Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery | Hacker News Reader

Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery

legacyofslavery.harvard.edu

20 pointsBrajeshwar18 comments

While some of this certainly feels like virtue signaling and riding the cultural winds of the last couple years, you have to give some credit that they're putting their money where their mouth is, with the 100 million dollar commitment.

Though, I am very curious where this capital came from and how is it going to be allocated. As for where it came from, I wonder whether it's coming from their insanely large $53.2 billion dollar endowment fund (anyone know?)? If so, it's just a tiny slice of the gains they've seen on that fund. Apparently, it grew $11.3 billion in value from 2020 to 2021.

And from what I can gather from the limited info I've seen, it sounds like they're going to setup another endowment fund for this initiative, where much of the $100 million may end up. Will that mean that it's essentially just capital that will be invested in the markets and continue to grow, occasionally being tapped for minor initiatives?

Couple isolated data points upon further investigation/thought:

- This $100 million represents 0.19% of their endowment fund

- African-Americans made up 8.5% of the student population in 2021

There are certainly other factors that I'm ignorant of, but it does kind of put the $100 million in perspective.

Where is that student stat from? Is that of all undergrads and grad students combined? The incoming College class is 15.5% African American or Black and the percentage has been like that for a number of years; it’s comparable to the U.S. population.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/4/1/admissions-class...

[1] was my source, which looks like it's combining both undergraduate and graduate population demographics for the year 2020-2021. I would certainly trust the number you are sharing for the incoming class, but the graduate population may be much more unrepresentative of the US population. This [2] source suggests that may be the case.

[1] https://www.univstats.com/colleges/harvard-university/studen...

[2] https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/edu/166027/harvard-uni...

The student population numbers look too high, I think they include the Extension School which offers certificates, undergraduate degrees, and graduate degrees. That also explains how there are so many students over 25 at both the graduate and undergraduate level. >30,000 people take Extension courses [0] every year so those stats might only include Extension students enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program.

The Extension School doesn't have a traditional application process and its courses are cheaper, per-credit, but it also doesn't have the financial aid offerings of the other Schools.

BTW, in the U.S. overall, ~13.5% of graduate students are Black or African American [1].

[0] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/11/30/dce-statistics...

[1] https://www.equityinhighered.org/indicators/enrollment-in-gr...

Thanks for sharing more sources to help provide light on the potential reality of the student population.

Here's more data I was able to find, from Harvard itself [1]. This enrollment data breaks out by College vs Graduate/Professional vs Extension. In Fall of 2021, African-Americans represented 9.37% of College enrollment, 6.12% of Graduate/Professional enrollment, and 4.11% of Extension enrollment. From looking at this data, it seems like the original 8.5% number is likely in the ballpark for those enrolled.

The picture that is emerging from the data points shared is that the percentage drops at each stage of the educational journey (The share admitted is not holding to those enrolled in the College, and it's not holding to those enrolled in graduate/professional degree programs).

[1] https://oir.harvard.edu/fact-book/enrollment

I know the admissions percentages for the College has been consistently over 10% for a while now so a total College enrollment of 9.37% would imply a disturbing dropout/flunk out rate. I don't think that is happening. Instead, I think the difference is due to the College admissions statistics [0] not being as detailed; in particular, I bet many of the students listed as "two or more races" in the other stats identified as Black or African American during admissions (or the Admissions dept. simplified the data presented).

[0] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

I wouldn’t call this “virtue signaling.” If you look at the findings of the report, Harvard faculty and staff enslaved 70 people, and directly benefited from slavery through donors after that: https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/report/introduction-and-.... $100 million is probably a drop in the bucket compared to how much of their endowment is directly traceable to donations from slave owners or those involved in the slave trade.

In my view this approach of tracing benefits directly is the way to go about things. It’s far better than when these wealthy white people act like the legacy of slavery is some common inheritance of white people benefitting them all—which is just a way for the real beneficiaries to hide behind other white people. There were fortunes built on slavery. That money didn’t end up in the bank accounts of white people in Appalachia. It ended up in institutions like Harvard, New York banks, etc., where white people continue to benefit from it.

Of course the money should go to reparations for ADOS people instead of whatever silly initiative they got it earmarked for. That seems to me to just move money from one account to another. If the money is ill-gotten, and the report makes a convincing case it is, they should turn over use and power over disposition of the money to someone else. Not say “we’re going to use the money we made from enslaving your ancestors to study how to—in our opinion—help you.” That’s perverse.

