Harvard Community

As Schools and units across the University join us in embodying our mission, we are excited to highlight the good work taking place as we build towards a reparative future.

Multiple Harvard faculty, staff, and alumni have incorporated portions of the Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery or the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Film into their courses and areas of work, which is leveraging the University’s excellence in education and expanding knowledge about this important work.

Faculty Spotlight

Gary Adamkiewicz

Gary Adamkiewicz, associate professor of environmental health and exposure disparities at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is working to identify the specific aspects of housing and communities that shape an individual’s health. These could include environmental exposure to smoke, chemicals, or mold. Adamkiewicz has been a faculty mentor for the Du Bois Scholars Program since its launch in 2024. He sees the program as a way to expand research interest in public health, while increasing the variety of perspectives and lived experiences within the profession.

Learn more about Gary and his work with Du Bois fellows

Alumni Spotlight

Earl Phalen, J.D. ’93

Earl Phalen, J.D. ‘93, is the CEO and founder of Skilled US, a multi-state workforce development organization committed to expanding economic mobility for adults and families through access to education, training, and sustainable careers.

As a grantee of the inaugural Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative Reparative Grant Program, Skilled US partnered with Fernando Reimers, Ford Foundation Professor of Practice in International Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and received funds for “equipping individuals with the skills and opportunities needed to secure good-paying, sustainable jobs that transform lives and strengthen communities.”

Learn more about Skilled US

Transforming Harvard

We are gratified that units and Schools across the University have embraced the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, unlocking enormous creativity and embodying our values as we continue to move the work forward. This is playing out through a wide variety of activities, such as community discussions, new lectures or lecture series, new curricular offerings, and much more. Below are just a few examples of the many additional efforts underway across the University.

Harvard Divinity School

Harvard Divinity School chose the Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery as its 2022-2023 Common Read book and engaged in a year-long, HDS community-wide conversation, and offered a public conversation series on Religion and the Legacies of Slavery. In 2024, HDS launched “Harvard Divinity School & Legacies of Slavery & Resistance: A Site for Reckoning, Healing, & Repair through Love,” an exhibit in the HDS Library that highlights the School’s entanglements with slavery drawing from the Report.

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is advancing the understanding of the legacy of slavery through the creation of meaningful programs and initiatives. Examples include the Belinda Sutton Distinguished Lecture and Academic Symposium and a commemorative installation that will pay tribute to Belinda Sutton and other enslaved people whose labor generated the wealth that contributed to Isaac Royall, Jr.’s bequest in 1781 to Harvard University. The donation funded Harvard’s first professorship in law, which was eventually transferred to, and helped contribute to the development of, the fledgling law school in 1817. As part of an effort to strengthen collaboration on future research and educational programming, the Law School is also providing $500,000 in financial support to the Royall House and Slave Quarters Museum in Medford, Massachusetts.

Harvard University Information Technology

Harvard University Information Technology and the Minority Serving–Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MS-CC) launched a pilot collaboration in 2024, called the Technology Enablement Initiative. This is a six-month program for IT professionals at HBCUs who have a focus on knowledge exchange. The program aims to develop peer mentorship opportunities among Harvard, I2, and HBCU institutions. Participants have the opportunity to take IT Academy courses (a Harvard-developed professional development program for Harvard IT professionals) at no cost, join facilitated conversations to ideate and share knowledge, and engage in exchange visits to participating cohort campuses.

Interested in your work being spotlighted on our website? Email legacyofslavery@harvard.edu.