DOING THE RIGHT THING: LUX & VERITAS..An Elite Institution Acknowledges It “helped to perpetuate … racial oppression and exploitation”.

Intro: Harvard’s move comes following a report by a 14-member committee on the school and the legacy of slavery. Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP

Harvard University

Harvard devotes $100m to closing educational gap caused by slavery

President says institution has ‘helped to perpetuate racial oppression and exploitation’ as it establishes endowment fund

"Harvard University is setting aside $100m for an endowment fund and other measures to close the educational, social and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism, according to an email the university’s president sent to all students, faculty and staff on Tuesday.

The email from Harvard’s president, Lawrence Bacow, included a link to a 100-page report by his university’s 14-member committee on Harvard and the legacy of slavery and acknowledged that the elite institution “helped to perpetuate … racial oppression and exploitation”.

The panel was chaired by Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a legal historian and constitutional law expert who is dean of Harvard’s interdisciplinary Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The email and the report were released to Reuters.

The move comes amid a wider conversation about redressing the impacts of centuries of slavery, discrimination and racism. Some people have called for financial or other reparations.

The report laid out a history of enslaved people toiling on the campus and of the university benefiting from the slave trade and industries linked to slavery after slavery was outlawed in Massachusetts in 1783, 147 years after Harvard’s founding.

The report also documents Harvard excluding Black students and its scholars advocating racism.

While Harvard employed notable figures among abolitionists and in the civil rights movement, the report said: “The nation’s oldest institution of higher education … helped to perpetuate the era’s racial oppression and exploitation.”

The report’s authors recommended offering descendants of people enslaved at Harvard educational and other support so they “can recover their histories, tell their stories, and pursue empowering knowledge”. . .

READ MORE >> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/apr/26/harvard-slavery-racism-endowment-fund