Did they forget to ask Biology department about this whole descendants number thing? I though they are a University, maybe they couldn't estimate the number outright, but at least some tiny thought at the back of their mind should have told them that even 1 person from 300 years ago can leave a lot of descendants. That's what 15-20 generations? Each potentially doubling in numbers.
> “At one point the fear was expressed that if we found too many descendants, it would bankrupt the university,” he said.
That doesn't make sense on its surface, what's the mechanism here? This is mentioned twice without any explanation
My understanding is that they intended to pay reparations to the descendants. But if they truly identified 10k descendants at $1k each they would need $10M alone for an amount that, depending on their personal circumstances, ranges from "an insult" to "not much".
We have values. But only as long as they are inexpensive.
Isn't that how that always is?
not that i am defending the university, but “expensive” is somewhat removed from “an existential risk”. Such straw men tend to be easier to knock down.
Is the argument here that Harvard, an institution (not a human being), deserves to exist more than descendants of slaves (human beings all) deserve reparations?
It's tough because it's apples to oranges, morally, but I think it's a reasonable position to argue.
But they are the ones setting that value per person , so there is 0 risk of bankruptcy - they can always adjust the value to fit whatever the non-bankrupting total they're comfortable with is!
The article nowhere mentions individual compensation to descendants by Harvard. I suspect the bankruptcy comment is an institutional fear of financial liability tied to large-scale identification of descendants.
Insanity that Harvard, apparently one of the gathering places for some of the best minds in the world, to think that tracking down and compensating people who are very removed from the realities of slavery. They could've thought of revitalizing black neighborhoods in tandem with HBCUs, carried outreach to black majority high schools by alumni, the works, but nope, they thought this would be a better investment of their funds. No wonder wealthy donors are so hesitant to donate to a pack of rabid morons.
In those lines, I might as well pressure the British government to compensate me, personally, because they decided to shove one part of my family tree into a train carriage to suffocate to death.
You say that like governments, like the British government (since you brought them up), didn't finish paying off its debt to slave owners in 2015 (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/repayment-of-26-billion-h...) for debt created decades before the American civil war over slavery. Are you okay with this? And if so, why is paying off this debt okay when slavery is so far removed, but the concept of reparations isn't?
That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery.
It's also talking about real agreements for an entity to exchange money in the future, for a bond tied to the value of the currency... Not some vibes based moral justification.
> That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery.
The debt was taken on to pay reparations to slave owners. About £6 Billion in modern terms, 4.5 billion of which was borrowed.
No, it wasn't "reparations". It was a commercial transaction to legally buy slaves and set them free.
Correct, the slave owners were already "compensated" for their crimes against humanity 200 years ago, so the debt being completed was the loan the UK took out to do so. But you are missing the point: the argument being made here (and in other comments) is that slavery was soooo loooonng aggoooo that considering reparations is at best virtue signalling, and at worst moronic. And yet you and others do not bat an eye at debt lasting that long. And let's be clear, I am fully supportive of OP's advocacy for funding black neighbourhoods and other such programmes. I am specifically aiming at this whining sophistry (which I'm not claiming OP made, but just in general) about slavery being ancient history so reparations are ridiculous, but debt lasting that long is totally fine and normal.
Because a debt like that is essentially a chunk of currency, that is passed between entitys; it doesn't matter when a debt a government was issued, the current holder is another contemporary entity or person.
Why a debt was created is irrelevant to the current holder, can't you understand why a government default is bad?
Can't you understand why attempting to resolve past wrongs is good? Why are finance obligations so important that they MUST persist throughout the centuries, but attempting to fix the legacies of human suffering is just "vibes based moral justification"? Why are numbers more important than people?
You dont seem to understand; the debt is owned and exchanged by contemporary people, why or when that debt was created is irrelevant, because the body (government) that owes it has many other debts created over time. You can not pick and choose which ones to repay without causing everyone who you currently owe money to be alarmed.
