[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing these related articles to our attention.] The full title of this article by Sophie Gao and Alexandra M. Kluzak (Harvard CrimsonApril 25, 2025 / May 4, 2025) “Harvard University outsourced its research into slavery. After that, former employees began notifying their descendants without that knowledge.” For more direct information on the discovery of the relationship between Antigua and Barbuda for this project, Harvard University hired researchers to clarify its relationship with slavery. He says his work was expensive: “We found too many slaves.”GuardianJune 21, 2025). Here’s an excerpt from here Harvard Crimson.
Richard J. Celini oversaw the Harvard Slavery Memory Program. Layoff January. He has told people over the past three months that Harvard University affiliates have enslaved their ancestors.
Seloni says that his work, unlike Harvard, is an “independent scholarship” and denotes official efforts as “employment work.” He believes Harvard’s decision not to contact his offspring until later stages of his research become merely “relatively stupid limits.”
“What exactly is Harvard waiting for? Who will benefit from this policy of control and delay?” Cellini wrote in an email. “If Harvard had filed your family history, wouldn’t you want to see it right away?”
In January, Harvard University outsourced its own research to its American ancestors, the country’s largest genealogical nonprofit organization. American ancestors worked with Celini’s team to build a family tree of enslaved individuals, but now they have taken over the research entirely.
Special Project Associate Profession Sara N. Bleich I said it in February The university will reach out to its descendants with “humility” and establish “long-term relationships.” She added that Harvard wanted descendants “to hear from us first.” This is the goal that Celini’s efforts may not be possible. Cellini is just one of several political parties studying Harvard’s historical connection to slavery, but he is the only one doing it in such a bold and unauthorized way.
In 2022, Harvard launched an initiative to consider its relationship with slavery regarding the recommendations of the landmark legacy of the Slavery Report. He participated in institutions such as Georgetown University, the University of Virginia and Brown University in saving historic connections with slavery.
Before outsourcing, Harvard’s internal team had identified at least 913 enslaved individuals and 403 living offspring. Both American ancestors and HSRP researchers have a complete list. Cellini, who overseen HSRP, has denied access, but is looking for a new name.
And at least three other groups are doing the same work. Some don’t focus solely on Harvard, while others do not study enthrallers more extensively in the Boston area or in the Colonial University. However, each university has its own relationship. The search could have widespread consequences in the lives of people who know they may be derived from people enslaved by Harvard affiliates, and the institutional liability that some of them may demand from the university.
Similar work has led to restoration measures at other schools. Georgetown, for example, offers priority treatment to enroll descendants of enslaved people, owned by the Maryland Association of Jesus. [. . .]
Harvard’s initiative was not Celini’s first foray into offspring research.
Before the Harvard Slavery Memory Program, Celini established the Georgetown Memory Project. This is an independent initiative that traces the descendants of individual slaves sold to pay off school debts.
At Harvard, unlike Georgetown, Celini began by supporting the school. He was recruited to identify those enslaved by university faculty, staff, leadership and direct descendants. However, even if he worked at Harvard, he was not hesitant to criticize the institution.
Cellini has claimed several times that as director of HSRP, Bleich instructed him to “not find too many offspring.” After his team was fired in January, he Crimson That means Harvard had “101 that turned the history of slavery upside down.” Harvard vehemently denies Celini’s accusations, saying no such directives have been issued.
Now, Celini wants to replicate what he did in Georgetown by launching an “independent and personally funded” investigation into Harvard’s historical connection to slavery. He currently plans to name it “Slaverytruth.org” although the domain is empty.
Cellini called his new research efforts “Version 2.0 of the Harvard Slavery Memory Program.” He has reached out to nearly 50 descendants so far, and said he viewed the initiative as a “co-op exercise” with them. “Best practices call for fundamental transparency in the research process,” Cellini added in response to a follow-up sent via email. “Harvard should contact their descendants as soon as they are identified and do not wait until “more efforts to identify them are underway.” ”
Technically, Cellini is still a Harvard affiliate despite her dislike for the facility. After he was fired as director of HSRP, he remained a peer at Harvard’s Safra Ethics Center, but he emphasized in the text that he was “not a member of staff.”
And although he condemned Harvard’s new partnership, he also maintains relations with American ancestors. Since 2023, Cellini has been the founding executive director of American Ancestors’ 10 million name projects, with the aim of identifying all African Americans enslaved in the United States.
[. . .] University spokesman Sarah E. Kennedy Orly emphasized in a statement that Celini’s efforts were not approved.
“Cousin Richard”
For Cellini, his outreach serves two purposes. It’s about letting people know and promoting his work. In many cases, Celini said that personal information such as birth, death, and marriage certificates cannot be obtained for the study “unless you are talking to the family themselves.” After identifying offspring, Cellini finds contact information through sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, and relies on word-of-mouth to expand outreach. In his view, descendants are not mere subjects, but potential partners. But he said, they don’t always respond immediately, often doing so with “many doubts and many mistrusts.”
When he first spoke to them, Celini said he often paused when he spoke about their ancestors: “You can just feel the break in the ice, and the conversation can move from a complete silence to a real curiosity.”
He said his descendants’ families have had mixed reactions and he has not “jumped for joy” after learning that Harvard affiliates have enslaved their ancestors. So, he tries to build trust with his descendants and helps him get the “important information” he needs. [. . .]
For the complete article, please refer to https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/25/slavery-notificianedescendants
[Photo above from the Bettmann Archive: Photographs of enslaved people in the US, possibly the oldest known in the country, were discovered in the basement of a Harvard University museum in 1977. For more information, see The Guardian.]
“Harvard also hired researchers to clarify his connection to slavery. He says the outcomes cost him his work: “We found too many slaves.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jun/21/harvard-slavery-decendants-of-the-enslaved
“Shake-up in the legacy of Harvard’s Slavery Initiative
The rapid layoffs of research teams raise broader concerns about university projects. ”
Lydialyle Gibson, Harvard Magazineupdated on January 29, 2025, March 6, 2025
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/01/harvard-legacy-of-slavery-layoffs
“In Antigua and Barbuda, the Legacy of Slavery Initiative identifies hundreds more enslaved by Harvard affiliates,” Sophie Gao and Alexandra M. Kluzak. Harvard CrimsonJanuary 17, 2025
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/1/17/harvard-slavery-remembrance-program-antigua-barbuda
