The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California

A critical examination of the complex legacies of early Californian anthropology and linguistics for twenty-first-century communities.

In January 2021, at a time when many institutions were reevaluating fraught histories, the University of California removed anthropologist and linguist Alfred Kroeber’s name from a building on its Berkeley campus. Critics accused Kroeber of racist and dehumanizing practices that harmed Indigenous people; university leaders repudiated his values. In The Unnami...