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Harvard University executives, faculty, and staff enslaved more than 70 people in the 17th and 18th centuries, when slavery was legal in Massachusetts, according to a report describing the university’s deep ties to the wealth generated by slave labor in the South and Caribbean. and its important role in the long history of racial discrimination against the nation.
The Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, published on Tuesday, is a landmark recognition by one of the world’s most prestigious universities for the breadth of its entanglement with slavery, white supremacy and racial injustice for centuries since its founding in 1636. It also shatters any notion that Harvard, because of its location in New England, was isolated from the evils of economic and social systems based on human slavery. The school promised $ 100 million to redress injustice.
Much of Harvard’s records of slavery and racial discrimination have been known for years. But the report seeks to deepen this knowledge and link it together in a relentless portrait of institutional shortcomings. Among his findings:
- Enslaved people of indigenous and African descent played an integral role in the Harvard community during its first century and a half. Harvard’s first teacher, Nathaniel Eaton, enslaved a man known only as the Moor, who served the earliest students in the college. Various presidents, associates, supervisors, stewards, and Harvard professors enslaved more than 70 people until slavery was banned in Massachusetts in 1783. The report does not specify the exact number. But the university said the total number appears to be 79, dozens more than previously known.
- Five men who made their fortunes from slavery and slave goods accounted for more than a third of the donations or financial promises Harvard received from private individuals in the first half of the 19th century. Among them was Benjamin Bussey, a sugar, coffee, and cotton merchant who left Harvard a $ 320,000 estate when he died in 1842. James Perkins, whose business included the slave trade in the Caribbean, bequeathed $ 20,000 to Harvard in 1822. d.
- Harvard is home to intellectuals who promoted “racial science” and eugenics in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their theories and research, including a collection of photographs of enslaved people and naked students, have provided crucial support for those seeking to justify the superiority of white and other racist ideologies. The university’s museum collections also house human remains believed to be of indigenous origin and enslaved people of African descent.
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The report was prepared by a faculty committee convened by Harvard President Lawrence S. Backo in 2019. Many who read the report will find it “embarrassing and even shocking,” Bacco said in a statement.
“Harvard is taking advantage of and somehow perpetuating practices that were deeply immoral,” Bacchou said. “I therefore believe we have a moral responsibility to do what we can to deal with the persistent corrosive effects of these historical practices on individuals, on Harvard and on our society.
Harvard is one of the newest major universities to engage in public awareness of its role in slavery, a trend that emerged after Brown University published a 2006 report examining its links to the transatlantic slave trade. Georgetown University, the University of Virginia and William and Mary, among others, have also delved into their slavish past in recent years. A group called the Universities of Slavery, based in the U-Va., Has about 90 members (including Harvard) in the United States and abroad.
Some universities, including Georgetown and William and Mary, have apologized in recent years for their role in slavery. Others are not. Bakou’s statement stopped with an apology on behalf of Harvard, and the university declined to comment. But Bakou announced that the university will set aside $ 100 million for initiatives, including a donation, to respond to the report’s findings.
The report recommends expanding partnerships with historic black colleges and universities (HBCU). Under the plan, Harvard will pay HBCU faculty to spend the summer, semester, or school year visiting Cambridge campuses, and Harvard professors will be able to do the same at HBCU. The report also envisions HBCU students being invited to spend a summer or one or two semesters at Harvard during their youth – with financial support from Harvard. Adolescents at Harvard can also spend time at HBCU. Students in these programs will be known as the Du Bois Scholars, in honor of civil rights leader WEB Du Bois, who in 1895 became the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard.
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, who chaired the commission that drafted the report, said many at the university were excited about the proposal to work more with HBCU. The nation owes money to historically black schools, she said. “Despite their benefits to the country, HBCU has been underfunded,” Brown-Nagin said in an interview, “and that in itself is a reflection of slavery and its legacy.”
The report also suggests that the university take steps to help address educational inequalities among communities of descendants of enslaved people, including in the South and the Caribbean, by working with schools, public colleges, tribal colleges and other institutions.
“We recommend paying special attention to creating, expanding and disseminating world-class learning opportunities – including curricula and pedagogical innovations, increased access to existing resources and excellent teacher training – especially to support historically marginalized children and young people from birth. to a high level. school and college, “the report said.
Harvard had previously acknowledged a significant connection to slavery.
In 2016, Drew Gilpin Faust, president of the university, said that Harvard was “a direct participant in the American system of racial slavery” from its earliest days until 1783 and that the university was indirectly involved through extensive financial and other connections. with the slave South until the time of emancipation. “
That same year, Faustus appeared with US envoy John Lewis of Georgia, the late civil rights leader, to unveil a plaque at Harvard’s Wadsworth House that commemorates four enslaved people – named Titus, Venus, Juba and Bill – who lived there during 18th century. and works for two Harvard presidents.
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The report, released Tuesday, said: “More and more people have been enslaved by Harvard stewards, and in that capacity they probably served Harvard students and maintained its campus.” An 18th-century steward, Andrew Boardman, enslaved at least eight people. Their names are referred to as Cuffe; Rose; Jane of the Rose; Flora of the “rose”; Jeffrey of the Rose; Cesar “of the rose”; Lucy; and Peter.
With new discoveries about Harvard’s broader ties to slavery, the report recommends further steps to honor the enslaved people whose work helped found and develop the university. Harvard must create “a permanent and impressive physical memorial, gathering place, or both,” the report said.
The report also recommends that the university seek to identify direct descendants of enslaved people who worked on campus or were enslaved by Harvard management, professors, or employees. According to the report, Harvard must “engage with these descendants through dialogue, programming, information sharing, networking and educational support.”
The report comes at a crucial time for Harvard. The university defends its race-based admission policy in a case that offers the conservative majority of the Supreme Court the opportunity to limit positive action. Harvard, the report says, has been a “champion of diversity in higher education” since the 1970s and provides extensive financial assistance to students of all backgrounds.
But for generations, the report acknowledges, the university has contributed to racial discrimination.
In the mid-19th century, Louis Agassis, a prominent professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, supported theories, according to the report, concluding that blacks were “at the bottom of a racial hierarchy determined by nature.” Agassis commissioned a photographer to make daguerreotype images in 1850 of seven enslaved people. Critics question Harvard’s right to own the images. They are housed in the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, but are not on public display.
Racial Science and Eugenics – a concept of selective racial reproduction now discredited – gained popularity at Harvard in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Charles William Elliott, president of Harvard from 1869 to 1909, allowed intrusive physical examinations and measurements of student athletes in pursuit of what the high school principal called “improving competition,” according to the report. Elliott also said in 1909 that “there should be no admixture of racial origin” and made other statements in support of segregation.
Abbot Lawrence Lowell, Elliott’s successor as president, oversaw discriminatory admission policies in the early 20th century, including well-documented efforts to expel Jewish students. Under Lowell’s leadership in 1922, there was also controversy over whether the small number of black students at Harvard would be allowed to live in freshman dormitories central to the home study program.
“The community Lowell is trying to build included only whites,” the report said. The boards eventually repealed his expulsion policy, the report said after press attention and pressure from students, alumni and …
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