Amna: America's oldest
university, Harvard, is
beginning to come to terms with
its own history and role in
slavery.
The school is out with a new
report detailing its extensive
entanglement and legacy.
Jeffrey brown has the details as
part of our ongoing reporting,
race matters.
>> The ties to slavery were deep
, these signs in some cases
hiding in plain sight.
Among the findings in the report
conducted by Harvard faculty,
Harvard presidents, faculty, and
staff enslaved more than 70
people in the 17th and 18th
centuries, some of whom labored
on campus.
Harvard benefited from donations
from plantation owners and other
trade involving slave labor.
It also details how Harvard's
longest-serving president,
Charles William Elliott, and
other prominent faculty promoted
eugenics, the racist idea that
selective breeding is needed to
purify the human race.
In response to these and other
findings, the university has
pledged $100 million to create
an endowed legacy of slavery
fund.
For more, I am joined by the
Dean of the Harvard Radcliffe
institute for advanced study,
and she chaired the committee
report.
There are many specifics in this
report, but what is key for you?
Is it how integral slavery was
to the history of Harvard?
>> I would say so.
We documented direct ownership
and enslavement of human beings.
We documented financial ties to
the slave trade and slave
economies.
Finally, the intellectual
production of ideologies that
supported slavery, segregation,
and white supremacy.
I would say the breadth and
depth of the findings are
significant and in particular
the direct ownership of more
than 70 human beings was more
than I would have anticipated.
Jeffrey: Is there any one
specific example that surprised
or shocked you?
Tomiko: I wouldn't say shocked
or surprised.
I would say the reality of
enslaved people being on campus,
feeding our students, serving
Harvard presidents, is quite
remarkable.
Jeffrey: What was an important
theme for you that came from
this report?
Tomiko: I am a historian of the
civil rights movement and it was
important to me and the
committee to lift up the history
of resistance to inequality that
is personified by graduates of
Harvard, such as W.E.B. Dubois,
who helped found the niagara
movement and the naacp and was a
towering intellectual figure.
Another is Charles Hamilton
Houston, known as the man who
killed Jim crow, because of his
civil rights lawyering that laid
the groundwork for brown V board
of education.
Those figures are vitally
important to understand as
representatives of Harvard.
Jeffrey: This new fund of $100
million is a lot, but what
exactly is it for?
Tomiko: It is a significant
financial commitment and we are
pleased the university has
established this fund that is
meant to address the harms of
slavery locally, nationally, and
in the caribbean through
leveraging its expertise and
education, of course access to
educational opportunities is a
known driver of social mobility,
which explains our leading there
and is consistent with our
mission.
We will seek to establish a
public memorial to allow people
on and off campus to engage with
this history.
We have committed to supporting
new and sustained partnerships
with historically black colleges
and tribal colleges, and also we
recommended as a committee and
the university will hold itself
accountable by establishing
reporting procedures and an
implementation committee led by
one of the world's authorities
on human rights and seeking
justice, Martha menno.
Jeffrey: It is not going toward
individual reparations, although
that continues to be a hot
topic.
Why not?
Tomiko: I think it's important
to focus on the remedies that
the committee did endorse.
There are a lot of ways to
characterize these remedies.
I think where we have landed are
on very meaningful ways of
seeking to address the harms of
slavery with financial support
established in perpetuity.
Jeffrey: Where do you see now
Harvard and American
universities more generally in
addressing and redressing this
past?
Tomiko: A number of universities
have documented ties to slavery
and established scholarships,
memorials, and in many other
ways have begun to address ties
to slavery.
There are thousands of American
universities north and south, so
there is the opportunity for
other universities to engage
their entanglements with slavery
as well, and also the lingering
effects of slavery into the 20th
century.