Harvard commits $100M to redress its complicity with slavery

Harvard commits $100M to redress its complicity with slavery

Harvard University is putting $100 million, about 94 million euros, into a fund to research and redress its “extensive entanglements with slavery”. The fund does not come out of the blue: the university also released an internal evaluation this week on the role of the prestigious institution during slavery. This revealed that Harvard employees, including four former presidents, enslaved at least seventy people.

Profiteering
The researchers concluded that the university continued to profit from slavery even after its abolition. For example, gifts were accepted from people who had amassed their wealth through the slave trade. 

“The research lays a solid foundation for our next phase: the process of accountability and recovery,” the university writes. Money from the fund will go to education and research, among other areas, and will be used to help address the “educational and social disadvantages caused by the legacy of the slave trade and racism.” (HOP, JvE)