Nile Blass remembers hearing about Georgetown University’s 2016 report on its historical connections to slavery before she even applied to the school. This report detailed how Georgetown University profited in 1838 from 272 enslaved persons and suggested steps that could be taken to make amends. For Blass, it became a factor in her decision to enroll at the university, which she saw as “an educational institution where a Black student like myself could thrive.”
“If they’re dealing with their history in this capacity,” Blass remembers her family thinking, “that means that they’re doing something above and beyond, and that can probably spell something positive for the campus culture.”
Blass is now a senior and has done well on campus. However, Blass also spent four years pushing the university to pay more back to descendants of their slave ancestors.
“The existence of these individuals and their work [permeates] the entire Georgetown experience, even if you’re not directly looking for it. That’s a debt owed,” says Blass, who was, until recently, the school’s student body president. “There is direct economic harm to be found there.”
Learn more 3 Ways America’s Elite Universities Benefited From Slavery
Harvard became the first and most prominent university in America to admit to its complicity in slavery. Harvard’s president, faculty, staff and other members of Harvard University were held responsible for enslaving more than 70 persons between 1636-1683. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found slavery unlawful.
“Enslaved men and women served Harvard presidents and professors and fed and cared for Harvard students,” stated the Harvard report, released on April 26. “Moreover, throughout this period and well into the 19th century, the University and its donors benefited from extensive financial ties to slavery.”
“I believe we bear a moral responsibility to do what we can to address the persistent corrosive effects of those historical practices on individuals, on Harvard, and on our society,” Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said in a letter to the school community.
The university pledged to spend $100 million toward a “Legacy of Slavery Fund” that will support the continued study of Harvard’s ties to slavery and will be used to implement other measures recommended by the report—including that Harvard honor the labor of enslaved people with a memorial on campus; develop partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities; and improve educational access through partnerships with local colleges and nonprofits, to confront “enduring inequities that impact descendant communities in the United States.”
The report also recommended that Harvard identify the descendants of people enslaved by Harvard’s leaders, faculty, and staff and “engage with these descendants through dialogue, programming, information sharing, relationship building, and educational support.” But it stops short of calling for direct financial reparations to those descendants.
Some experts argue that’s a missed opportunity for one of the country’s wealthiest universities—Harvard has a $53 billion endowment—to make a more meaningful difference for victims of slavery and their descendants. Advocates for financial reparations argue it’s a step that would help to address the lasting inequities that can be traced back to slavery in the United States, including the persistent racial wealth gap and under-representation of Black students in higher education. Brookings reports that in 2016, the median wealth level of a white household was almost 10 times higher than the average wealth level for a Black household. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that while 12% of Americans are Black, just 7% were Black at Harvard and Georgetown in fall 2020.
“The institution and individuals in the institution were paid for their role in the buying, selling, trading of slaves,” says Andre Perry, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro, who has written about inequality and reparations in education. “Cash was exchanged. So at some point, you should cut a check to the descendants of those who were burdened by those actions.”
So if $100 million sounds like a lot, Perry says, it’s still “somewhat of an insult” considering what the institution can afford.
To Perry, direct impact in the form of reparations would be all the more meaningful because, while honest acknowledgement of an institution’s involvement in slavery is a step in the right direction, he thinks similar reports released at other universities have thus far had a “minimal impact” on the individual descendants of those who were enslaved.
Learn more Slavery on America’s College Campuses Went Beyond Buying and Selling
Take Georgetown: The Jesuit-founded school in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that it profited off the sale of enslaved people and pledged to give an admissions advantage to their descendants—similar to the admissions advantage offered to children of Georgetown faculty, staff and alumni. GBH News in February reported that 16 descendants of slaves have been admitted to Georgetown University since 2016. (Thousands of descendants have been identified, though it’s not clear how many have applied to the school.)
Blass and other students continue to demand more involvement with their descendants.
Spring 2019 saw two-thirds vote for a Georgetown student fee to pay compensation to descendants of slaves and those who were sold to Georgetown. Instead of announcing that $400,000 would be raised annually for projects to benefit descendant communities, the university opted not to do so. According to the university, it plans to grant the first projects grants in 2021. Georgetown’s spokesperson did not reply to our request for comment on the status of these grants.
But that decision frustrated some students, including Blass, who doesn’t want that money to be thought of as a charitable donation.
“This is not a matter of charity,” she says. “If you owe someone for work that is done, you pay them for it.”
Julia Thomas—a junior at Georgetown and a descendant of Sam Harris and Betsy Ware Harris, who were sold to benefit Georgetown in 1838—says she would like to see Georgetown and the Jesuits make direct payments to descendants, in addition to supporting projects like scholarship initiatives and campus memorials.
“The issue of reparative justice for the descendants is larger than Georgetown taking action,” Thomas said in an email. “It must include the Jesuit order. After all, it was the Society of Jesus that enslaved my ancestors for the benefit of Georgetown College.”
Brown University students overwhelmingly voted last year in favor of paying reparations to descendants of slaves who were held at the university. The school published an updated version of its 2006 slavery report in November. However, it did not respond to the student referendum.
“There is no active process underway to identify descendants or pay reparations, but it’s a question that continues to be relevant,” Brian Clark, a spokesperson for Brown, said in an email, adding that the university is committed to remembering and addressing issues of injustice in its teaching, research, admissions, and hiring practices.
William Darity is a Duke University professor of public policy who studies the economics and reparations of racism. He notes that universities have responded to slavery’s history only by renaming buildings and removing Confederate statues. But, while he says those moves just scratch the surface of what would be a commensurate response, he believes such a solution won’t be found in a piecemeal approach from a handful of universities.
“I don’t think that colleges and universities or private donors actually have the capacity to meet a full-scale plan for reparations,” he says, adding that he would like to see universities use their influence to advocate for a federal reparations plan that would help to eliminate the longstanding racial wealth gap across the country.
“If they truly feel a sense of obligation, given their history, then what they should do is actually pursue having a national program of reparations, and they should use their clout and influence to make that happen,” Darity says.
Still, Perry is hoping that Harvard’s report will inspire other institutions in higher education to reckon with their own history and complicity in slavery.
“Harvard, arguably, is the biggest name in higher ed,” he says. “As Harvard goes, so will other institutions.”
He would also like for universities to take greater steps such as investing in Black-led businesses and Black communities, improving their diversity, and divesting of companies that have a history discrimination.
If more universities do that, he says, it would not only change the institutions taking those steps, “it can help transform higher ed as a whole.”
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