Harvard Must Not Botch the Legacy of Slavery Initiative

It shouldn’t have taken Harvard nearly 400 years to reckon with its ties to slavery. Now that it’s started, the University can’t afford to rush.

Five years, two faculty chairs, and an executive director later, recent reporting suggests that Harvard is doing just that. Affiliates involved with the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative describe internal leadership strife, pressure from the University to prioritize press releases over progress, and instructions to limit or dilute its work.

The University is right to regard this initiative as urgent. Few causes appear to us more important than redressing its abominable history of chattel slavery. But it would be an embarrassment — and a grave disrespect to the victims of that history — to rush through, slapdash, a sloppy product for good PR.

Reparation is valuable for reparation’s sake. Harvard and its affiliates did horrible things to at least 300 enslaved people. The University must atone for those sins, and for the ill-gotten gains it reaped from them.

And after this past year, the University owes it to the Harvard community, Black affiliates especially, to show that it cares about racial justice. In January, Harvard’s first Black president resigned after a campaign against her full of racist vitriol. Shortly thereafter, three other Black Harvard academics — including the school’s chief diversity and inclusion officer — faced targeted attacks on their scholarly credentials. And now, after the fall of affirmative action, Black enrollment in the Class of 2028 has dropped four percentage points.

Yes, reckoning with Harvard’s legacy of slavery is more urgent than ever. The University can afford neither to drag its feet nor to carelessly rush the process. But somehow, Harvard seems to be doing both.

Waves of resignations and bureaucratic infighting have hamstrung H&LS’ progress. At the same time, initiative staff allege that administrators looking to churn out public-facing updates have pressured them to rush their work, neglecting essential priorities like community engagement and careful outreach to the descendants of enslaved people Harvard affiliates owned.

We trust that the academics working on this initiative do so with its best interests in mind. While it’s hard to read the tea leaves of office politics, we’re inclined to believe them when they say they’re being unduly rushed.

To be clear, the Legacy of Slavery Initiative has made some real progress. We applaud its $6 million effort to digitize and preserve collections of African American history held at historically Black colleges and universities. Ditto for the newly established Du Bois Scholars program, which brings HBCU students to campus for a summer research internship.

If designed with proper input from descendants and stakeholders, the proposed physical memorial could be a striking public reminder of the darkest chapters of Harvard’s history. It’s a shame the University has left the artists who submitted proposals for it in the lurch by requesting plans seemingly before they were ready to evaluate them.

Of course, memorializing the past is not enough. Harvard must show the depth of its commitment to racial justice today.

That starts with robust outreach to living descendants of those enslaved by campus leaders — all of them. No stone can be left unturned when it comes to grappling with the University’s sordid past.

And there’s plenty more Harvard can do right now: Dename Winthrop House, end legacy admissions, bolster socioeconomic affirmative action, establish a Museum of Institutional Failings, and collect data on the enrollment of generational African Americans.

For the memory of those enslaved on this campus, for their descendants, for the people who walk this campus today, the University must get this initiative right.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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