Harvard hired researcher to uncover slavery ties, fires him for finding slaves
104 comments
·June 24, 2025Yizahi
belorn
There is a rather interesting historical person called Hans Jonatan (19th century) who was an escaped slave from a Danish colony, fled to the danish fleet, fought in the Battle of Copenhagen, and then fled to live in Iceland. Because of the very small amount of immigration from people with West African ancestry to Iceland, Hans has been the subject of fairly extensive Genetic study that found around 800 descendants.
philipkglass
There have been a couple of Hacker News stories about Hans Jonatan that made the front page:
"The DNA of Iceland's First Known Black Man, Recreated from Living Descendants"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16188715
"A Trail Gone Cold"
eviks
> “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
probably_wrong
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".
pyrale
We have values. But only as long as they are inexpensive.
WithinReason
Isn't that how that always is?
woleium
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.
Simulacra
Welcome to Harvard
eviks
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!
isaacfrond
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.
Sabinus
How is the institution 'liable' for the slaves owned by the founders? I'm both confused that people expect the University to pay significant reparations to the many descendants of slaves and that it would be afraid of that expectation. Is a preferential entry or special scholarships not enough?
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fakedang
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.
Defletter
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?
bbarnett
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.
ZeroGravitas
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.
Defletter
> 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?
typewithrhythm
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.
ZeroGravitas
> 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.
Teever
> 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?
Defletter
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.
fakedang
a.) My family weren't slaves, they were British colonial second-class subjects.
b.) They were killed in the 1920s, way after Britain decided to compensate its slavers.
c.) The whole payment to slaves till 2015 is not real, it's just a quirk of how the payments were structured via annuities - in fact the payments were done by the 1840s.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-colle...
d.) The slaves themselves never received any compensation.
wtcactus
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.
eviks
How would it bankrupt them when they're the ones setting the compensation???
Yizahi
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.
eviks
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
Simulacra
Yet, it drives people to the polls. Year after year, empty money promises - no matter how asinine - drive voters.
Defletter
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.
KoolKat23
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.
Teever
Would you be opposed to the British government mandating that the descendants of slavers need to repay this debt? Why or why not?
Defletter
I mean, they can renege, Parliamentary Sovereignty and all that jazz. The choice not to renege is indeed a choice.
bitshiftfaced
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.
wtcactus
Well, that's mostly because the UK, did something almost no one ever did before and not only abolished slavery (something most Cristian kingdoms did by themselves) but even took a step further and went to war to prevent it from continuing.
Sure, you don't see countries with a very, very long history of slavery like most Arab nations, or India, or most of the descendants of African kingdoms, paying debt they contracted to end slavery, because they couldn't care less about ending it, and even went to war against Britain to continue practicing it.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Brita...
drdaeman
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?
vintermann
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.
drdaeman
First of all, to avoid misunderstanding, let me explicitly say that I agree with a lot of things in your comment.
But my question was not about whenever far descendants of slaves need (or need not) to be compensated somehow. It was about the "completely bonkers" bit. Possibly, it was a mistake to reiterate the idea to ensure it is consistently understood - the third paragraph (specifically, the emphasized part) of my comment was the point, not the second one.
We have an insanely complex system composed of multiple societies that may or may not exhibit some behaviors because of some antecedent events. Yet, GP didn't say e.g. "but it completely drowns" (essentially, claiming statistical insignificance) or that their understanding of possible corrective action has questionable effects (like @modo_mario's neighbor comment about universities), but rather that the whole thing has no rational basis to it ("bonkers") whatsoever ("completely").
This is something that I don't think I understand and that concerns me. Not whenever someone needs a preferential treatment for some injustices of the past (not that the latter doesn't concern me, but way less significantly).
modo_mario
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.
Simulacra
People are quick to feel slighted and counterreact.
People are quick to stand in line for money.
PeterStuer
Would you then not just focus on helping currently disadvantaged people, rather than some ancestry chase that might or might not be presently relevant?
KoolKat23
Sorry, it's completely bonkers.
How long is a piece of string?
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ggm
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.
eviks
> 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.
CaliforniaKarl
Where was it that you read about this?
labster
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.
IAmBroom
> it’s simpler to assume
So, you didn't read anything to support your assertion at all? You just made it up, whole-cloth, from your political assumptions?
blitzar
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huseyinkeles
[flagged]
zemvpferreira
It's called a joke.
bloqs
the pearl clutching is really unecessary here as it's obviously light hearted humour.
jinnert
[flagged]
bryanrasmussen
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.
blitzar
PhD and Postdoc students are generally relatively well-treated in Academia (relatively is doing a biblical quantity of the heavy lifting here)
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esseph
This is what???
hoseja
[flagged]
lovelearning
Performative virtue signaling is not always easy.
RickJWagner
What remains of slavery in the northeast are the economic byproducts.
What remains in the south are the descendants of the slaves, and the ironically scape goated guilt.
sharpshadow
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.
corimaith
Every culture that exists today over the bones of vanquished peoples long lost to history.
sharpshadow
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.
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.