Deciding to default on an old debt like that would be the equivalent of deciding any coin minted in 1993 is no longer valid, suck it up whoever currently has one in their pocket.
To be clear, you are the one trying to draw this parallel without any solid foundation to make it.
When you look the moral problem, there is a discontinuity that doesn't exist for abstract financial instruments. People make moral choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability. This is a different case and needs to be made without trying to use financial instruments as a starting point.
And the institution of slavery and its legacies were and are experienced by contemporary people. In fact, penal chattel slavery was an ongoing thing well into the 20th century in the US.
And I honestly fail to see the distinction you're making: you insist that financial obligations are different because, to paraphrase: "there's a paper trail and defaulting is bad". But slavery and its legacies also has a paper trail, likewise with human life and misery, and not resolving this is also bad. You have yet to provide an argument that fundamentally CANNOT also be applied to reparations: you've only given arguments over how we merely don't apply them to reparations. This kind of definition game, that 'reparations aren't considered that way because we don't consider them that way', reminds me of when there's outrage over police murdering someone and people insisting it's not murder because murder is an unlawful killing.
So, I ask you, without resorting to mere definition, what is the difference between "People make moral choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability" (reparations) and "People make financial choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability" (debt)?
Debt is a mechanic we use to settle long term concrete transactions, particularly between complicated abstract entitys like nations. To be able to enter into new long term agreements, we must respect existing agreements.
Morality pertains to how individuals should behave. There is no need for me to consider the actions of others I had no control over in order to act morally.
You are trying to compare abstract concepts in a way that weakens your point. Nations are not individuals. Similarly, individuals do not inherit debt.
The ancient Chinese perspective is that the long-term stability and trust in the reliability of the system is more important than individual heroics.
> And yet you and others do not bat an eye at debt lasting that long
People don't have debts or credits they didn't sign up for. You're failing to tell the difference between something the British government hundreds of years ago signed the British Empire up in perpetuity to pay to enforce on the world a totally new value system, and someone born today suddenly being assigned a credit or debit based on things from hundreds of years ago.
That is a distinction without a difference: my tax money went to paying off that loan. Whether it was a debt established 200 years ago that we we're still paying off, or assigned a new debt based on something that happened 200 years ago makes no difference: I still had to pay for it. It's a legal fiction, all of it. Quibbling over whether it's this category or that makes no difference to me having to pay for it.
> That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery.
This seems like a distinction without a difference. Can you elaborate?
If you say we are not paying a debt to slave owners, then slave owners do not receive money.
If you say we are not paying the current holder of a bond we created to pay slave owners in the past, then you damage your current credit rating. (In the worst case, potentially hurting organisations that let you have good terms for socially beneficial causes, refusing to pay back a charity that helps end slavery for example).
The slave owners were paid lifetimes ago. The repayments are to the inheritors of the debt that was taken on to pay said slave owners.
Read up on the 'home children'. Hundreds of thousands of orphaned children were contracted(sold), indentured, to the colonies. Some faced harrowing, near starvation conditions and were beaten, tortured, and so on.
On top of that, to reduce resistance, families were broken up. One brother would be sent to Canada, another Australia, never to meet again.
This is, of course, not as severe as slavery. Once adults, after a decade or more of hard labour, their contract was often satisfied. Yet my point is that the past was a more brutal time. This is how white, British children were treated by the British. And not one descendant of home children (such as my grandfather was) has ever been compensated. There is no effort to help track down families broken apart.
And look at what happened to orphans in Catholic care? Priest raping children, and it being kept quiet for decades by the police and Catholic church.
If reparations aren't being given to cases like these, then why would they be given to other cases a centuries old?
NOTE, I'm not saying "fair or not". I'm saying that is that the past is a different world. And expecting today's people to pay for what their great-great grandfather's did, isn't a thing that's often entertained.
If we start getting into reparations, I feel I should also have my property returned from when the British took it from my Scottish ancestors. Or maybe Italy should be paying, for the time the Romans invaded and they took some land back then?
