It’s My Job To Find the People Harvard Enslaved. It Can’t Outrun History.

I direct the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program, which identifies people enslaved on Harvard’s campus and by Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff, and traces their direct descendants. I accepted this solemn responsibility in 2022 because I believed Harvard was committed to doing this work properly. I still believe that.

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.

Now, I write to assure the Harvard community that academic freedom and research integrity are as vital to the HSRP as they are to Harvard itself. I did not come to Harvard to compromise Harvard’s principles or tarnish Harvard’s name – or my own for that matter.

The HSRP was chartered by the Harvard Corporation when it approved the recommendations of the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Report. Though the Provost’s Office provides us with budgetary and administrative support, historical truth doesn’t have a boss — documented facts don’t need a supervisor. At Harvard, truth should occupy the highest rung in the reporting structure.

Last month, The Crimson reported that there was debate among senior administrators about the scope of the project. Some senior leaders questioned whether Harvard has a duty of repair where governing board members enslaved individuals “in their personal homes.”

Historically, Harvard’s governing boards have included some of the richest and most powerful people in the Atlantic world. Investigating Harvard slavery while excluding board members is like investigating bank robbery while excluding bank robbers. Thankfully, the matter is now finally settled: board members remain within the scope of our research. Intellectual honesty has won.

I am entirely confident that the members of the Harvard Corporation understand that no institution can credibly investigate its own wrongdoing. Under my leadership, the HRSP functions as an independent fact-finder, and exercises broad investigative powers and responsibilities.

This is not the first time I have shouldered the responsibility of uncovering and revealing the truth about institutional slavery. As a Georgetown University alumnus, I founded and led an independent research initiative — the Georgetown Memory Project — that identified more than 10,000 descendants of people enslaved by my alma mater. At no time did I permit university officials to interfere with the scope or outcome of our work. Harvard’s leaders knew my record when they hired me, or damn well should have.

Rest assured: HSRP’s research is rigorous, independent, and honest. Research that supports a predetermined conclusion isn’t research — it’s consulting. Only a very silly sausage would think that Harvard can steer this research towards an expedient outcome.

As scholars, we comply with the research integrity standards of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. As citizens, we are bound to uphold the duty of care established by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Lanier v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. As members of the Harvard community, we follow the Harvard Corporation’s directive that researchers must center enslaved people and not the institution that exploited them.

As the HSRP’s director, I have an affirmative obligation to build and maintain public confidence in our work. We can and will find only as many enslaved people as the archives permit — neither more nor less. Anything else would be fraud.

Our work can’t be bound by institutional consensus because there isn’t one in this field. Many people think Harvard bears responsibility for every enslaved person who ever conferred an economic benefit on the institution, no matter how incidental or remote. Others think Harvard is responsible only for persons physically enslaved on campus — or better yet, within the walls of Harvard Yard.

No matter what path of reparations Harvard chooses, it can’t ignore the facts. Though the University is very old and very rich, it can’t outrun history.

Modern-day Harvard is warming itself by a fire it did not build, and drinking from a well it did not dig. We have a moral responsibility to identify the enslaved people who built that fire and dug that well.

Harvard doesn’t scare me. If you ever want to know if the HSRP’s research remains independent, rigorous, and honest, just ask me. I will answer promptly and truthfully.

There is no respectable alternative to academic freedom and integrity in this work. We are as a city upon a hill, raised up. The eyes of the world are upon us.

Correction: October 11, 2024

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the writer is a research fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, a position he once held but no longer does.

Richard J. Cellini is the founding director of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program.