Law Schools

Only Harvard Law Would Still Care About Something Like This

The school dropped its Royall Crest as an unnecessary vestige of a racist past. But the school can't quite figure out what to do without a coat-of-arms because pretentiousness is a hell of a thing.

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It’s been two years since Harvard Law students successfully rose up and forced the school to abandon its long-standing logo, which just happened to be the family crest of the slave-owning Isaac Royall Jr. While Royall apologists complained that “hey, it’s just a meaningless symbol so you shouldn’t worry about it and that’s why it’s super important that it can never be taken down,” eventually common sense carried the day and the powers-that-be at Harvard Law agreed that ordering new letterhead wasn’t much of a reason to identify the school with three sheaths of wheat that were symbolically harvested by institutionalized human misery.

When the Royall Crest finally fell, the school promised to come up with a new logo. But two years on, and the school hasn’t got anything. The Harvard Crimson is on the case:

[Dean of the Law School John F.] Manning added he wants to ensure the process for choosing a new seal is “fair and effective” and that he is gathering input from Law School affiliates about what that process might look like.

“We want to think about what is a fair and effective process for identifying a new seal,” Manning said. “This is my first year as dean, I’ve been going around and had lots of interaction with the community, with faculty, staff, students, and alumni, and in coming up with decision-making processes, it helps me to hear from a lot of constituents.”

“I’m dealing with a lot of lawyers and a lot of people who care about Harvard Law School, and so I’m asking around to see what people think would be a good process for identifying a new shield,” he added.

Or — and this is just a wild thought — don’t. Honestly, who cares about having a wildly douchetastic coat-of-arms for a law school in the 21st century? Just because Harvard branded itself with an anachronistic device for years doesn’t mean it has to continue. Other elite law schools have eschewed a crest. When you type in “Berkeley Law” logo you don’t get a crest, or if you do it’s the broader university crest appended to a stylized, modern logo. NYU might throw the university torch onto their design, but they haven’t invested in a heraldry expert.

Only Harvard Law could be caught up in its own importance to think they need some sort of faux ancient sigil or they can’t be taken seriously as a law school. If there’s one institution on the planet that deserves a good swirlie it’s Harvard Law:

Amanda M. Lee, former president of the Law School student government, wrote in an email Monday that the absence of an official seal has not generated much concern among the student body.

Lee did say, though, that some students “had concerns that the diploma might have a blank seal,” but those concerns quickly went away after Manning confirmed diplomas will bear the University’s “Veritas” seal.

Oh, right. There’s already a perfectly acceptable shield in Harvard’s back pocket. Just get over yourselves and move on. Not every bad idea has to be replaced with something better — sometimes it’s just fine to stop making mistakes.

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Two Years After Law School Removed Royall Crest, No New Seal in Sight [Harvard Crimson]

Earlier: Harvard Law School Takes A Scythe To Its Wheat Crest

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