A $100 million University initiative intended to make amends for Harvard’s ties to slavery has been hamstrung by infighting, high staff turnover, and senior University officials seeking to limit the project’s scope, multiple current and former staff members told The Crimson.

Even as Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich, who leads the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative, underscored the University’s commitment to redressing historic wrongs, Bleich and other top administrators pushed for public relations victories and fostered an environment where affiliates felt pressured to speed up their work, the current and former staffers said.

Two high-profile departures occurred in late May when English professor Tracy K. Smith ’94 and Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Director Dan I. Byers resigned as co-chairs of the initiative’s memorial project committee, issuing a scathing resignation letter to top University leadership.

The internal friction continued through the summer as Roeshana Moore-Evans, formerly the initiative’s executive director and Bleich’s top deputy, left the University in June.

And Richard J. Cellini, the director of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program, said in a statement to The Crimson that he was explicitly instructed by Bleich to limit the number of descendants of enslaved individuals identified by his research team.

“I have been repeatedly and emphatically told by Dr. Sara Bleich ‘not to find too many descendants’ and that ‘the HSRP shouldn’t do its job too well,’” Cellini wrote.

University spokesperson Sarah E. Kennedy O’Reilly disputed Cellini’s statement, saying that no such instruction had ever been issued.

“There is no directive to limit the number of direct descendants to be identified through this work,” she wrote.

This account is based on interviews conducted over the past four months with 18 people familiar with Harvard’s efforts to redress its ties to slavery, including eight people directly involved in the Legacy of Slavery initiative, and dozens of documents and email communications reviewed by The Crimson.

Many of the current affiliates interviewed for this article were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the Legacy of Slavery initiative and discuss sensitive personnel issues.

Though almost everyone interviewed for this article said they were proud of their work to support the Legacy of Slavery initiative, several affiliates said the pressure to swiftly produce public-facing progress reports led them to question the authenticity of Harvard’s dedication to the mission.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 reiterated the University’s commitment to its goal of reckoning with its past and threw his support behind Bleich in a statement on Thursday.

“We are dedicated to the success of this endeavor,” Garber wrote. “I am confident that Vice Provost Sara Bleich will continue to lead our efforts with vision and commitment.”

‘Fire Me, or Let the HSRP Do This Work Properly’

The University announced in October 2022 that Cellini would lead its efforts to identify the descendants of enslaved individuals who labored on Harvard’s campus or were owned by staff, faculty, or leadership.

Cellini was one of the initiative’s first hires, with his appointment coming months before Bleich assumed her role as vice provost at the helm of Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery. He was well-known in genealogical research circles long before he even came to the University, having directed an independent effort at Georgetown University to identify the descendants of enslaved individuals sold to fund the school.

Richard J. Cellini is the director of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program. By Courtesy of Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

At the time of his hiring, Cellini told the Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication, that “the hard part is not the finding. The hard part is the looking.”

“There are a million reasons — emotionally, psychologically, financially, intellectually, spiritually, culturally — why we collectively — inside and outside Harvard — will find it difficult to look,” Cellini added. “So, in some sense Harvard has already overcome the biggest hurdle in this process, which is having the willingness and the courage to look.”

But less than one year later, Cellini no longer believed Harvard had cleared that hurdle.

One of the key figures Cellini accused of hindering his work was Bleich, a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health who was appointed by then-Provost Alan Garber in November 2022 to oversee the initiative.

In spring 2023, there was debate among senior administrators over whether members of the University’s governing boards fell under the Remembrance Program’s charge to identify the descendants of those enslaved by “Harvard leadership.”

Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich leads the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative. By Courtesy of Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University

Cellini wrote in a statement that Bleich had told him “on several occasions” that Secretary of the University Marc L. Goodheart ’81 had “sought to exclude members of the Harvard Corporation and Board of Overseers from the scope of HSRP research” — a result that Cellini deemed unacceptable.

“When I expressed an intention to contact Mr. Goodheart directly to determine the truth of this statement, Dr. Bleich emphatically forbade me to do so,” Cellini added.

Kennedy O’Reilly, the University spokesperson, denied Cellini’s allegations against Goodheart, saying Harvard administrators had never been against considering the Overseers as part of the project’s scope.

But the University did not deny that some questions were raised internally about whether or not including members of the governing boards was the right decision.

In May 2023, Bleich wrote a memo to Harvard Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who led the effort to produce the 2022 Legacy of Slavery report, asking for guidance on how to address those concerns.

In the memo, which was obtained by The Crimson, Bleich wrote that administrators questioned if Harvard should “voluntarily undertake acts of repair” related to “slaveholding activities” of individuals — such as members of the governing boards — whose primary position was not in Harvard leadership or who enslaved individuals “in their personal homes.”