When does it end? Where does it end?
This comment may not be liked by many, but what I'm trying to point out is that the past was not today, mores were different, and it wasn't just one race that was treated poorly.
Everyone treated everyone poorly compared to today.
> And expecting today's people to pay for what their great-great grandfather's did, isn't a thing that's often entertained.
From what I can tell, the argument is that: if your great-great grandfather became extremely wealthy off of slavery, and was then paid by the government to free their slaves, and then eventually you inherit that wealth... well... if the wealth from crimes against humanity can be inherited, why isn't the responsibility to undo the harm not also inherited?
Because selectively applying this line of reasoning to one moral injustice is making someone a victim by unfairly applying a standard to them alone.
Is your plan to analyze all current wealth for morality based redistribution?
> Is your plan to analyze all current wealth for morality based redistribution?
Don't threaten me with a good time! Jokes aside, I'm generally pro-redistribution to begin with (I'm somewhat of a dirty communist) and I think trying to finagle exactly how much someone's wealth should be redistributed based on the weaving and waning of economic activity over two centuries to be rather a waste of time. Better to just redistribute based on wealth. But if this were something that happened only thirty years ago, I'd absolutely be calling for "morality based redistribution", as you put it, because it is then something that can actually be achieved.
> Because selectively applying this line of reasoning to one moral injustice is making someone a victim by unfairly applying a standard to them alone.
Who argued to apply it selectively?
> Is your plan to analyze all current wealth for morality based redistribution?
It's not about morality, it's seeing what part or your current wealth is due to obscene and unjustifiable (often even for the time) acts.
No one argues to have you do time for your ancestors, but if part of your wealth is due to those acts, what would be wrong about giving it back?
FYI various Catholic organisations are paying reparations to their victims (some for slavery, some for abuse of children).
Probably too little and too late but still a strange example to give if your point is that reparations are unthinkable.
The first settlers created Harvard University in 1636, while slaves also started to be common during that century. That are over 200 years of slavery until 1865. Havard benefited for more than half its existence from slaves.
Every culture that exists today over the bones of vanquished peoples long lost to history.
The point here is that it’s not vanquished but in the archives. Havard as one of the oldest institutions started with the first settlers, probably, very likely, has one of the most extensive histories of slave ownership.
PhD and Postdoc students for starters.
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It's called a joke.
the pearl clutching is really unecessary here as it's obviously light hearted humour.
This is antisemitic propaganda. Slaves were generally relatively well-treated in America (with great emphasis, of course, on relatively).
OK well.. https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-free-slave-8336f214da45
I'm not sure if "great emphasis" is the proper phrase to describe the use of relatively here.
Wherein a fugitive slave on the run must lie to misrepresent himself as a free man?
Did I miss the part about rape and amputation? He even received a wage, and the slave owner said she would free him one day (until he grew impatient and suspicious, and fled instead).
This is what I mean. I'm not painting slavery as a wonderful vacation. Don't mistake me. I am saying that it was not this endless exercise in cartoonish sadism like some would have you believe. The Torah forbids it.
PhD and Postdoc students are generally relatively well-treated in Academia (relatively is doing a biblical quantity of the heavy lifting here)
This is what???
The idea of giving all the descendants of someone that lived hundreds of years ago some form of compensation because 1/32nd (or much lower) of their ancestors was harmed in some way, is completely bonkers for me. Virtue signaling at it’s best.
Harvard tried to do it (to virtue signal, I mean) and eventually found out that the maths for their little publicity stunt would get them bankrupt. They then proceeded to try and stop the all thing.
That’s the story here.
I agree, the fact that the UK government was still paying off slave-owner debt in 2015 (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/repayment-of-26-billion-h...) instead of freeing itself from that debt because the idea of giving the descendants of slave owners who were "harmed" in the loss of their "property", is completely bonkers.
These bonds were a consolidated, tradable asset. They were likely traded many times over the centuries. They could end up in things like pension funds after 200 years.
