Nixing Hastings name opens new dispute: What to rename the law school

UC Hastings College of the Law is ready to change its name. But a potential conflict emerged at a Capitol hearing on Wednesday.

"There is no disagreement about whether we should change the name of the school of law," said Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, during the hearing of the Assembly Select Committee on Native American Affairs. "The only question is, 'What do we change it to?'"

Hastings Chancellor and Dean David Faigman asked legislators to change the name to UC San Francisco College of Law. But Mona Oandasan, a Yuki Indian and a representative of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, had a different request.

"We're asking to change the name of the college to a Yuki name," Oandasan said. "It's the very minimum the state can do, especially in light of this history."

That history is a genocide that many scholars say Serranus C. Hastings participated in. Hastings was California's first chief justice and third attorney general. He founded UC Hastings in 1878. But while making his fortune as a landowner in the 1850s, some modern historians say, he organized and financed militias that killed Yuki Indians in the Eden and Round Valleys of Northern California.

"The Yuki population went from around 20,000 to 300 in a little under three years," Oandasan said. "This is truly not just about a name change."

Disagreement over the new name may be a reason lawmakers have not yet introduced a bill to make the change. In November, Hastings' board voted to cooperate with a name change.

On Feb. 8, the school, tribal representatives and several lawmakers issued a statement saying, "We anticipate introducing legislation soon." Among those who signed on were Ting, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and Assemblyman James Ramos, D-Highland. A member of the Serrano/Cahuilla tribe, Ramos oversaw Wednesday's hearing as chair of the select committee. Wiener has publicly supported the change.

"The college is a statutory and constitutional entity, and does not have unilateral power to change its name," Faigman told the committee.

He said the debate over the name has "subsumed all other conversations" since he became dean in 2017. That year, Hastings adjunct professor John Briscoe published an op-ed headlined "The moral case for renaming Hastings College of Law." Faigman said he then read two histories of Indian genocide in California. While neither devoted more than "a paragraph or two" to Hastings, Faigman said it was clear he was an "accomplice" in the genocide.

Faigman opened an Indigenous Law Center on campus and held meetings with native people. He listed several tribal names people suggested, but said some tribal members requested the school not be named Yuki because the word "originally meant 'enemy' in another tribe's language."

He said the school's board voted unanimously in December to request the name "San Francisco." Faigman said the urban campus in the heart of the city overlooks city hall and is "uniquely identified with San Francisco." He added that it is a "uniform and default" convention to name University of California campuses after the city where they are located.

"As has been demonstrated repeatedly in conversations with people of Eden and Round Valleys, a first principle of sovereignty, whether it's a person or as a community, is to choose by what name you wish to be called," Faigman said. "We wish this principleU to be honored in the name of our great law school."