The committee of 12 was established in November by Dean Martha Minow and made up of faculty, students, alumni and staff of the school. In its report to the corporation, the committee stated: ‘We believe that if the Law School is to have an official symbol, it must more closely represent the values of the Law School, which the current shield does not.’

Officially adopted in 1937, the shield depicts three bundles of wheat, an image borrowed from the family crest of Isaac Royall Jr. The son of a wealthy Antiguan slaveholder known to have treated his slaves with extreme cruelty, Royall Jr’s estate endowed the first professorship of law at Harvard.

Dean Minow created the committee after a group of law school students formed a group called Royall Must Fall to denounce the shield and endorsed its recommendation, though the vote was not unanimous. Committee members Professor Annette Gordon-Reed and law student Annie Rittgers submitted an article entitled ‘A Different View,’ arguing that the law school should maintain the current shield, ‘tying it to a historically sound interpretative narrative about it.’ Source: Harvard Law Today