These discussions lasted several weeks, before settling on including members of the governing boards in the Remembrance Program’s remit.

Still, Cellini’s relationship with Bleich and other Harvard administrators continued on a downward spiral.

In July 2023, Cellini filed a complaint with Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel alleging that he was instructed by Bleich and other administrators not to identify “too many descendants.” He filed a similar complaint in February 2024 against Bleich with Garber’s chief of staff, Tez “Bank” Chantaruchirakorn.

“I have publicly rejected the idea that the HSRP ever could, would, or should limit the number of descendants it finds; fail to do its job to the best of its ability; or exclude members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers from the scope of HSRP research,” Cellini wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson.

“Using plain English, I have 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,” he added.

Kennedy O’Reilly declined to comment on Cellini’s complaints, citing a University policy not to comment on personnel matters. Still, she said it would be “inaccurate” to describe concerns raised by individuals in discussions about the project’s scope as “inhibiting the work to identify direct descendants.”

Rising Internal Tensions

As the relationship between Cellini and Bleich deteriorated, the two distanced themselves from one another and have avoided direct communication for months.

In January 2024, Bleich told Cellini that he was rude and abrasive. Cellini has also asserted that he reports directly to the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, and does not need to report to Bleich — especially given the complaints he has lodged against her.

However, both Cellini and the Remembrance Program as a whole report to Bleich, according to a University spokesperson.

But Cellini was not the only leader in the initiative to find themselves at odds with Bleich and other senior University officials.

The Harvard Corporation — the University's highest governing body — conducts its business in Loeb House. By Frank S. Zhou

The environment in the Legacy of Slavery initiative grew increasingly tense as the disagreements over how to implement the 2022 report’s recommendations seeped into staff members’ interpersonal relationships, according to current and former employees of the initiative.

The employees said the bitter workplace culture started at the top.

In March 2024, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, Moore-Evans submitted a complaint with human resources against Bleich, citing both personal and professional differences — including the allegation that Bleich had micromanaged and hindered the work of the initiative.

A University spokesperson declined to comment on complaints or tensions between members of the team, citing a policy of not commenting on personnel matters.

Moore-Evans and Bleich — the initiative’s two top leaders — had a visibly tense relationship for several months, according to three people involved in the initiative. By the end of Moore-Evans’ tenure as executive director, they had avoided taking in-person meetings together for several months.

Moore-Evans’ complaint against Bleich was eventually dismissed. Her departure was negotiated by an HR representative, according to a person familiar with her departure, and she officially resigned from her position in June.

Moore-Evans wrote in a statement that she “was not terminated” from her position, though she did not deny that HR was involved in negotiating her departure. Moore-Evans also declined to answer questions about her HR complaint against Bleich.

Rayshauna Gray, who served as Bleich and Moore-Evans’ executive assistant from February to September 2023, said she often felt that she was talked down to or unfairly snapped at by the project’s leadership, especially by Moore-Evans.

“While I know I wasn’t a perfect employee, we don’t have to be perfect in order to not be condescended to, singled out, set up to straight up fail,” Gray said.

Moore-Evans wrote in a statement that she believes “in creating a work environment that is equity-centered, inclusive, and respectful, and I deeply value the relationships I’ve formed through the initiative.”

However, several other members of the initiative expressed positive experiences, saying that they found other members of the team to be both supportive and productive.

Remembrance Program researcher Raymond L. Wilkes III said he felt “Harvard is progressing at a rate as best as it can.”

“I do feel that it maybe took on a lot all at once — which is expected because it’s Harvard — and I do feel that it’s beginning to maybe realize some of that and I think it’s beginning to make the changes to fix,” Wilkes added.

Last year, around the time that divisions emerged between its leadership, the initiative sought out team coaching to resolve tensions between its staff members.

Around the beginning of 2024, they reached out to leadership coach Gina Lincoln, an affiliate of Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program, for advising. At the time, Lincoln wrote in an email to Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery leadership that the group was not yet ready for team coaching — and that they needed clearer demarcations between their positions.

“I think drawing clear distinctions between roles/responsibilities/decision-making authority will help A LOT to clear up tension,” she wrote in the January email.

The initiative ultimately did not engage with Lincoln, however, and instead opted for team coaching through Harvard’s Center for Workplace Development.

A Pressure to Produce

In addition to the workplace tensions, several people close to the group said they grew frustrated as University leadership seemed more focused on the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative’s public image than its work on implementing the recommendations.

The current and former staff members said they felt pressure to produce public announcements about the progress of the initiative’s work, even when they felt it was premature to do so, or that there was an unhealthy emphasis on speed.

