CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–In a sudden move that has sparked outrage, Harvard University laid off the entire staff of its Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program (HSRP) last week, including its director, Richard J. Cellini.
The program was central to the Ivy League school’s $100 million “Legacy of Slavery” initiative to identify descendants of individuals enslaved by university affiliates.
According to Harvard’s student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, this work will now be carried out by American Ancestors, a New England-based genealogical nonprofit and one of HSRP’s external research partners. Employees were notified last Thursday without advance notice and were not given a reason for the team’s disbanding.
A legacy of tension as Harvard outsources slavery remembrance program
The layoffs mark the latest shakeup in a year filled with turmoil for the Legacy of Slavery initiative. According to the Crimson, Cellini had accused Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich, who oversees the project, of instructing HSRP “not to find too many descendants.”
The Black Wall Street Times reached out to Harvard. “There is no directive to limit the number of direct descendants to be identified through this work,” Sarah Kennedy-O’Reilly, Assistant Director, Media Relations & Communications responded.
“I have told officials at the highest level of the University that they only have two options: fire me or let the HSRP do this work properly,” Cellini wrote in a September statement to the Crimson. “Today, Harvard fired me. So now we know,” he said in a text message after the layoffs.
Last May, poet and English professor Tracy K. Smith and her co-chair resigned from the initiative’s memorial project committee, citing rushed deadlines and roadblocks to descendant outreach. By June, the initiative’s executive director had also resigned.
The Harvard spokesperson declined to provide reasons to the Crimson for the HSRP layoffs, citing personnel policies, University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. praised American Ancestors’ expertise in a statement to the Crimson. “Now it is time for American Ancestors to take the lead in what will be a systematic, scholarly, sustained effort,” Gates said.
Work cut short
Before layoffs, HSRP had identified at least 913 individuals enslaved by Harvard affiliates and 403 of their living descendants. The work, which began with the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program (HSRP), has now been fully outsourced to genealogical nonprofit American Ancestors following Harvard’s recent layoffs of the HSRP team.
Cellini told the Crimson that his team increased the number of known Harvard-affiliated enslaved individuals from 70 to nearly 1,000 in 18 months, emphasizing that “every family is precious” and rejecting claims that the team sought to limit descendant discoveries. “You can never find too many descendants,” he said.
While American Ancestors has been tasked with continuing the research, former staff members, including Wayne W. Tucker, highlighted that significant work remains, particularly on individuals enslaved after 1800. Despite identifying more than 400 living descendants, Harvard has yet to articulate a plan for notifying or engaging with them, leaving questions about how the University intends to fulfill its commitment to these families.
The path forward
The university told the Crimson that American Ancestors is expected to “significantly expand” its descendant identification work while it undergoes a “strategic planning process” for the initiative.
However, as the university faces mounting scrutiny, its actions will likely set a precedent for how other institutions address their historical ties to slavery. For now, the laid-off staff of HSRP and the communities they served are left to wonder if Harvard’s commitment to justice is as robust as it claims.
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