MGN
The University of California, Berkeley has removed the name on its anthropology building, Kroeber Hall — named for prominent American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber — because of his controversial history with Native Americans.
A proposal to rename the building was submitted last July to the Building Name Review Committee headed up by the school’s chancellor, Carol Christ, according to the university.
Alfred Louis Kroeber, who was born in 1876, was the founder of the study of anthropology in the American West.
The proposal lists several key factors in wanting his name removed including “research practices that were always objectionable to many Native Americans and that society now recognizes as reprehensible and has made illegal.” The proposal then describes the practices, which include collection of remains and sacred funerary objects of Native American ancestors and other indigenous people from their graves without consent from tribes or individual descendants.