More focus than ever is being cast on Harvard’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as universities across the country, such as Columbia and Johns Hopkins, face crackdowns due to external government pressure. So, when Harvard itself laid off all 12 internal members of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program this past January, many were surprised and outspoken with disapproval.
The HSRP was established as an acknowledgment of the University’s ties to racial oppression by working to discover direct descendants of those enslaved by Harvard-affiliated individuals. Yet University faculty and administrators now feel differently about the initiative’s purpose and instead focused on the recent transition of descendant research efforts to the Boston-based genealogical nonprofit American Ancestors this past January. Further projects within the initiative focus on empowering descendants of slaves and reaching out to historically Black colleges and universities may offer a chance for Harvard to reclaim its troubled past with slavery, though in the face of an era of uncertainty around diversity efforts, these may also be short-lived.
In January, Harvard officially began its partnership with the American Ancestors. The move was simultaneous with a disbanding of the HSRP, which included abrupt layoffs of all 12 of its staff members. Certain former employees, such as former HSRP director Richard Cellini, suspect that the cuts may result from his supervisors’ request “not to find too many descendants.” By the time of the Reparation Program’s downsizing, HSRP had found 1,400 direct relatives of slaves owned by individuals affiliated with Harvard.
“I have told officials at the highest level of the University that they only have two options: fire me, or let the HSRP do this work properly,” Cellini told the Harvard Crimson. Spokespeople from the Vice Provost for Special Projects did not give a direct reason for the cuts, referring to Harvard’s policies on employment.
Nearly three years have passed since Harvard launched its Legacy of Slavery Initiative, a program that includes a $100 million commitment to addressing the University’s historical ties to slavery, especially through the HSRP. The Initiative was announced in 2022 following a report by the Presidential Committee, which detailed the University’s financial and intellectual entanglements with slavery from the 17th through the 19th centuries. The fund supports a range of efforts, including genealogical research, partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities, community engagement, and educational initiatives aimed at fostering public understanding and memorialization.
The origins of the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, as well as HSRP, trace back to former Harvard President Lawrence Bacow’s introduction of the Initiative in 2022, where he framed it as a challenge yet also a call to action. “The work of further redressing its persistent effects will require our sustained and ambitious efforts for years to come,” he said. “While Harvard does not bear exclusive responsibility for these injustices, and while many members of our community have worked hard to counteract them, Harvard benefited from and in some ways perpetuated practices that were profoundly immoral.”
Three years later, administrators close to the Initiative echoed their commitment to its mission. “In just over two years, we have taken significant steps to advance the mission of the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative,” Sara Bleich, Harvard’s Vice Provost for Special Projects, said in a press statement detailing the collaboration with American Ancestors.
At the time of the partnership’s announcement, American Ancestors also emphasized a commitment to rigorous documentation and descendant outreach at the core of the Initiative, despite public outcry at the turnover. “We are committed to advancing this critical research to help Harvard establish meaningful connections and engagement with living descendants,” American Ancestors president Ryan J. Woods said in a press release from the Initiative. The collaboration marks the next step in a history between the organization and Harvard, including the popular PBS show “Finding Your Roots” hosted by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Harvard administrators believe the partnership reflects a broadening scope of the Initiative, backed by the genealogical robustness of American Ancestors. “We look forward to the expertise and skill with which American Ancestors will continue to build on the foundation we laid in 2022,” wrote University President Alan Garber ’76 in a press statement announcing the American Ancestors partnership.
The same statement outlined how working with American Ancestors would by extension support 10 Million Names, a project working to uncover the names of roughly ten million men, women, and children of African descent enslaved in America’s earliest periods, and brings the reach of the partnership to the broader issue outside just Harvard.
Though the partnership with American Ancestors may expedite the process of finding descendants, previous HSRP affiliates have recounted successes before employees were terminated. In a January profile published by Harvard Magazine, historian Vincent Brown described working with the initiative’s internal team as actively and successfully uncovering histories—identifying nearly 1,000 enslaved individuals and more than 1,400 direct descendants.
“We had a real sense about how research collaboration on Antigua might develop,” said Brown. When HSRP cut down on staff a week later, Brown resigned from the Initiative’s Memorial Project Committee, criticizing the Initiative and calling Harvard’s firing of Cellini “vindictive and wasteful.”
The Initiative’s announcement of working with American Ancestors also stressed their foci outside of HSRP, and future plans include an expansion toward fostering partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities, bringing professors and visiting faculty from HBCUs to Harvard’s campus over the past academic year as well as planning for bringing further cohorts of HBCU students on campus for summer research. Part of this has been done through the DuBois Scholars program, which connects certain HBCU students with Harvard faculty for a summer of research.
Additionally, Harvard’s Reparative Partnership Grant Program has awarded $2.3 million in grants to focus on “descendant communities” in an effort to pay back societal inequities, especially in the local Boston and Cambridge area. The program supports projects known by names such as “Empowering Descendant Communities to Unlock Democracy” and “Our Voice, Our Stories, Our Legacy: Celebrating Black Cambridge Youth through the Arts” which address various aspects of the lives of these communities.
Yet as the Legacy of Slavery Initiative adapts and continues, the investigation into Harvard’s role in slavery may face further obstacles given the recent rise in crackdowns on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs nationwide, in addition to the precarious past of the offices governing the Initiative. Columbia University recently conceded to the Trump administration’s demands that they revamp the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department and institute a mask ban campus-wide, fearing the government’s threats of pulling $400 million in funding from the University. This follows from accusations of antisemitism in the wake of protests on campus regarding the Israel-Hamas War and Columbia’s lackluster handling of the protests.
With 44 other universities under investigation for “race-exclusionary programs” across the nation, public funding for the University is in an uncertain time. If Harvard is cornered into a similar position as Columbia, conditions for continued funding may be placed on ending or changing highly scrutinized DEI programs like the Legacy of Slavery Initiatives.
“Most universities—including Harvard—have responded to these attacks with strategies of self-preservation,” wrote Harvard Government professors Ryan D. Enos and Steven Levitsky in an op-ed to the Crimson. “They are lying low, avoiding public debate (and sometimes cooperating with the administration) in the hope of mitigating the coming assault.”
However, until it is shut down, representatives of the Initiative show no signs of slowing their projects. These include carrying out seven recommendations from the President Committee that aim to use the Initiative’s mission in a context expanding to supporting Native communities and honoring slaves through extended research and instituting educational programming.
“Our commitment to truth means that we must embrace it even when it makes us uncomfortable or causes us pain,” stated President Bacow when the Initiative was first founded. As Harvard enters these next stages of the Initiative’s future, Bacow’s words echo to the present.
Ben Kaufman ’28 (benkaufman@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the Independent.