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Harvard University

John Harvard Statue

Harvard benefited from Antigua slavery. The two are talking about an education partnership.

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald — Harvard University and the island of Antigua and Barbuda are talking about an educational partnership following a letter the Caribbean island’s prime minister sent to the university requesting slavery reparations. A Harvard University spokesman confirmed to the Miami Herald that the school’s president, Lawrence Bacow, recently reached out to Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders, to discuss how the prestigious university…

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Jesuit statue - Georgetown University campus in Washington.

Reparations mark new front for US colleges tied to slavery

By Reparations

By Carolyn Thompson, AP News — BUFFALO, N.Y. — The promise of reparations to atone for historical ties to slavery has opened new territory in a reckoning at U.S. colleges, which until now have responded with monuments, building name changes and public apologies. Georgetown University and two theological seminaries have announced funding commitments to benefit descendants of the enslaved people who were sold or toiled to benefit the institutions. While…

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Clockwise from top left: Michael Drake, president of Ohio State University; Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation; Cecilia Conrad, a managing director at the MacArthur Foundation; and Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard.Credit...

Black Scholars Are Not ‘Rare Creatures’

By Commentaries/Opinions

When Purdue’s president said this, I had to respond because this myth is so pervasive. By G. Gabrielle Starr, The New York Times — In late November, the president of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels, told students that he will soon “be recruiting one of the rarest creatures in America — a leading, I mean a really leading, African-American scholar.” “Creatures?” a student asked. “Come on.” “It’s a figure of speech. You must have taken some literature,”…

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In this Nov. 19, 2002, photo, students walk through the Harvard Law School area on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Harvard Law School traces its origins to an Antiguan slave owner. Now the country wants reparations.

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Meagan Flynn, The Washington Post — In an urgently worded letter recently sent to Harvard, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne demanded that the university pay his country reparations “for the gains Harvard enjoyed at the expense” of Antiguan slaves. Browne’s Oct. 30 letter to Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow — reported Tuesday night by the Miami Herald and Harvard Crimson — draws a direct line from Harvard Law School’s success today…

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Dr. Ray Winbush

Ben and Jerry’s Support of HR 40 Might Mainstream the Reparations Discussion

By Reparations

The iconic, progressive ice cream company is in favor of a House Bill that would develop reparations proposals—a sign that attitudes towards a once-radical answer to racial parity are shifting. Story Transcript JACQUELINE LUQMAN: This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network. Reparations for African Americans or the descendants of Africans brought to the US to be enslaved is a socially and politically charged topic. Widely discussed and advocated within…

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Martin Kilson, First Tenured African American Professor at Harvard, Dies at 88

Eminent outspoken scholar, Dr. Martin Kilson passes at 88

By News & Current Affairs

By Herb Boyd — In this digital age of social media, when in a nanosecond you have the news, we are just learning of the death of noted scholar and esteemed intellectual Dr. Martin Kilson who made his transition on April 24. His passing, no matter when it occurs, is a considerable loss to the world of African and African American studies. Dr. Kilson, 88, a Government Professor Emeritus from…

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