Harvard Professor Vincent Brown Quits Legacy of Slavery Memorial Committee After University Lays Off Research Team

Harvard professor Vincent A. Brown resigned from a committee within the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative on Monday, condemning the University’s decision to lay off the staff of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program in a scathing resignation letter.

In the letter, which was obtained by The Crimson, Brown criticized the decision to lay off the HSRP team as “vindictive and wasteful,” adding that he feared the turbulence within the Legacy of Slavery initiative would sow mistrust and compromise his own academic reputation.

Brown, who has appointments in the History and African and African American Studies departments, served on the initiative’s committee tasked with designing a memorial for those who had been enslaved by Harvard affiliates.

HSRP’s work to identify the descendants of those enslaved by Harvard faculty, staff, and leaders has now been fully outsourced to American Ancestors, a Boston-based genealogical society.

Brown wrote that he was confident American Ancestors’ research expertise would allow them to “carry this work forward,” but he censured the outsourcing of the project in the letter, writing that he felt the University should be responsible for reckoning with its past.

One week before the layoffs, Brown and members of the HSRP team conducted a research visit to Antigua and Barbuda, where they met with the prime minister and governor general to discuss expanding their research efforts in the Caribbean nation.

“Harvard’s relationship with Antigua should be something the university rediscovers and nurtures for itself, not one left to a business partnership with an external concern,” Brown wrote in his resignation letter.

In the letter, Brown wrote that he was concerned by what he described as Harvard’s lackluster response to an unfriendly political climate.

He criticized what he called the University’s inability to deal with “the intervention of some of the university’s philanthropists” and “a national government hostile to the concerns for racial reconciliation that animated the 2022 Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery.”

“Harvard has shown itself to be unwilling or unable to defend its students, faculty, and staff from politically-motivated attacks,” he wrote.

Brown declined to comment further, citing concerns that individuals “hostile” to the Legacy of Slavery initiative would use any criticisms to “undermine” the work.

A University spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brown is not the first person to resign from the memorial project committee in the past year. In May, English professor Tracy K. Smith and Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Director Dan I. Byers resigned from their positions as the committee’s co-chairs, writing in their resignation letter that they felt University administrators had rushed their process and hindered descendant outreach.

Brown wrote the controversies engulfing the Legacy of Slavery initiative had distracted from its original mission, which he described as “memorialization and education, supporting descendant communities, and advancing HBCU partnership.”

After the churn of departures from the Legacy of Slavery initiative, Brown wrote, the ensuing scandal shifted the focus from more important questions: “How many people did Harvard leaders enslave, and where? What were their names? What can we discover about their lives? Who are their descendants and how can we help reconnect them to the stories of their ancestors?”

“I wish all the best for your strategic plan,” he wrote to the University, referencing the process that landed on the HSRP team’s dismissal. “I only regret that I cannot formally be part of that effort.

—Staff writer Sophie Gao can be reached at sophie.gao@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sophiegao22.

—Staff writer Alexandra M. Kluzak can be reached at alexandra.kluzak@thecrimson.com.