Harvard Approves Dropping Law School Shield

CAMBRIDGE, MA - The Harvard Corporation agrees that with the a Harvard Law School committee that recommended the law school shield be abandoned due to its ties to an 18th-century slaveholder, and the Corporation has given approval to retire it.

"The Corporation agrees with your judgment and the recommendation of the committee that the Law School should have the opportunity to retire its existing shield and propose a new one,” wrote Harvard President Drew Faust and Senior Fellow William F. Lee in a Monday letter to Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow.

• SEE: Letter from Harvard president to Harvard Law dean supporting decision.
• The Harvard Law School committee's initial report on the shield.

The Harvard Corporation said the school should have a new shield, "one conducive to unifying the Law School community rather that dividing it.”

Minow, in a message to the Harvard Law School announcing the decision, wrote: “The opportunity to consider a new symbol on the threshold of our Bicentennial allows us to engage in a productive and creative focus on expressing the School’s mission and values as we continue to strengthen its dedication to intellectual rigor and truth, to reasoned discourse and diverse views, and to a community marked by mutual respect and inclusiveness.

• Sign up for free Cambridge news alerts and daily newsletters.

"Our constant efforts to marshal talent to serve justice and to advance human freedom and welfare are the best way to symbolize the ideals of Harvard Law School."

The Harvard Law School Shield Committee recommended the shield be dropped because of its link to the Isaac Royall family. Royall was the son of an Antiguan slaveholder who burned 77 people to death, according to Harvard Law Today. The shield is modeled on the coat of arms of the Royall family.

"We believe that if the Law School is to have an official symbol, it must more closely represent the values of the Law School, which the current shield does not," the committee said.

Royall's gift of land helped support the first professorship of law at Harvard.

"There are complex issues involved in preserving the histories of places and institutions with ties to past injustices, but several elements make retiring the shield less controverted than some other issues about names, symbols, and the past," said Minow in a letter of endorsement of the initial report.