One affiliate, however, disagreed with the characterization that Harvard, through Bleich, had improperly prioritized public image over work quality. Rather, they said that Bleich’s role, as vice provost, was to serve as a spokesperson for the initiative and ensure that Harvard is reliably sharing updates with the Harvard affiliates and other stakeholders.

Kennedy O’Reilly, the University spokesperson, echoed this affiliate’s reasoning.

The Legacy of Slavery initiative is housed in the Harvard Office of the Vice Provost for Special Projects at 114 Mt. Auburn Street. By Hailey E. Krasnikov

Some people close to the initiative said that the focus on PR was apparent when the University contracted Proverb, a Boston-based marketing agency, in fall 2023 to provide the initiative with recommendations on its branding and naming strategy.

Proverb interviewed more than a dozen individuals involved in the initiative, including members of the community, students, and staff, according to a slide deck obtained by The Crimson. They presented commonly-held frustrations about the initiative by groups of stakeholders and suggested potential ways for the University to address them.

The agency also made suggestions for the initiative’s communications strategy and for how the initiative could potentially look to rename or rebrand itself to better signal the initiative’s reparative work.

Some of the proposed renaming options suggested by Proverb included “Slavery & Harvard,” “Veritas & Justice,” and “The Institute for Slavery Justice at Harvard.” Proverb advised the initiative to focus on names that were direct and to not avoid placing the words “Harvard” and “slavery” close to one another.

At the time, the initiative had yet to develop a strategy for reaching out to descendants, several affiliates of the initiative said, leaving them disappointed by the decision to focus on public image before making significant headway on the work itself.

Kennedy O’Reilly declined to comment on the initiative’s relationship with Proverb.

Gray, the former executive assistant, stressed the importance of the work and said Harvard needs to take the time to get it right.

“To handle this as if it’s anything but nitroglycerin is just the height of hubris, immaturity, ego, and a lack of appreciation for the gravity of what we’re doing,” Gray said.

“I can’t tell you exactly what Harvard wants but I know that Harvard does not want to be known for getting this wrong,” she added.

In their May resignation letter, Smith and Byers encouraged the initiative’s leadership to slow down its efforts to construct a physical memorial to allow for more time to engage descendants during the process.

“Our decision to step down stems from our conviction that the only thing an ongoing ethos of speed will ensure is that the memorial-to-be will stand as a gesture of institutional self-regard; an aesthetic rather than a conscience- and community-based undertaking,” Smith and Byers wrote.

The former co-chairs also expressed concern about administrative pushback to their efforts to engage with descendants.

“From our earliest committee meetings, we have warned ourselves against the hubris of erecting a memorial to the enslaved and their descendants without first forging genuine and durable relationships with descendant communities in Cambridge and Boston, yet we have been cautioned by the Office of the Vice Provost to delay and dilute these efforts,” they wrote.

Though Byers still remains a member of the memorial project committee, Smith decided to leave the group entirely.

In response to a request for comment, Kennedy O’Reilly pointed to a statement issued by a University spokesperson in April stating that Bleich and the initiative “take seriously the co-chairs’ concerns about the importance of community involvement and of taking steps that will enable Harvard to deeply engage with descendant communities.”

Where Things Stand

Before Smith and Byers resigned as co-chairs of the memorial project committee, they solicited submissions from artists for a proposal to construct a physical memorial that would commemorate the enslaved individuals who labored on campus.

According to a “Request for Qualifications” document posted in December 2023, the committee had budgeted about $4 million to construct and design the site. At the time, artists were given a deadline of Feb. 20 to submit their proposals for the memorial.

But after Smith and Byers resigned and voiced their concerns about being rushed by Bleich and University administrators, the Legacy of Slavery initiative indefinitely paused its efforts to review artists’ submissions, according to an email obtained by The Crimson.

The email was signed by the “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative team” and sent to artists in July, more than one month after Smith and Byers tendered their resignations.

“To enable us to spend more time engaging with community members to inform our path moving forward and in acknowledgement of the challenges over the past year, we plan to extend our timeline to ensure adequate time and care is given to collecting this vital community,” the email stated.

An artist who submitted a proposal for the memorial said in an interview in July that the communication between the initiative and the artists was “terrible,” expressing frustration that artists who had dedicated time and effort to submit their proposals were not notified of the delay in a timely manner.

The artist requested anonymity to speak freely about their communications with the memorial committee.

“We know that things fall through, but because I’m the one that did all the work, I was pretty annoyed about it,” the artist said. “I said, ‘Hey, this isn’t right.’”

Kennedy O’Reilly, the University spokesperson, declined to comment on communication with artists, referring The Crimson to the Sept. 12 press release in which the University announced new co-chairs for the committee.

Former Cambridge Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72, who previously advised the initiative, said its leadership could have done a better job in listening to community members and Black alumni when making directional decisions.

