Probing how colleges benefited from slavery
Hundreds of listeners from Harvard and beyond packed a Radcliffe auditorium on Friday for a series of wrenching discussions about the historical role of universities in the propagation of slavery. After calling on Harvard last year to investigate further its ties to slavery, President Drew Faust convened a faculty committee to develop the conference, called “Universities and Slavery: Bound by History,” which was sponsored by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The day of discussions, remarks, and poetry readings at the Knafel Center featured academicians, scholars, and administrators who explored how Harvard and other universities have been coming to terms with their pasts. Harvard was complicit in slavery from the 17th century until the practice ended in Massachusetts in 1783, said Faust, and the University maintained financial and other ties to the slave-holding South through Emancipation during the Civil War. “This history and its legacy have shaped our institution in ways we have...