‘To rescue for human society the native values of rural life’: race, space, and whiteness in the University of California, Berkeley’s agricultural complex

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I read Hilgard Hall as a text of whiteness to explore how one campus building at the University of California, Berkeley renders racial power relations in the academy. Through the lens of critical whiteness studies, I examine Hilgard Hall’s namesake, architecture features, and weighty epigraph, to rescue for human society the native values of rural life. Specifically, I analyse Hilgard Hall’s identity as a building dedicated to agricultural research and education through its entanglement with Berkeley’s history as a land-grant institution. I offer a possible vision for Hilgard Hall that attempts to enable the building to become a ‘spatial race traitor’ through renovation and occupation. This article speaks to the current debates on removing monuments and building names and how agricultural programmes might approach addressing the ways white supremacy is literally constructed in(to) their teaching and research spaces.