As students reenter UC Berkeley’s hallowed libraries, controversial legacies remain; regardless of the push to rename Bancroft Library over two years ago, campus will retain the name despite acknowledging that its namesake — Hubert Howe Bancroft — held racist and nativist views in his later writings. The decision, announced July 10, follows the release of the Bancroft Library Reckoning Committee’s final report and a nearly two-year review process. The committee, formed in 2023, was tasked with evaluating the harms caused by Bancroft’s writings and weighing community input on whether the library should be renamed. The proposal was initially co-submitted in 2023 by then-graduate student Sean Peterson and the student group RECLAIM. The proposal cited prior unnaming decisions on campus, noting that Boalt, LeConte and Barrows halls had been renamed due to the “racist legacies and rhetoric of their namesakes.” According to the proposal, honorific names shape campus values and community, an...