"Like many venerable American universities, Harvard’s past is tied to slavery: for decades, if not centuries, the University inculcated pro-slavery sentiment and benefitted from funds that were the fruits of the slave trade or slave labor. But unlike many of its peers—such as Brown and Yale—Harvard has never conducted a formal examination of its past.
Alongside Yale and Brown, several other schools — like the University of Alabama, the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia, and the College of William and Mary — have acknowledged that they all benefited from slavery and took steps to apologize for their pasts.
“Harvard is less complicit” than other colleges, Schlesinger said, noting that much of the slave trade was based in and around Newport, Rhode Island. “I just don’t think it was as evident up here as it was at Yale or in Rhode Island. People connected to Harvard might have been making money from their estates in the Caribbean where they owned slaves, but they were not professional slave traders themselves.”
