The university said the money will go to a fund that will be used to “help address the educational and social damage caused by the legacy of the slave trade and racism”.
The announcement of the relief fund follows an extensive internal evaluation of the university’s role in slavery, the results of which were published on its website. The report shows that Harvard employees, including four presidents, enslaved more than 70 individuals before slavery was outlawed in Massachusetts in 1783. Harvard University was founded in 1636 in Cambridge near Boston.
The report also states that the university “benefited from extensive financial ties to slavery,” including donations from slave traders.
Harvard is not the only American educational institution in the United States that is taking steps toward reparations for historical injustice. For example, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. has also created a $100 million aid fund. After consulting with Georgetown students, among other things, it was decided that the money would benefit the descendants of slaves who had been sold in the 19th century by the Jesuit school – and then the elite -.
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