Harvard University has released a report on its historical ties to slavery

An internal committee commissioned by Harvard University has published an exhaustive inquiry¹ into the prestigious² school's history and ties to slavery and the study of eugenics, university president Lawrence Bacow announced on Tuesday, adding that the school was setting aside $100 million to "make amends³" for its past transgressions⁴.

Harvard profited from "the beneficence of donors⁵ who accumulated their wealth through slave trading; from the labor⁶ of enslaved people on plantations⁷ in the Caribbean islands and in the American South; and from the Northern textile manufacturing industry, supplied with cotton grown by enslaved people held in bondage," the report, published on Tuesday by the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy⁸ of Slavery, revealed.

哈佛大学奴隶制遗产委员会4月26日发布的报告称，哈佛从“通过奴隶贸易积累财富的捐赠者的慈善行为中获利；从加勒比岛屿和美国南部种植园中的奴隶的劳动中获利；从奴役奴隶种植棉花的北方纺织制造业中获利。”

Indeed, "more than a third of the money donated to or promised to Harvard by private individuals came from just five men who made their fortunes from slavery and slave-produced commodities," including cotton, the report found.

Bacow initially⁹ formed the committee in 2019 in order to probe the school's "historic ties to slavery - direct, financial, and intellectual." Its report found that from 1636 to 1783, the school enslaved 70 people, some of whom were responsible for caring for the university's presidents, professors and students.

Harvard didn't just benefit from slavery - it took concrete steps to quash abolitionist sentiment on campus, according to the committee, which made a point of countering the popular narrative¹⁰ that places New England at the center of the "antislavery moment" and in particular casts Harvard's home state of Massachusetts as a “hotbed of opposition¹¹ to slavery.”

据该委员会称，哈佛不仅从奴隶制中受益，还采取了具体措施压制校园里的废奴主义情绪。该委员会特别反驳了将新英格兰视为"反奴隶制"中心的流行说法，尤其是将哈佛大学所在的马萨诸塞州视为 "废奴制的温床"。

Harvard's medical school admitted three black students in 1850 but subsequently expelled them following complaints from white students and alumni, and only admitted an average of three black students per year as late as 1940, according to the report, which noted¹² that Harvard was still promoting the study of eugenics - central to World War II-era "race sciences" - at the time. Harvard's women's college, Radcliffe, denied housing to its few black students.

Additionally, Harvard Law School's first professorship was established with the profits of the slave trade in the form of a bequest¹³ from Isaac Royall Jr., a rich slave merchant who left the school a hefty sum in his will in 1781. The university incorporated elements of the family's coat of arms into its law school seal, an issue which became controversial in 2016, leading to the retirement¹⁴ of the seal and Royall's denunciation as "the son of an Antiguan slaveholder known to have treated his slaves with extreme cruelty."

报告称，许多有问题的“早期赞助者”在哈佛大学的建筑和教授职位上留名，而他们的雕塑也遍布校园。报告发现，尽管美国内战后奴隶制正式瓦解，但“哈佛的肤色线”依然存在。哈佛大学任期最长的校长和其他著名学者是优生学研究的关键人物。优生学是一门伪科学，用于为美国和其他国家的种族隔离辩护。

The report calls on the university to "identify, engage, and support" direct descendants of enslaved workers early in the university's history, which included Black and Native American slaves. The primary recommendation was to offer increased access to educational opportunities, while also attempting to reach broader groups that have largely been excluded from attending Harvard.

The report recommends a closer partnership¹⁹ between Harvard and historically Black colleges and universities, in part through the creation of a new "Du Bois Scholars Program," to subsidize semester, summer or yearlong visits from HBCU students to Harvard.

"Harvard benefited from and in some ways perpetuated²⁰ practices that were profoundly immoral," Bacow wrote in his letter accompanying the report, arguing the school bears "a moral responsibility to do what we can to address the persistent²¹ corrosive²² effects of those historical practices on individuals, on Harvard, and on our society."