Harvard sets up $100 million endowment fund for slavery reparations

Harvard University is setting aside $100 million for an endowment fund and other measures to close the educational, social and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism, according to an email the university’s president sent to all students, faculty and staff on Tuesday.

The email from Harvard President Lawrence Bacow included a link to a 100-page report by his university’s 14-member Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery. The panel was chaired by Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a legal historian and constitutional law expert who is dean of Harvard’s interdisciplinary Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The email and the report were released to Reuters.

The move by the university in Massachusetts comes amid a wider conversation about the impacts of centuries of slavery, discrimination and racism. Some people have called for financial or other reparations.

The report laid out a history of slaves toiling on the campus and of the university benefiting from the slave trade and industries linked to slavery after it was outlawed in Massachusetts in 1783 - 147 years after Harvard’s founding. The report also documents Harvard excluding Black students and its scholars advocating racism.

While Harvard had notable figures among abolitionists and in the civil rights movement, the report said, “The nation’s oldest institution of higher education ... helped to perpetuate the era’s racial oppression and exploitation.”