Harvard Creates $100 Million Fund To Address Racist Past

Harvard University plans to commit $100 million to a new endowment fund to address its historical ties to slavery. 

Harvard President Lawrence Bacow published a letter to the Harvard Community addressing the school’s uncomfortable truth: its “history includes extensive entanglements with slavery.” 

“And the truth is that slavery played a significant part in our institutional history. Enslaved people worked on our campus supporting our students, faculty, and staff, including several Harvard presidents. 

The labor of enslaved people both far and near enriched numerous donors and, ultimately, the institution.

Some members of our faculty promoted ideas that gave scholarly legitimacy to concepts of racial superiority. 

And long after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States in 1865, Harvard continued discriminatory practices that sharply limited the presence of African Americans on our campus,” Bacow said.  

The letter from the president contained a hyperlink to a +100-page report detailing the Ivy League university’s strong connections to slavery, segregation, and discrimination. 

Slavery was “integral to Harvard,” the report said, adding that segregation and discrimination were typical on campus through the 1900s.  

The report urged the university to support descendants of those Harvard enslaved, establish a Legacy of Slavery Fund, and work more with Black colleges and universities. Here’s the complete list of recommendations the report laid for how Harvard should spend the money: 

Recommendation 1: Engage and Support Descendant Communities by Leveraging Harvard’s Excellence in Education 

Recommendation 2: Honor Enslaved People through Memorialization, Research, Curricula, and Knowledge Dissemination 

Recommendation 3: Develop Enduring Partnerships with Black Colleges and Universities 

Recommendation 4: Identify, Engage, and Support Direct Descendants

Recommendation 5: Honor, Engage, and Support Native Communities 

Recommendation 6: Establish an Endowed Legacy of Slavery Fund to Support the University’s Reparative Efforts Recommendation 7: Ensure Institutional Accountability

Recommendation 7: Ensure Institutional Accountability

Bacow said the new fund would be infused with $100 million, indicating “some of these funds will be available for current use, while the balance will be held in an endowment to support this work overtime.” 

“Slavery and its legacy have been a part of American life for more than 400 years … the work of further redressing its persistent effects will require our sustained and ambitious efforts for years to come,” he said.

A $100 million might sound like a lot of money, but it’s peanuts compared to Harvard Management Company, otherwise known as Harvard’s Endowment fund, which has a massive AUM of $53.2 billion (as of the latest figures from 4Q21).

Maybe in the age of ‘wokeness,’ the school has found an easy way to virtue signal its way out of its very racist past.