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Harvard hired researcher to uncover slavery ties, fires him for finding slaves
- blitzar 1y ago[flagged]
- huseyinkeles 1y ago[flagged]
- zemvpferreira 1y agoIt's called a joke.
- jinnert 1y ago[flagged]
- blitzar 1y agoPhD and Postdoc students are generally relatively well-treated in Academia (relatively is doing a biblical quantity of the heavy lifting here)
- bryanrasmussen 1y agoOK well.. https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-free-slave-8336f214da45 https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-free-slave-8336f214da45 I'm not sure if "great emphasis" is the proper phrase to describe the use of relatively here.
- jinnert 1y ago[flagged]
- esseph 1y agoThis is what???
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bloqs 1y agothe pearl clutching is really unecessary here as it's obviously light hearted humour.
- ggm 1y agoI read about this elsewhere and the sentiment was "this is a very hot take" because overall Harvard remains committed to recognising, documenting and taking account of its slavery ties, it's not in denial. All projects come to an end. Maybe funding ran out, maybe it's cowardice in the context of the Anti DEI move, but this isn't the same as what the headline implies.
- CaliforniaKarl 1y agoWhere was it that you read about this?
- labster 1y agoThe story is from The Guardian, they have a certain point of view. I like it most of the time, but in this story it’s simpler to assume that spending money on slavery reparations and DEI activity suddenly became a political liability this January, rather than any very theoretical monetary liability in reparations. Unfortunately, appeasement didn’t work this time, either.
- IAmBroom 1y ago> it’s simpler to assume So, you didn't read anything to support your assertion at all? You just made it up, whole-cloth, from your political assumptions?
- labster 1y agoBelieve it or not, people who read newspapers get a lot of background information on lots of topics. One such topic was that US corporations, en masse, started dropping DEI policies around the beginning of Trump’s term in acts of anticipatory compliance. It was suddenly very unfashionable to be looking to the slavery reparations business. Now, we could ascribe Harvard’s actions to being in line with the larger trends. Or, we could take the researcher’s idea that the end of the study was about how good and productive the researcher was and how bad and unrepentant Harvard is. They would never be forced to pay reparations to these people, but the costs of being on Trumps bad side has already cost Harvard hundreds of millions. I think it’s simpler to assume the former is true. My own politics are kind of irrelevant here.
- wtcactus 1y agoThe idea of giving all the descendants of someone that lived hundreds of years ago some form of compensation because 1/32nd (or much lower) of their ancestors was harmed in some way, is completely bonkers for me. Virtue signaling at it’s best. Harvard tried to do it (to virtue signal, I mean) and eventually found out that the maths for their little publicity stunt would get them bankrupt. They then proceeded to try and stop the all thing. That’s the story here.
- eviks 1y agoHow would it bankrupt them when they're the ones setting the compensation???
- Yizahi 1y agoThey would probably need to pay a little more than 5$ Comcast/Hewlett-Packard style, and if there were even 10 slaves back then, today it would be 30000 descendants. If there were 1000 slaves back then, it would be 3 million people today. Paying each even a measly thousand would require 3 billion dollars just for compensations, without any other investments or programs.
- eviks 1y agoThey wouldn't even have to pay out to individuals, instead they could pay to "communities"! Again, they're the ones setting up the structure of the compensation
- drdaeman 1y agoHow is it completely bonkers? I think the idea is that those people were put at inherent disadvantage due to unfair treatment of their long gone predecessors. Or at least that’s my understanding of it. The validity of this claim, type and amount of corrective action (and from some viewpoints - its very appropriateness or necessity), as well as the relative importance of the subject - those can all be a matter of debate, but are any of those so obvious they render the whole idea crazy?
- hoseja 1y ago[flagged]
- eviks 1y ago> “At one point the fear was expressed that if we found too many descendants, it would bankrupt the university,” he said. That doesn't make sense on its surface, what's the mechanism here? This is mentioned twice without any explanation
- probably_wrong 1y agoMy understanding is that they intended to pay reparations to the descendants. But if they truly identified 10k descendants at $1k each they would need $10M alone for an amount that, depending on their personal circumstances, ranges from "an insult" to "not much".
- pyrale 1y agoWe have values. But only as long as they are inexpensive.
- WithinReason 1y agoIsn't that how that always is?
- woleium 1y agonot that i am defending the university, but “expensive” is somewhat removed from “an existential risk”. Such straw men tend to be easier to knock down.
- pseudocomposer 1y agoIs the argument here that Harvard, an institution (not a human being), deserves to exist more than descendants of slaves (human beings all) deserve reparations?
- happytoexplain 1y agoIt's tough because it's apples to oranges, morally, but I think it's a reasonable position to argue.
- fakedang 1y agoInsanity that Harvard, apparently one of the gathering places for some of the best minds in the world, to think that tracking down and compensating people who are very removed from the realities of slavery. They could've thought of revitalizing black neighborhoods in tandem with HBCUs, carried outreach to black majority high schools by alumni, the works, but nope, they thought this would be a better investment of their funds. No wonder wealthy donors are so hesitant to donate to a pack of rabid morons. In those lines, I might as well pressure the British government to compensate me, personally, because they decided to shove one part of my family tree into a train carriage to suffocate to death.
- Defletter 1y agoYou say that like governments, like the British government (since you brought them up), didn't finish paying off its debt to slave owners in 2015 (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/repayment-of-26-billion-historical-debt-to-be-completed-by-government https://www.gov.uk/government/news/repayment-of-26-billion-h...) for debt created decades before the American civil war over slavery. Are you okay with this? And if so, why is paying off this debt okay when slavery is so far removed, but the concept of reparations isn't?
- typewithrhythm 1y agoThat is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery. It's also talking about real agreements for an entity to exchange money in the future, for a bond tied to the value of the currency... Not some vibes based moral justification.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago> That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery. The debt was taken on to pay reparations to slave owners. About £6 Billion in modern terms, 4.5 billion of which was borrowed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
- sharpshadow 1y agoThe first settlers created Harvard University in 1636, while slaves also started to be common during that century. That are over 200 years of slavery until 1865. Havard benefited for more than half its existence from slaves.
- corimaith 1y agoEvery culture that exists today over the bones of vanquished peoples long lost to history.
- sharpshadow 1y agoThe point here is that it’s not vanquished but in the archives. Havard as one of the oldest institutions started with the first settlers, probably, very likely, has one of the most extensive histories of slave ownership.
- Yizahi 1y agoDid they forget to ask Biology department about this whole descendants number thing? I though they are a University, maybe they couldn't estimate the number outright, but at least some tiny thought at the back of their mind should have told them that even 1 person from 300 years ago can leave a lot of descendants. That's what 15-20 generations? Each potentially doubling in numbers.
- belorn 1y agoThere is a rather interesting historical person called Hans Jonatan (19th century) who was an escaped slave from a Danish colony, fled to the danish fleet, fought in the Battle of Copenhagen, and then fled to live in Iceland. Because of the very small amount of immigration from people with West African ancestry to Iceland, Hans has been the subject of fairly extensive Genetic study that found around 800 descendants.
- philipkglass 1y agoThere have been a couple of Hacker News stories about Hans Jonatan that made the front page: "The DNA of Iceland's First Known Black Man, Recreated from Living Descendants" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16188715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16188715 "A Trail Gone Cold" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41716963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41716963
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RickJWagner 1y agoWhat remains of slavery in the northeast are the economic byproducts. What remains in the south are the descendants of the slaves, and the ironically scape goated guilt.
- lovelearning 1y agoPerformative virtue signaling is not always easy.