Reeves said he did not feel the initiative had solicited community input “in the most deep and effective ways.”

“The creativity in terms of community outreach is pitiful,” Reeves said.

Kennedy O’Reilly wrote in a statement that the University is “grateful for the engagement, ideas and feedback received through numerous interactions with Harvard’s alumni community.”

Wadsworth House, which sits on Massachusetts Avenue at the edge of Harvard Yard, was built in 1726 for its namesake Benjamin Wadsworth, a president of the University who enslaved two people. By Julian J. Giordano

But even as progress slowed on implementing some of the recommendations, several people familiar with the initiative’s work praised its new partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities and its efforts to fund projects aimed at combating systemic inequalities.

Howard University law professor Harold A. McDougall ’67 said institutions like his are “happy” to see that the initiative has established exchanges between HBCUs and Harvard.

Earlier this year, as part of the Legacy of Slavery initiative, the University established the Du Bois Scholars program. The program — named after renowned sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, Class of 1890, Harvard’s first Black Ph.D. candidate — funds students from HBCUs to participate in a nine-week summer research internship at Harvard.

George R. “Chip” Greenidge Jr., a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, discussed his excitement for “the opportunities to prepare” for career goals on Harvard’s campus.

“I met up with the Du Bois scholars this summer and also the UNCF scholars this summer to just do a check-in,” said Greenidge, referring to students with scholarships from the United Negro College Fund. “They had many questions about continuing their relationships at Harvard University.

The University is also partnering with the HBCU Library Alliance to establish the HBCU Digital Library Trust, a collaboration that seeks to maintain and digitize African American historical collections.

HBCU Digital Trust Director Andrea Jackson Gavin said in an interview that the initiative is in the process of expanding from 25 contributing HBCUs to 28.

Bleich also praised the initiative’s partnerships in a statement.

“It is remarkable to see how many partners and leaders, in and outside the University, have joined this effort — where progress is happening but will take time,” she wrote.

‘The Long Haul’

Despite the leadership turnover and criticism of the initiative, several Harvard faculty members close to the initiative as well as other stakeholders said they remained optimistic about the initiative’s future.

African and African American Studies professor Paulina Alberto and Afro-Latin American Research Institute Director Alejandro de la Fuente emphasized their appreciation for the work already conducted by the initiative and said they were hopeful about its future research.

“The first important thing this initiative does is call attention to a certain history that had remained silenced for many years,” de la Fuente said.

He added that the project could grow to focus on Harvard’s ties to slavery in other areas.

“The Boston economy during the 19th century had very close links to the slave society of Cuba, the slave economy of Cuba, the plantation slave economy of Cuba,” de la Fuente said. “And that's what we have not really researched yet.”

Though Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery initiative has garnered significant attention from both University affiliates and the public, Harvard is not the first institution to take on a reparative project of such.

Georgetown’s Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation — which began in 2015 — led to the launch of the Reconciliation Fund, which allocates $400,000 annually towards organizations and projects that aim to benefit more than 10,000 descendants of enslaved individuals.

Brown University released its Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice in 2006 — and an expanded edition in 2021 — to chronicle its historical ties to slavery and racial injustice.

Despite Harvard releasing its report only two years ago, expectations were high — and some affiliates said the large-scale initiative could have a global impact.

Luciano Ramos, the executive director of the Center for Economic and Social Justice at Roxbury Community College — a beneficiary of the Harvard initiative’s Reparative Partnership Grant Program, said he views the initiative “as being much bigger than Harvard.”

“Harvard is Harvard, right? It’s such a global institution, and what Harvard does doesn’t often stay within the walls of Harvard,” Ramos said.

Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is headquartered in University Hall. By Frank S. Zhou

But other people affiliated with the initiative said Harvard’s leadership must do more to demonstrate its commitment to engaging with descendants and local communities in Boston and Cambridge.

“​​Harvard has always tried to be number one at everything,” Reeves said. “It is not number one in efforts to address reparations for its involvement in slavery.”

Last week, the initiative announced Faculty of Arts and Science Chief Campus Curator Brenda Tindal and director of the Graduate School of Design professor Eric Höweler would succeed Smith and Byers as the two co-chairs of the memorial committee project.

The initiative also launched a new advisory council, featuring several faculty members who served on the initial Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery implementation committee. The advisory council will advise the initiative’s leadership and support them with implementing the recommendations from the 2022 report.

Bleich also underscored Harvard’s dedication to redressing the University’s ties to slavery.

“The University is committed to this work for the long haul, and I look forward to the work we have ahead of us,” Bleich said.

—Staff writer Neeraja S. Kumar can be reached at neeraja.kumar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @neerajasrikumar.

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at neil.shah@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @neilhshah15.

—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.