Telling the Truth about All This: Reckoning with Slavery and Its Legacies at Harvard and Beyond

Friday, April 29, 9:15 AM-6 PM ET

Knafel Center OR Online on Zoom

10 Garden Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

“Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?” 

—W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (1935)

Over the past two decades, universities around the world have begun to engage with their legacies related to slavery. Many have issued reports detailing some of their historical ties to slavery, the substantial financial benefits the institutions and their affiliates extracted from slave economies, and universities’ intellectual contributions to racist ideologies and practices. At the same time, this research has uncovered a long history of African American resistance, and we are just beginning to address the impact of legacies of slavery on Black students at these institutions into the 21st century.

With this history uncovered, we must now ask: What must institutions of higher education do? What types of repair work can and should we undertake? We will explore these questions in our conference through discussions about a range of topics, including engagement with descendant communities, legacies of slavery in libraries and museums, and novel public engagement and educational opportunities.

Speakers:

• Jody Lynn Allen, assistant professor of history and Robert Francis Engs Director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, College of William & Mary
• S. James Anaya, University Distinguished Professor and Nicholas Doman Professor of International Law, University of Colorado Law School
• Ana Lucia Araujo, professor of history, Howard University
• Lawrence S. Bacow, president, Harvard University
• Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
• Tomiko Brown-Nagin RI ’17, dean, Harvard Radcliffe Institute; Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School; professor of history, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and chair, Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery
• Andrew M. Davenport, director of the Getting Word Oral History Project, International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and graduate student in American history, Georgetown University
• Dom Flemons, cofounder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops; singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and music scholar
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University
• Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela RI ’21, South African National Research Foundation Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma and the Research Chair in Historical Trauma and Transformation, Stellenbosch University
• Annette Gordon-Reed RI ’12, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard University
• Evelynn M. Hammonds, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and professor of African and African American studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
• Adam Harris, staff writer, the Atlantic, and author, The State Must Provide: Why America’s Colleges Have Always Been Unequal(Ecco, 2021)
• Anthony Abraham Jack RI ’22, Shutzer Assistant Professor, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and assistant professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, professor in the Department of English, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma, and author, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper, 2021) and The Age of Phillis (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)
• Shandra M. Jones, doctoral student, Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Ibram X. Kendi RI ’21, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the founder and director of the Center for Antiracist Research, Boston University
• Nancy F. Koehn, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
• Meira Levinson RI ’03, Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society, Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Tiya Miles RI ’22, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and Michael Garvey Professor of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
• Martha Minow RI ’18, Three Hundredth Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University
• Simon P. Newman, Sir Denis Brogan Professor of American History, Emeritus, and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, University of Glasgow; coauthor, Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow; and Honorary Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Suzannah Omonuk, master’s candidate, Harvard Divinity School
• Julia Rose, historic house manager at Marietta House Museum, Prince George’s Parks and Recreation
• Ruth J. Simmons, president, Prairie View A&M University; president emerita, Brown University; president emerita, Smith College
• Kyera Singleton, executive director, Royall House and Slave Quarters
• Tracy K. Smith, Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and professor of English and of African and African American studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
• Densil A. Williams, pro vice-chancellor and principal, Five Islands Campus, University of the West Indies
• Kevin Young, Andrew W. Mellon Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture

To learn about topics and to register, visit www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2022-telling-the-truth-about-all-this-conference

Live closed captioning will be available for this webinar. This event is free. All are welcome to attend.