Wednesday 8 June 2022 02:04 AM Harvard has remains of nearly 7,000 Native Americans and enslaved black people ... trends now
A leaked report has revealed that Harvard University is in possession of the remains of nearly 7,000 Native Americans and about 20 enslaved people.
The draft was put together by a committee over the past year in an attempt to parse out how the university would handle its ties to America's legacy of slavery.
The university announced in April that it was setting aside $100million for an endowment fund and other measures to close the educational, social and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism.
The 'unfinalised' draft report was leaked this week by The Harvard Crimson.
Evelynn M. Hammonds, the chair of the committee expressed disappointment over the leak. A professor of African American studies and the former dean of Harvard College, Hammonds called it 'irresponsible.'
A leaked report has revealed that Harvard University is in possession of the remains of nearly 7,000 Native Americans and about 20 enslaved people, many of them held in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (pictured)
The remaining DNA is currently being held at the university's Warren Anatomical Museum
She also referred to the document that got out as an 'outdated version that does not reflect weeks of additional information and committee work'.
Evelynn M. Hammonds, the chair of the committee expressed disappointment over the leak. A professor of African American studies and the former dean of Harvard College, Hammonds called it 'irresponsible'
Hammonds contends that the final report will feature DNA analysis, display and ethical stewardship of human remains and more detailed proposals in terms of what to do with the remains.
Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said in 2021 when he founded the committee that the school's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and Warren Anatomical Museum's hold the remains of over 22,000 individuals.
'We know much about some of these individuals because they were accompanied by detailed records of their unique experiences, but others were afforded no biographical information,' Bacow said in a statement at the time.
'The latter circumstance is a testament, in some cases, to the status of individuals at the times of their deaths or to the standards under which their remains came to be collected.'
Dr. Henry Louis Gates - the host of Finding Your Roots and a prominent academic - is one of the members of the committee
