With the ambition of
"repairing"
its slave past in the 17th and 18th centuries, the American university Harvard, one of the most prestigious on the planet, announced on Tuesday April 26 the creation of a fund of 100 million dollars.
The announcement, made by a letter from the president of the university Lawrence Bacow to the students, professors and employees of the institution founded in 1636 in Cambridge (Massachusetts, northeast), is part of a vast university movement in recent years. Recognition and Reparation for Slavery in the United States, officially abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865.
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But, acknowledges Lawrence Bacow,
“slavery and its legacy have been part of American history for over 400 years.
Repairing its lingering effects will require our sustained and ambitious efforts over the next few years
.
Harvard will therefore devote 100 million dollars to a fund which will finance research, education and memory on racism and slavery from the 17th to the 19th century in the United States.
The move follows a report by a university committee that makes recommendations on how to financially
“fix”
the exploitation on tens of generations of millions of people forcibly deported from Africa and the United States. Europe to America.
At Harvard in particular, in the 17th and 18th centuries, several members and presidents directly enslaved more than 70 people—African Americans and Native Americans—until it was declared illegal in Massachusetts in 1783.
“Harvard profited and somehow perpetuated practices that were deeply immoral
,” admits the president of the institution.
He recognizes that his university
“bears a moral responsibility to be able to address the corrosive effects that persist from these historical practices on individuals, on Harvard and on
American society”.
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In a country still plagued by racism and rocked by movements like Black Lives Matter, the Harvard report points out that until the 20th century, university presidents and professors were teaching and promoting racial theories such as eugenics.
Harvard is not the first institution to make amends on slavery.
In 2021, the conference of American Jesuit priests also promised to raise $ 100 million in compensation for descendants of slaves it had exploited.
In 2016, the Jesuit University of Georgetown, founded in Washington in 1789, apologized for the sale of 272 slaves in 1838, offering in compensation to facilitate the admission of their descendants.
A repair fund had been approved in 2019 by the students.
Brown and Columbia universities have also admitted to having participated in the slave trade.
