Harvard Law Committee Suggests Dropping School Shield

CAMBRIDGE, MA - The controversial Harvard Law School shield should be abandoned because of its links to slavery, a committee of students, faculty, staff, and alumni said in a report Friday.

The appropriateness of the seal, adopted by Harvard Law in 1936, has been discussed for months and was put before a special 12-person committee; 10 voted for the change.

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At the center of the controversy is the shield's 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.

The Harvard Corporation will decide what is done with the shield.

Royall's gift of land helped support the first professorship of law at Harvard, according to Martha Minow, dean of the law school.

"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 report.

Harvard officials in February announced the school is dropping the term “House master” in favor of “faculty dean.”

>>>Read the committee's 11-page report here<<<