The Staff of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program Has Been Abruptly Laid Off

Over the past several years, the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative has investigated the Ivy League school’s historic ties to slavery. As part of the project, the staff of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program (HSRP) has worked to identify individuals who were enslaved by university administrators, faculty, and staff, as well as those individuals’ direct descendants.

Recently, a team of scholars from the HSRP traveled to Antigua and Barbuda to further investigate records of hundreds of formerly enslaved individuals from the Caribbean who had ties to Harvard. Just one week after the team’s trip, Harvard abruptly laid off the entire HSRP staff, according to an article from The Harvard Crimson. The HSRP staff were not given a reason for their team’s disbandment.

Richard Cellini, the recently laid-off HSRP director, has been vocal about his concerns regarding Harvard administrators’ influence and viewpoints on his staff’s research.

In an October 2024 op-ed in The Harvard Crimson, Cellini wrote, “Last year, I formally notified the Office of the President and the Office of General Counsel that a small number of senior university administrators pressured me not to find ‘too many descendants’ and not to do my job ‘too well.’ I made these statements because they are true. As a member of the New York Bar, I am sworn never to make baseless allegations.”

Just one month earlier, Cellini wrote to The Harvard Crimson that he “told officials at the highest level of the university that they only have two options: fire me, or let the HSRP do this work properly.”

Following his involuntary departure, Cellini told the Harvard Magazine that his team had identified nearly 1,000 people who had been enslaved by Harvard affiliates, as well as 1,400 direct descendants. Going forward, HSRP’s project will be led by American Ancestors, a nonprofit genealogical organization in Boston that has participated in HSRP’s research. Prior to the recent layoffs, the HSRP would identify the first generation or two of enslaved individuals, and American Ancestors would trace their descendants to the present day. According to Cellini, roughly 500 of the identified direct descendants are alive today.

Now, American Ancestors will perform all research into the identification of former enslaved individuals with ties to Harvard. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Advisory Council member, director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies, and the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard, voiced his support of American Ancestors in a press release issued by Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Special Projects.

“Richard Cellini’s superb efforts launched us on our way on this historically important mission, and now it is time for American Ancestors to take the lead in what will be a systematic, scholarly sustained effort to establish the facts about this dark chapter in our university’s history, and begin the long journey of healing,” said Professor Gates, who also serves as an honorary trustee of American Ancestors. “We are indebted to Richard for his early guidance and his ambitious leadership.”

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