Harvard establishes $100 million endowment fund for slavery reparations

Students and pedestrians walk through the courtyard of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., March 10, 2020. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File photo

April 26 (Reuters) – Harvard University is setting aside $100 million for an endowment fund and other measures to close the educational, social and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism, according to an email from Harvard University president university sent all students, faculty and staff on Tuesday.

Harvard President Lawrence Bacow’s email included a link to a 100-page report by his university’s 14-member Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery. The panel was chaired by Tomiko Brown-Nagin, legal historian and constitutional law scholar, Dean of the interdisciplinary Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. The email and report were sent to Reuters.

The move comes amid a broader conversation about repairing the impacts of centuries of slavery, discrimination and racism. Some people have asked for financial or other reparations.

The report presents a history of slaves working on campus and of the university profiting from the slave trade and slave-related industries after slavery was outlawed in Massachusetts in 1783, 147 years after the founding from Harvard. The report also documents that Harvard excludes black students and their scholars who espouse racism.

While Harvard had notable figures among abolitionists and in the civil rights movement, the report said that “the oldest institution of higher learning in the country…helped perpetuate the racial oppression and exploitation of the time.”

The report’s authors recommended offering descendants of enslaved people at Harvard educational and other support so they “can reclaim their stories, tell their stories, and seek empowering knowledge.”

Other recommendations included that the Ivy League school fund summer programs to bring long-underfunded students and faculty from historically black colleges and universities to Harvard, and send Harvard students and faculty to the institutions known as HBCUs, like Howard University.

In his email, Harvard President Bacow said a committee would explore turning the recommendations into action and that a university board of directors had authorized $100 million for implementation, with some of the funds held in an endowment. .

“Slavery and its legacy have been a part of American life for more than 400 years,” Bacow wrote. “The work of further correcting its lingering effects will require our sustained and ambitious efforts for years to come.”

Other American institutions of higher learning have created funds in recent years to address the legacies of slavery. A law enacted in Virginia last year requires five public state universities to create scholarships for descendants of people enslaved by the institutions.

Information from Michela Moscufo; edited by Donna Bryson and Jonathan Oatis

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