyone we disagree with is a tactic more worthy of the Islamic State.

My own reactions to all this are:

• The idea of a "listening period" appeals to me, even though at Oriel it applies primarily to the statue, not the plaque. The question is whether it is just buying time and whether the issue is in danger of festering rather than being discussed.
• The plaque erected by Alfred Mosely seems to have some merit, reminding us at very least of Mr. Mosely, who seems to have done some important humanitarian work in South Africa and England.
• Destroying monuments should not be a form of speech, although it seems sometimes to be perceived as such. In the 1950s I lived for three years in Dublin. The central monument was Nelson's Pillar, a tall Doric column topped by a statue of a great Englishman, Admiral Lord (Horatio) Nelson. It was the terminus for the green CIE buses that I used to take from Blackrock and then Dalkey. Irish Nationalists never liked having an English naval hero at the center of Dublin and in 1966–nearly 50 years ago, and 50 years after the Easter Rising–the Irish Republicans blew it up. I can fully understand Irish sentiment against the Pillar, but condoning extra-legal violence on the basis of one's sympathy for the objective is dangerous. I am glad that the monument-toppling at Oxford is proceeding within a framework of law.
• When the statues of Kwame Nkrumah and Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin were toppled, on the other hand, few tears were shed. These were rarely of any artistic or historical merit, although I am told some Lenin statues are now worth real money because of their scarcity.
• The Islamic State (aka ISIS) is doing something much worse than blowing up propaganda statues. It is destroying ancient monuments of great artistic and historical importance, like the Palmyra Temple, in the name of their ideology. One hopes that if the Rhodes monuments are indeed removed from Oriel, they will find a home in a museum.
• At Harvard Law School, students are proposing something much more cautious than at Oxford. They are asking their officials to remove the wheatsheafs from the Law School shield, on the basis that the arms are derived from a donor to the Law School who was a slaveholder.  
• If Americans were to go all the way down that road, we would endanger the future of the Jefferson and Washington monuments and even the name of the nation's capital, since our Virginia forebears were slaveholders.
• But I wouldn't mind replacing a few of the long-forgotten men on horseback who grace some Washington, D.C. parks and replacing them with fresher candidates. For example, why not put a statue of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Stanton Park on Capitol Hill? 

Morality-based trashing of national heroes can be based on ignorance of the importance of their positive contributions, anachronistic application of modern standards, and failure to appreciate deep flaws in alternative heroes who are suggested as new icons. Above all, we should be cautious about destroying any monuments of artistic merit or historical significance. To these ends, Oriel College's proposed "listening period" makes some sense.

Postscript

Oriel College has heard enough. The statue will stay. Oriel's decision has been tied to the Yale University free speech incidents. University administrations are sorting out where the lines should be drawn. If free speech becomes a license for A to bully B, what has happened to the free-speech rights of B?

HERALDRY: Harvard Shield Shamed (Postscript March 6, 2016)

Harvard Law School Shield,
Now But Not Forevermore

November 4, 2015–The following story is excerpted from a story in the Harvard Crimson on November 1, 2015. (There is also a story in the Harvard Alumni Magazine.) By "seal" (which is in the realm of numismatics, not heraldry) the author, Andrew M. Duehren, means "shield".

At Harvard Law School, Students Call for Change of Seal
A new student movement at Harvard Law School is organizing to change the seal at the school, which the students argue represents and endorses a slaveholding legacy.
The seal is the coat of arms of the family of Isaac Royall Jr., a slaveholder who endowed the first professorship of law at Harvard. Dubbed “Royall Must Fall,” the movement styles itself after a student activist movement in South Africa that lobbied [successfully] to remove imagery of Cecil Rhodes, a British imperialist, from the University of Cape Town’s campus.

Banner of the Anti-Shield Lobby

At Harvard, activists formally began their effort for change with a rally of about 25 people on the Law School campus on Oct. 23. [...]
Students involved in the effort argued that imagery from a slaveholding era has no place at today’s Harvard Law School. [... They] pointed to the research and scholarship of visiting Law School professor Daniel R. Coquillette, who recently published a book about the first century of Harvard Law School, as inspiration for the movement.
In the book, Coquillette details the relationship between the Royall family’s slaveholding and the endowment of the Law School. While Coquillette said he was sympathetic to their aims, calling Royall “a coward, and a brutal slaveholder,” he said he does not think the Law School should change its seal. [...]

The article piques my attention as an example of the importance that some students attach to the coats of arms under which they compete and study. This was the subject of my recent article (pp.  45-50) in Oxford Today on the coats of arms of the Oxford colleges.

Crimson staff writer Andrew M. Duehren can be reached at andy.duehren@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @aduehren.

Postscript (March 6, 2016)

A committee of the Harvard Law School charged with responding to a student request to remove the wheat sheaf charge from the Law School shield has decided to drop the wheat sheaf, because it is associated with Isaac Royall Jr., who endowed the first law professorship at Harvard, and his father, who was a prominent user of slaves on plantations that he owned.  Harvard's corporation is described by the New York Times (which continues to misuse the word "crest" in its reporting on the shield) as likely to approve the proposed change.

The committee decision (which won 10-2) came with a "passionate" dissent from Prof. Annette Gordon-Reed, who has conducted scholarly research on the intimacy of Thomas Jefferson with his slave Sally Hemings. Jefferson's paternity via Hemings has been supported by DNA research. Gordon-Reed argues that the wheat-sheaf charges should be retained but the narrative should be changed to include the slaves who worked for Mr. Royall:

People should have to think about slavery when they think of the Harvard shield; but from now on, with a narrative that emphasizes the enslaved, not the Royall family.

On the other hand, no one has yet noted anywhere a huge advantage created by the removal of the wheat sheaf. It creates a fantastic opportunity for the Harvard Law School to reward a new donor by inserting a new charge on the shield that relates to a new gift. After all, what has Isaac Royall Jr. done for Harvard lately? If I were a billionaire with loose millions in change ready to invest in my immortality, I would see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to plant my flag, or at least a charge associated with my name, on a platinum-quality institution. I am available for consultation on the specifics. I plan to post the following on Craig's List:

UNIQUE DONOR OPPORTUNITY. With the pending removal of a shamed symbol from the shield of a world-famous academic institution, a vacancy in the space has been created for a limited time only. Act now before a person less worthy of immortality sweeps this prize from the table! If you are a billionaire seeking immortality, please contact the undersigned ASAP for suggestions on Next Steps. Contact: YourFameMyJob.

Or am I being too cynical?

Here Are Links to Some of My Posts on the Arms of Oxford Colleges and PPHs: Original Article in Oxford Today . Heraldry as Branding . Heraldry as Fun .  Coat of Arms vs. Crest . Sinister Questions . Visit to the College of Arms . Windsor Herald Talks to New Yorkers . Shaming of Harvard Law Shield :: Rapid Expansion of Oxford's Colleges and Halls . Oxford Stars . Links to Heraldry, Oxford, GW . Harris Manchester College . Linacre College . St Catherine's . St Cross College . St Edmund Hall . Trinity College :: Regent's Park College . St Benet's Hall .