The dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law said Tuesday he has accepted a recommendation to remove the name “Boalt” — associated with the school for more than a century — because its namesake was a racist and never a student there.
John Boalt, a Nevada lawyer who inspired the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, also spoke derisively about Native Americans and people of African descent.
His name is sprinkled throughout the school. There is the Boalt Hall Alumni Association; Boalt Hall Fund; Boalt Hall Student Association; Boalt Environmental Law Society; and, perhaps most incongruously, the Boalt Hall Committee on Human Rights. Even the school’s Facebook page is called “UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall.” Alumni call themselves Boalties.