That's more to do with the method in which it was resolved, it was ended in place of government debt. They can't simply renege on government debts purely due to its origin.
It's like saying they should in part renege on some current 2008 financial crisis debts.
Would you be opposed to the British government mandating that the descendants of slavers need to repay this debt? Why or why not?
I mean, they can renege, Parliamentary Sovereignty and all that jazz. The choice not to renege is indeed a choice.
How is it completely bonkers?
I think the idea is that those people were put at inherent disadvantage due to unfair treatment of their long gone predecessors. Or at least that’s my understanding of it.
The validity of this claim, type and amount of corrective action (and from some viewpoints - its very appropriateness or necessity), as well as the relative importance of the subject - those can all be a matter of debate, but are any of those so obvious they render the whole idea crazy?
I found out my son is a descendant of slaves. I am not, but his mother is from a family with a few upper class connections, and in one of them there was a Danish slave ship captain, who married a "free woman of color" on St. Croix and moved to Norway. "The Creole Woman" was a family legend told to me by his great-grandmother, but I checked, and it was completely true.
Apparently it's really common in Denmark to be a descendant of slaves in a similar way.
I think it's obviously ludicrous that my son should be entitled to corrective action for this. Yes, his ancestor was subjected to an injustice, but it completely drowns in the sea of other injustices or unfair advantages his ancestors have had.
If you want to sum up the historical injustice and unearned privilege someone's ancestors had, it's much better to look at their bank account than their pedigree. DoS-restitution suggests that but for transatlantic slavery, the present distribution of resources would have been just. The further back you are willing to go in asserting the right to restitution, the more forcefully you are asserting it.
As a practical matter, you have to have some level of material comfort and/or solid family relationships to be able to document your ancestry. That already biases it away from those who would need it most.
The world is filled with such qualms. People are quick to feel slighted and counterreact. For example if the uni decided to make it more financially manageable by letting those decendants in easier suddenly it starts mirroring the stories of asian and white students needing higher scores to get in that caused an outrage. Giving money because of some modern day one drop rule ends up no different.
It will also always be a mess even if you do compensate. See at the fights about who gets native american tribe status and benefits. On one hand you have people actually struggling with the faults of the past. On the other hand there's groups of people who genuinely believe it's them that bear the costs of the past with less measurable ancestral ties than the average african american looking to benefit decrying what happened.
Would you then not just focus on helping currently disadvantaged people, rather than some ancestry chase that might or might not be presently relevant?
Sorry, it's completely bonkers.
How long is a piece of string?
How would it bankrupt them when they're the ones setting the compensation???
They would probably need to pay a little more than 5$ Comcast/Hewlett-Packard style, and if there were even 10 slaves back then, today it would be 30000 descendants. If there were 1000 slaves back then, it would be 3 million people today. Paying each even a measly thousand would require 3 billion dollars just for compensations, without any other investments or programs.
They wouldn't even have to pay out to individuals, instead they could pay to "communities"! Again, they're the ones setting up the structure of the compensation
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I read about this elsewhere and the sentiment was "this is a very hot take" because overall Harvard remains committed to recognising, documenting and taking account of its slavery ties, it's not in denial.
All projects come to an end. Maybe funding ran out, maybe it's cowardice in the context of the Anti DEI move, but this isn't the same as what the headline implies.
> this isn't the same as what the headline implies.
Correct, you need to read the actual article to find justification for the headline, not limit yourself to a generic "everything ends"
For example, re funding running out
> Even though Cellini was eventually given a budget for 2025, albeit a fraction of what he had asked for, the university would soon halt his work entirely.
Where was it that you read about this?
The story is from The Guardian, they have a certain point of view. I like it most of the time, but in this story it’s simpler to assume that spending money on slavery reparations and DEI activity suddenly became a political liability this January, rather than any very theoretical monetary liability in reparations.
Unfortunately, appeasement didn’t work this time, either.