The findings of this committee-summarized in this introduction and detailed in the pages that follow-not only reveal a chasm between the Harvard of the past and of the present but also point toward the work we must still undertake to live up to our highest ideals. Harvard leaders, faculty, staff, and benefactors enslaved people, some of whom labored at the University ⁠ Go to footnote 2 detail accrued wealth through the slave trade and slave labor and defended the institution of slavery.⁠ Go to footnote 3 detail Through research in the Harvard University Archives and in several Harvard libraries, including the Houghton Library and the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, as well as in collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the American Philosophical Society, the University of Michigan Library, and the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among other repositories, this report documents now incontestable truths: During the 17th and 18th centuries, the sale and trafficking of human beings-in slavery-and the industries rooted in the labor of enslaved women, men, and children were pervasive around the world, comprised a vital part of the New England economy, and powerfully shaped Harvard University.

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