Acknowledgments
The committee is grateful to President Lawrence S. Bacow for launching this effort, to his chief of staff, Patti Bellinger, for her support, and to the many other dedicated members of the Harvard community who contributed their time, energy, and expertise to this report and to the nearly three-year process that underlies it.
In particular, we wish to thank the staff of the Presidential Initiative on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery—Courtney Howard, Cristine Hutchison-Jones, Martine Jean, Dawn Ling, and Alexandria Russell—and all the outstanding student research assistants whose names are listed in Appendix II.
The initiative was anchored at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), and nearly every part of the Institute played an important role in its success. Alexander F. Hall, chief of staff and strategic advisor to the dean, and Jane F. Huber, director of communications, were invaluable contributors to all aspects of this effort.
The HRI communications team worked long and hard to bring this work to life, and the HRI events and Academic Ventures and Engagement departments were critical partners in executing 18 public programs, including an upcoming landmark conference, that engaged a broad audience with this history and its contemporary relevance. Staff of Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America supported our research and assisted in securing rights to the many historical images that bring the report’s contents to life. Other HRI departments—human resources, finance, facilities management, and of course the dean’s office—made our work possible, and several Radcliffe fellows participated in generative conversations.
There are many others to thank, both within and outside Harvard, several of whom are mentioned in Appendix II: A Note on Process. We are truly grateful to all who helped us reach this important milestone.
Members of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, chair
Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School; professor of history, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Sven Beckert
Laird Bell Professor of History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Annette Gordon-Reed
Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard Law School; professor of history, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Stephen Gray
Associate professor of urban design, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Evelynn M. Hammonds
Chair of the Department of the History of Science, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science, and professor of African and African American studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Nancy F. Koehn
James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Meira Levinson
Professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Tiya Miles
Michael Garvey Professor of History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Martha Minow
300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard Law School
Maya Sen
Professor of public policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Daniel Albert Smith
Lecturer on ministry studies, Harvard Divinity School
David R. Williams
Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; professor of African and African American studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
William Julius Wilson
Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus, Harvard Kennedy School and Faculty of Arts and Sciences
In Memoriam
Paul Farmer (1959–2022), our dear friend and colleague, was the Kolokotrones University Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a cofounder of Partners In Health.