Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery

Reckoning with Harvard University’s entanglement with slavery began in 2007, as Harvard students and faculty members asked important questions and raised critical issues, leading to a series of undergraduate research seminars taught by Laird Bell Professor of History Sven Beckert. Harvard’s 28th president, Drew Faust, advanced this research by establishing a committee on the University and slavery, co-chaired by Laird Bell Professor of History Sven Beckert and Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies Evelyn Higginbotham. This led to memorializing the labor of four enslaved people — Titus, Venus, Juba, and Bilhah — at Wadsworth House in Harvard Yard, where they lived and worked for two Harvard presidents and their families. 

Larry Bacow, Harvard’s 29th president, established the Presidential Initiative on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery and appointed a committee representative of all of the University’s Schools, chaired by Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Led by Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, this committee was charged with diving deep into Harvard’s history of slavery. Their work culminated in the Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, which was released in April 2022 and details the University’s historic ties to the enslavement of people of African descent and Native Americans in North America and the Caribbean.

The Report documented three truths about the University’s ties to slavery:

• Harvard has direct ties to slavery: Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff enslaved more than 70 people during the 17th and 18th centuries.
• Harvard has financial ties to slavery: Five men who made their fortunes from slavery and slave-produced goods accounted for more than one-third of all private donations and financial pledges during the first half of the 19th century.
• Harvard has intellectual ties to slavery: In the 19th and 20th centuries, several Harvard faculty and leaders promoted now-debunked theories of race science and eugenics, ideas that underpinned Jim Crow segregation and continue to support white supremacy.

Based on this knowledge and anchored in a commitment to begin reckoning harms caused by slavery, Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, led a committee shortly after the Report’s release to begin implementing the recommendations.

The University established the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative in the summer of 2022.