Law Prof’s Article Not Just a ‘Pebble’ as UT Drops Klansman’s Name from Dorm
The University of Texas will remove the name of a dead law professor from one of its dorms because he was once a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
The university’s governing board voted today to change the name of Simkins Residence Hall, according to the Houston Chronicle and the Associated Press. The dorm was named after William Stewart Simkins, a law professor who died in 1929 after teaching at UT’s Austin law school for 30 years. Simkins was a Klan leader in Florida after the Civil War.
The controversy arose after a former UT law professor, Thomas Russell, posted a paper on the Social Science Research Network contending that the university named the dorm after Simkins as it faced pressure to admit African-American students.
The dorm will now be called the Creekside Residence Hall, the Chronicle says. A park named for Simkins’ brother, a former UT regent also involved with the Klan, will now be called Creekside Park.
Russell told the National Law Journal earlier this month that when he wrote his paper, he didn’t expect the name of the dorm to be changed. “Most academic writing drops into the sea like a pebble,” he told the legal publication. “Is renaming a dorm really a big deal? Not in itself. What I wanted to provoke was a bigger conversation about race, history and the law.”
