‘CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY’

Prestigious Law School to Ditch Name After Founder’s Deadly History Comes to Light

Serranus Clinton Hastings, the founder of the first law school in California, promoted “genocide to his own benefit,” the school’s dean said.

California’s first law school, the UC Hastings College of the Law, will change its name so it no longer references its founder, Serranus Clinton Hastings, who played a significant role in the mass killings of Indigenous people, the Los Angeles Times reports. The school launched a review after a former adjunct professor wrote an op-ed about how the Yuki tribal members’ ancestors were targeted and killed by Hastings in the 1850s and ’60s. School dean and chancellor David Faigman said the review committee’s report “told a very disturbing and horrific story of Hastings promoting genocide to his own benefit.” It found that Hastings promoted exploration expeditions in Northern California that killed and displaced hundreds of Yuki Indians. He then took the land for himself and paid the state $100,000 to establish the law school.

Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) are among the school’s notable alumni.