Harvard University removes human skin binding from book

If this was the skin of your grandmother’s grandmother, how would your grandmother feel about it being used a hazing ritual?

Using the balance of probabilities it is likely that the unidentified person’s family would not want that to happen and is likely they would want their grandmother back.

This being a woman is only relevant because, in that era it was more likely to be a woman, I.e. consent was not seen as important when do things to/with women’s bodies.

Since I'm an atheist, I don't really have particularly strong feelings about what happens after I die (ideally: reasonably green, so composting seems better than cremation). And yet, it is weird to imagine my doctor or mortician taking some part of my body for their personal collection (imagine a tooth or finger).

With that in mind, I understand these posts. Harvard: "whoa guys this is skin!" To "sorry we called you all guys [2], and sorry we were shocked and sensational in our discussion of this artifact"

What should they do? It makes sense to have human attendants manage the book if you want it to be accessible in the collection. At least then they can warn would-be viewers (since that's a thing they want to do)

They could just donate the book to a museum? Then nobody really touches it and it's probably well-preserved. They could remove (but preserve) the skin. I imagine that's what they've done, which seems ok. Anyone can use the book, researchers can study the skin

The book-skin combo artifact doesn't seem particularly special to me - is it worth preserving as a whole unit? I'm surprised so many others in the comments think so

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliquary#:~:text=A%20reliqu....

[2] this is a joke

[3] thinking about this, I can't imagine human skin is the best binding for a book, but I do appreciate that it would be possible to say "I really don't care what happens to my skin" or to otherwise be ok with this. It doesn't seem like this was the case for this book, though.

So what's your point, we should glorify some sick mind who thought it was a good idea to take and use human remains to decorate his library?

Removing the binding from the book was the right decision. Returning the victim's remains to their descendants and trying to find more context on how their loved one perished is also absolutely the right decision.

I hope this is preserved; what a pointless waste otherwise. How are we to imagine the deceased here? A person outraged at the insult, or one now doubly outraged at the waste?

That's... a thing you can do. Yeesh.

Bet he was a Lovecraft fan in his final years.

Seriously, look up the book. It sounds like a polite description of a necromantic grimoire.

edit: next step, harvard ppl studying the consent about random ossuaires in France https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-10-24/10-creepiest...

It’s a historical artifact. The change adds a historical significance. The symbolic value is minimal vs the information.

It’s a book.

Just reading the title alone heightened my sensibilities as it immediately reminded me of such Nazis atrocities where they made objects out of the skin of their victims.

That was my emotional self talking and I'd expect it would always be my initial reaction, but when my rational self kicked in moments later I immediately asked what motivated these Harvard idiots to so act, was it out of some kind of perverse political correctness? If not, then what was their motivation?

It seems to me these people are both unprofessional and irresponsible and should not be charged with the responsibility of housing and managing important historical items. The principal responsibilities of museums is to preserve historical artifacts in their original unaltered form as is best possible and keep them safely housed for posterity and for the benefit and education of future generations.

It is not the job of museums to alter museum pieces because they don't like some aspect about them, and to do so clearly smacks of vandalism. If an institution is so offended by some object in its collection then it can either remove it from normal viewing and make it only available to researchers, or alternatively, give it to another museum that does not take offense (there'll always be others willing to take the object off their hands).

Let's put this book into perspective. There are aspects about it that are deemed sordid by today's ethical standards but that does not devalue its historical significance, in fact a knowledge and understanding of how the object acquired these attributes make it all the more important from an historical perspective, ipso facto it will also be more valuable. Vandalizing it will make it less so on every account.

Now let's compare the historical aspects of this book with other objects commonly found in many museums that also could be deemed to have 'sordid' backgrounds. If other museums similarly applied Harvard's sanctimonious ethical attitudes to this class of items in their collections then many thousands of objects would have to be withdrawn from display.

For instance, modern and ancient weapons of war—guns, howitzers, Roman, Greek and Viking swords, and a myriad of other things whose very existence—their raison d'être—is based on ethical standards that many of us today would now consider abhorrent and repugnant but we don't alter or destroy them.

Similarly, after WWII we didn't destroy hideous places such as Auschwitz and Buchenwald but kept them for their great historical significance and to remind present and future generations of the horrors that took place there.

What I find outrageous is that these days many professionals find it acceptable to try to 'correct' history (as in the case of this Harvard book). Why they cannot see and just accept that ethical and societal values were very different in the past than now—and that every era had its own standards and ethical values, many of which were brutal.

Over recent decades there's a collective lemming-like cultural attitude developed amongst many professionals who ought to know better, they refuse to criticize idiocy and outright hypocrisy even at the expense of both their professionalism and their professions, and they often so act out of fear of being labeled politically incorrect.

I'm damned if I know how these people can ditch logic and reason and still live with their consciences.

I was lead to believe that Harvard was where smart people were. The simple thing to do would be to remove the book from circulation, not destroy the thing that made it interesting.