A University of Richmond law school alum is demanding the university refund his family $3.6 billion over its move to “cave to woke activists” by taking his family name off the law school. Robert C. Smith is the great-great-grandson of T.C. Williams, whom the law school was named after until last September following the adoption of a policy that prohibits any campus buildings and programs from being named after a person who “directly engaged in the trafficking and/or enslavement of others or openly advocated for the enslavement of people.” Williams’ family donated $25,000 to fund the law school following his death. He owned tobacco businesses, with government records showing that his businesses had 25 to 40 enslaved people working for them, while he owned three enslaved people himself, personal tax records show. Smith sent a five-page letter to university President Kevin Hallock Jan. 30, slamming him as a “carpet bagging weasel” while denouncing the “shameful” decision to rename the law school. “Since you and your activists went out of your way to discredit the Williams name and since presumably the Williams family money is tainted, demonstrate your ‘virtue’ and give it all back,” Smith wrote in the letter. Smith further used the letter to boast of Williams’ role in the Confederacy in the Civil War, serving against “a voracious and plundering invader.” Despite all that, a university spokesperson said the law school hasn’t been referred to by T.C. Williams’ name in 20 years.
