Harvard has gone public with a reckoning that has been centuries in the making, releasing a searchable database that names 1,613 people enslaved by university leaders, faculty, or staff between 1636 and 1865. The move dramatically scales up Harvard's previous disclosures and kicks off a new wave of genealogical research and outreach centered in Cambridge and Boston.
Harvard's database and methodology
The new online database lays out names, locations, and documented dates for the 1,613 individuals, and links each entry to specific Harvard affiliates. The genealogical work was led by Boston nonprofit American Ancestors, according to the Harvard Gazette. Researchers first rebuilt rosters of university leaders, faculty, and staff from archival records, then sifted through probate files, deeds, and church records to identify enslaved people and begin tracing living descendants. Harvard has framed the project as part of its broader Legacy of Slavery Initiative and a direct response to recommendations that this research be made public.
Scope of the findings
Researchers have assembled a working list of roughly 3,000 Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff whose records are under review, and have already confirmed at least 259 who enslaved people, The Boston Globe reports. Lindsay Fulton of American Ancestors cautioned that the final tally could climb significantly, telling the Globe, "It could be 100x, it could be 5x," a reminder that the 1,613 named individuals likely represent only an early cut of the records. That figure is a huge leap from the roughly 70 enslavers identified in a 2022 presidential committee report and signals that historians and genealogists are in for years of additional work.
Staff shake-up and outsourced research
Harvard did not arrive at this moment without internal turmoil. The university previously laid off the in-house team that ran the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program and at the same time expanded its partnership with American Ancestors to take the lead on the research, according to The Harvard Crimson. The shake-up, along with disputes over the scope of the work, drew criticism from some faculty members and from the program's former director. University officials, however, said the restructuring was intended to scale up the genealogical effort. American Ancestors is now tasked with driving the next phase of identifying additional individuals and tracing their descendants.
What Harvard says and next steps
Harvard says it plans to identify and contact living descendants, support research and teaching tied to their family histories, and feed its findings into collaborative efforts such as the 10 Million Names project, according to the Harvard Gazette. At the same time, the university has explicitly ruled out monetary reparations and preferred-admissions programs in the near term, making education and memorialization its primary tools for repair for now, as Axios notes.
Why this matters here
The 2022 Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery called for public-facing research, memorials, and a $100 million reparative commitment. The launch of this database effectively moves those recommendations into an active research phase, as laid out in the committee's findings at the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery report. In Cambridge and Boston, the names now available will reshape local history projects, cemetery work, and memorial planning, as researchers and descendants work to restore stories that were kept in the shadows of the archive for centuries.
