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“When you analyze a name change, you have to understand the equity you have in the existing name, the cost of changing the name, and the value of changing the name - you have to balance all those things,” said David Aaker, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who specializes in marketing and brand strategy. To some branding experts, the hard costs of a name change - websites, stationery, books, libraries, tests, degrees - would pale in comparison to the incalculable cost of conveying a new brand identity to people across the world, for whom “Berkeley” is synonymous with academics. UC Berkeley consistently ranks among the best public and private universities, known globally for its list of Nobel laureates and inventions, as well as its tradition of political activism. Attorneys representing the college filed a motion to dismiss the suit, which is now being challenged at the California Court of Appeal.įor Berkeley, a top-tier public university that has spent more than a century and a half cementing the reputation of its brand, the risks appear even greater. The law school also faced a $1.7 billion lawsuit from descendants of Hastings, which stalled in December after a San Francisco Superior Court Judge denied the plaintiffs’ motion to halt the name change. Hastings’ Chancellor David Faigman allowed a six-month transition for the college to adopt its new name, UC College of the Law San Francisco - a process that required “an immense amount of preparatory work,” Faigman said, including new state legislation. San Francisco has purged problematic names from streets and a waterfront plaza, while what was previously known as UC Hastings discarded the name of its founder, Serranus Hastings, after historians linked him to massacres of Native American people in Mendocino County.īut most of these decisions met resistance and had myriad associated costs, from replacing building signs to creating new logos and letterhead. Renaming or “denaming” has become a way for cities and institutions to denounce or reckon with contentious figures of the past. Mogulof said he is not aware “of any formal effort or request to change the university’s name.” “At the same time, we are cognizant of the fact that over the course of the ensuing 155 years since the university’s founding, ‘Berkeley’ has come to embody and represent very different values and perspectives,” he continued, citing diversity and social equity as chief among those values.