Harvard Commits $100M To Begin Addressing The Whole ‘Major Benefiter From Enslavement’ Thing

// Ever since reading Craig Steven Wilder’s Ebony and Ivy back in undergrad, I thought of Harvard as a slavery school. Which is why I made this joke at their expense the other day.

Under his leadership, all classes shall begin with the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song.

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But as they say, art imitates life. On April 26th, Harvard dropped a hell of historicism, reporting its involvement in anti-Blackness from the 17th century onward.

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In a sweeping report, the university also acknowledged its complicity in 19th-century “race science” and 20th-century racial discrimination, and announced the creation of a $100 million fund to address the legacies of slavery, including inequalities in educational outcomes, that persist to this day.

“Harvard benefited from and in some ways perpetuated practices that were profoundly immoral,” Harvard president Lawrence Bacow wrote in a letter to the university community about the report. “Consequently, I believe we bear a moral responsibility to do what we can to address the persistent corrosive effects of those historical practices on individuals, on Harvard, and on our society.”

The report, produced by a team of faculty and student researchers led by a high-ranking dean, describes a range of ties to slavery dating from the university’s founding in the 17th century to abolition in the 19th.

If you have the time to indulge in what few others besides Jordan Peele and Frank Wilderson III would consider light reading, the full 130-page report is available here. If you’d like a shorter engagement with Harvard’s racial legacy, I would recommend this, one of these, and a smidgen of that. Don’t forget the article too; few things get thoughts of equity and justice rolling like the realization that:

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Harvard presidents, as well as faculty and staff, enslaved more than 70people who labored in their homes and on campus, where they fed generations of students, according to the report. The Harvard Corporation, the entity that controls Harvard’s wealth to this day, profited from slavery through loans to Caribbean planters, whose businesses depended on slave labor, and investments in American textile mills, whose raw material — cotton — was produced by women and men enslaved in the South.

Folks who are familiar with the report took their thoughts to Twitter.

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A few (me included) are looking at other big names to follow suit:

Yale & Princeton need to follow Harvard & add their $ to the atonement pot.
If these insurance companies like The Llyods of London & banks like Chase follow Harvard, a quarter of our reparations would be paid. #cutthecheck#ReparationsNow https://t.co/IOYegvrkIP pic.twitter.com/ho1Nl13nA3

— Antionette * (@Antionette_B1) April 27, 2022

There is also the question of how equity will be meted out:

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I hope this means actual money and not just academic support. From @nprnews @ayanaarchie: Harvard releases report detailing its ties to slavery, plans to issue reparations https://t.co/f1jn7yAO2g

— Amaya Smith (@amayajsmith) April 27, 2022

And if $100M is actually enough to redress the wrongs committed:

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See how there’s an enormous jump in size when going from Jupiter to the Sun? That’s just two orders of magnitude in difference.

This is a great way to visualize the difference between $100 million (how much Harvard is committing to reparations) and $40 billion (endowment). https://t.co/i2M30yC5sh

— The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (@IBJIYONGI) April 27, 2022

I look forward to reading more about and seeing how Harvard will begin rectifying its legacy. And Princeton. And Brown. And Columbia. And Rutgers. And…

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

Topics

Harvard, Race Science, Racial Discrimination, Slavery