Harvard Law Committee: Stop Using Shield With Ties to Slavery As Official Symbol

For more than seven decades, Harvard Law School’s official symbol has been a shield that displays three bundles of wheat under Harvard’s “Veritas” motto. Now, perhaps no more.

An internal committee at Harvard Law School announced Friday that the symbol’s links to a slaveholding benefactor are not consistent with the institution’s values, and recommended retiring the shield as the official symbol. The committee, however, did not ask the university to stop using the shield entirely.

“It is undeniable that the law school of the present is very different from the law school of 1937 for which the family crest of a slave owner could be chosen as its official symbol without anyone seeing the ...