Last month the portraits of black professors hanging in Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Hall were defaced with strips of black tape over their faces. Following the incident, students and faculty began to more strongly consider a movement to change the seal of the elite institution, citing concerns about its association with slavery. The seal of Harvard Law School contains three sheaves of wheat under the motto “Veritas”— Latin for “truth.” The problem is that the sheaves of wheat pay homage to the family crest of Isaac Royall Jr., a slaveholder who endowed Harvard’s first law professorship in the mid-19th century. “These symbols set the tone for the rest of the school and the fact that we hold up the Harvard crest as something to be proud of when it represents something so ugly is a profound disappointment and should be a source of shame for the whole school,” law student Alexander J. Clayborne told The Harvard Crimson.
Drawing inspiration from the group of students at the University of Cape Town, whose activism successfully removed the statue of colonialist Cecil Rhodes from campus, students at Harvard Law gathered for a rally dubbed “Royall Must Fall” on October 23rd. Since then, the movement has gained hundreds of followers on Facebook and gathered enough momentum to prompt the school to organize a committee of administrators, students, faculty members, and alumni to “reconsider” the seal.
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The protests have also enacted tangible change. Since the beginning of the movement, Harvard College discontinued the use of the term “house master” to describe residential staff, changing the title to better accommodate “the 21st-century needs of residential student life.” "Master" is also the term that was used to refer to slave owners.
“Symbols are important,” Martha Minow, dean of the law school, said this week. “They become even more important when people care about them and focus on them.”
Related: Here's Why Students at Harvard and Princeton Are Protesting
Check out Teen Vogue’s December/January issue cover star, Fernanda Ly.