Hosting timely discussions will be key to that process.
The initiative launched a number of virtual presentations in response to protests this spring over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Scholars, along with thousands of viewers, convened over Zoom to discuss racial and economic inequities in policing, mass incarceration, health care, education, and the economy.
And along the way connections were made to the nation’s original sin. In recent weeks, Brown-Nagin led a conversation with the founder of the 1619 project, Nikole Hannah Jones, and Harvard’s Tiya Miles moderated a discussion titled “The Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Racism in the North.”
Miles, a member of the faculty committee guiding the effort, said she, along with her co-chairs of the subcommittee on campus and community, will focus on developing recommendations for “materializing the [initiative’s] research and findings on our streets, in our neighborhoods, and on our campus.”
“We aim to create opportunities for meaningful engagement that will address this difficult history and enrich all of our lives with the remembrance of Black and Native American enslaved people who contributed to the building of this University, the city of Cambridge, and surrounding estates and towns — not by choice, but by force,” said Miles, a professor of history at Harvard and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor who plans to engage with students, community members, staff members, and descendants of enslaved people to further the work.
“As members of this intellectual community, it is our duty to draw as near as we can to the truth and to share what we find with as many people as possible,” said Miles. “By addressing Harvard’s relationship to slavery, we recognize an important facet of our University’s history, which is in many ways interconnected with the history of the country and the world. This endeavor furthers knowledge of the past and our present, allowing us to chart more informed and just futures.”