They also fought on the side of the North, helping to kill their kin to end slavery (as did plenty of their donors, since we're bringing donors into this), and helped spread vaccines (which Benjamin Waterhouse tested on his own family) and anesthetics, which massively benefited people of color as well. I wonder if that earns them a discount?

If not, do we have any reason to believe these $100 million will earn them any credit in the future, or will the repentance have to be perpetual?

>”Harvard faculty and staff enslaved 70 people, and directly benefited from slavery through donors after that: https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/report/introduction-and-.... $100 million is probably a drop in the bucket compared to how much of their endowment is directly traceable to donations from slave owners or those involved in the slave trade.”

I think this number is extraordinarily difficult to calculate but $100 million does not seem like a drop in the bucket number in this case. It is my understanding that the majority of the $50 something billion endowment was only gained in the last 100 years and a substantial portion of it is due to patents and shares in companies rather than from compounding interest on legacy funds or investments.

Ben Franklin set up a trust fund using the equivalent of $125,000 in todays dollars and after 200 years it was worth a relatively measly 2 million dollars.

My takeaway from this is that even compounding interest on investments or gains made during the era of chattel slavery in the United States do not seem to be worth nearly as much as modern day investments and valuations. Not that these should be dismissed, though. But even a modest tiny investment in some startup could end up being worth far more to Harvard’s endowment.

If someone makes a $100,000 investment in your early stage company, do they expect to get compound interest, or equity? Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard—and wouldn’t be in the position to be getting those patents—without those early donations from slavers.

Regardless, my other point is that Harvard’s introspection is at least closer to the mark than similar efforts, which lump people like Harvard trustees with poor people in Appalachia—under the umbrella of “whiteness”—as common beneficiaries of slavery. Whatever the dollar value of slavery’s legacy, it’s preposterous to act like it inured to all white people in any meaningful way—which is how it’s typically framed.

I think the biggest challenge is that we are dealing with a kind of butterfly effect justification. I suppose it is true that every aspect of our current society and economy is descended in some way to slavery. Everything is necessarily interconnected and a product of historical events and you can always draw a connection if that is your goal.

The challenge is, of course, trying to figure out just how much of an impact. What I was getting at with my earlier post is that it seems like the majority of Harvard’s wealth is recent rather than longstanding. And, if someone is looking at this through the lens of historical wealth that was gained directly from the activity of slavery, $100 million seems to be reasonable rather than not nearly enough of the total $50+ billion.

It's interesting how we may cognitively accept this action as progress or effort, but have no specific understanding of what is being achieved or it's relative value.

Superficially we may assume $100 million extra dollars is being spent on something but it's difficult to tell if that's the case. It seems to instead be an allocation of existing funds to support minority students? But then you'd have to ask, were they previously not being supported but the much larger existing endowment?

Harvard seems to have done something good and I think that's the point of the website and the overall messaging, but we are given a limited amount of details to articulate exactly what this good thing is and whether it's a material change.

Not a fan of the place. But they certainly deserve credit for being forthcoming with this.

That's quite generous in the current climate. I think this is a very transparent and self-serving publicity stunt and a signal to their in-group.

It's getting out in front of any accusations which may paint this past in a less flattering light. It's catering to exactly the kind of hyper-liberal social views and politics likely shared by their most generous donors, current and future staff and students, academia, and the US government. All of this in service to the growing gospel of diversity is very fashionable at the moment.

I think this perspective is just as limiting as extreme wokeness. No action can be taken at all without being accused of disingenuous virtue signaling. What could Harvard have done here(or any institution)? They could remain silent and ignore any connection and what would that achieve? Why should they do that instead? Or they could do what they've done and at least accomplish something. Even if they did it purely due to the current climate, who cares? At least they took ownership and made a real plan to attempt to address the issues and their history. If I'm a descendant of someone whose body is held in Harvard's collection, for example, The politics are unimportant; I just want it resolved.

Exactly. The guilt never ends, and there is always something you can be persecuted for.

The solution is not to demand that "the institutions" do something to atone for their blasphemous behavior; rather for individuals to introspect on their own behavior and the innumerable ways in which they, too, are guilty, before pointing the finger at others.

I find it immensely aggravating when those who call for large scale social action seem incapable of observing the very same tenets they espouse during small scale, every day encounters.

> It's getting out in front of any accusations which may paint this past in a less flattering light.

It’s not exactly new information. What’s your point?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com