Executive Director of Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery Initiative Suddenly Resigns

Roeshana Moore-Evans, the executive director of Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery initiative, suddenly announced her resignation on Friday, becoming the third member of leadership to cut ties with the effort in less than one month.

Moore-Evans’ last day at Harvard will be July 5, according to an internal email obtained by The Crimson. Her departure quickly follows the resignations of English professor Tracy K. Smith ’94 and Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Director Dan I. Byers from the initiative’s memorialization committee.

In their resignation letter, Smith and Byers sharply criticized the University’s handling of the memorial project, including the leadership of Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich. Now, Bleich must fill several core leadership vacancies as the University’s effort to address its ties to slavery is mired in controversy just two years after its launch.

Moore-Evans joined the initiative in December 2022 as one of its first hires. She and Bleich were brought on to implement recommendations from the University’s April 2022 Legacy of Slavery report that assessed and acknowledged the role of slavery in Harvard’s development.

Moore-Evans wrote in an email to colleagues announcing her departure that she was sharing the news with “mixed emotions,” though she did not share her reasons for leaving. Bleich responded in the email thread by thanking Moore-Evans for her work on the project and said Moore-Evans had “decided to step down.”

In their May 29 resignation letter to University leaders, Smith and Byers alleged that Bleich’s office told them to “delay and dilute” their outreach efforts to local descendants of enslaved people.

“This decision, which neither of us takes lightly, extends from our sense that the necessary conditions for the work of memorialization, as agreed upon by committee members, are not yet manifest at the University,” Smith and Byers wrote in their resignation letter.

Smith and Byers recommended that University officials should “pause the memorial production process” so that the memorial committee could, “working alongside a dedicated and appropriate staffed administrative body,” conduct more outreach and better inform its work.

Smith and Byers were not the first to voice internal criticism of the initiative in recent months. Speaking at the University’s Legacy of Slavery Symposium in April, New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones slammed the initiative’s $100 million budget as a “rounding error” relative to the University’s financial gains from slavery.

But while Smith and Byers penned a lengthy resignation letter totaling more than 1,300-words detailing their concerns with the project, Moore-Evans’ email on Friday was far shorter.

Moore-Evans wrote that she was drawn to the role by “Harvard’s bold decision to release the Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery and its commitment to repair in perpetuity.”

“It has been a privilege to contribute to this effort, and I sincerely hope the University’s commitment to this mission will not only continue but also deepen, inspiring impactful and transformative change,” she wrote.

Moore-Evans did not respond to a request for comment. Both Bleich and Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment for this article, citing a policy of not discussing personnel matters.

In her reply to Moore-Evans, Bleich wished Moore-Evans “all the best.” Bleich did not share any details about the timeline or process for selecting Moore-Evans’ successor.

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at neil.shah@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @neilhshah15.