Slavery

Harvard Magazine logo

The Uses of Discomfort

September 21, 2023
That has been a large part of HDS Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Melissa Bartholomew’s work: facilitating constructive discomfort. Last year the Divinity School hosted a series of discussions focused on Harvard’s report and on the visible reminders of slavery embedded in the buildings and traditions of the Divinity School itself. Students, faculty, staff, and administrators took part, and the conversations, Bartholomew said, were honest and hard.
Item Live logo

Nahant Village Church Celebrates 200-Year Anniversary

July 6, 2023
In the summer of 1820, Rev. Samuel Joseph May, a recent Harvard Divinity School graduate, was invited by Nahant summer residents to provide the town’s first Christian worship services. Ten years later, May made a name for himself as a preacher and joined the abolition movement. He helped found the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the New England Non-Resistance Society.
Participants seated in a circle the Braun Room of Swartz Hall during the October Common Read opening session.

Head and Heart Work: Harvard Divinity Community Spends Year Deeply Engaged with Harvard Legacy of Slavery Report

April 18, 2023

On a fall afternoon in November inside Harvard Divinity School’s Swartz Hall, the School’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Melissa Wood Bartholomew along with Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Steph Gauchel and their colleagues Professors David Holland and Diane Moore, prepared to lead a small group restorative circle session for the HDS community to discuss the report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery. They arranged chairs in a circle for participants and readied an agenda with multiple questions to pose to attendees.... Read more about Head and Heart Work: Harvard Divinity Community Spends Year Deeply Engaged with Harvard Legacy of Slavery Report

The Harvard Crimson logo

Harvard Divinity School Faculty Discuss Teaching the Legacy of Slavery

March 21, 2023
A panel of Harvard Divinity School faculty reflected on the School’s ties to slavery and its responsibility to educate the next generation of religious scholars and leaders during the sixth and final installment of the School's Religion and the Legacies of Slavery series.
Morgan Curtis, MTS '23, in black and white, looks at the camera

How Family History Can Inspire Accountable Reparations and Foster Ancestral Healing

March 6, 2023
On Monday, February 13, 2023, Harvard Divinity School hosted an event, featuring HDS Professor Dan McKanan, on legacies of slavery at HDS as seen through stories of the School’s founders and early students. Following the event, Morgan Curtis and Emily Chaudhari, MTS candidates, sat down together to talk about it.
Harvard Magazine logo

Readying for a Reckoning

February 24, 2023
Sara Bleich, vice provost for special projects, stressed more localized efforts taking place within individual schools at Harvard to incorporate the Legacy of Slavery report and its recommendations. Harvard Divinity School has been holding a series of online public conversations, exploring religion and the legacies of slavery. “This type of work is so important,” Bleich said, “because for us to propel this work forward, we need to embed these activities in the DNA of the University.”

Pages