FILE - A tour group walks through the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 30, 2012. Harvard University is vowing to spend $100 million dollars to research and atone for its extensive ties with slavery, the school's president announced Tuesday, April 26, 2022, with plans to identify and support direct descendants of dozens of enslaved people who labored at the Ivy League campus.
The report, commissioned by Bacow, found that Harvard’s faculty, staff and leaders enslaved more than 70 Black and Native American people from the school’s founding in 1636 to 1783. It cautions that the figure is “almost certainly an undercount.” Using historical records, researchers were able to identify dozens of enslaved people by name, along with their connection to the university.
Harvard invested directly in the sugar and rum trades in the Caribbean, along with the U.S. cotton and railroad industries. The college's early growth is credited to support from wealthy donors who accumulated their fortunes through the slave trade and industries that relied on it.
In his message, Bacow called the findings “disturbing and shocking,” and he acknowledged that the school “perpetuated practices that were profoundly immoral.” “Through such efforts, these descendants can recover their histories, tell their stories and pursue empowering knowledge,” the report said. Georgetown University in 2019 promised to raise $400,000 a year for the descendants of enslaved people sold by the school. The Princeton Theological Seminary created a $27.6 million reparative endowment. The University of Virginia established scholarships for the descendants of enslaved people.
Ridiculous no one alive was a slave or owned slaves / enough of the shit already so tired of black And their wanting free shit
😂😂😂 waste of money.. yall are stupid for supporting that bullshit
How about using it to reduce tuition