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"Harvard University is committing intellectual Seppuku. The university has committed $100 million to expose its own historical ties to slavery and other racist, benighted, and unspeakable thoughtcrimes."

I'm going to defend Harvard here in general here for coming clean with its ties to slavery and how the educational institution benefited from the institution of slavery. There's a VERY conservative argument to be made that at a minimum, slavery constitutes a huge theft of labor from an unwilling class, and although the original victims of that theft cannot be made whole, their inheritors should be, in the same way had something been stolen from my great grandfather and recovered after his death.

The usual argument against this is that no one "living" committed the theft, and consequently, shouldn't be held to account for the sins of their ancestors. However, Harvard, as a non-profit organization that WAS around during slavery, and an institution that benefited from that theft of labor, SHOULD be responsible for redressing the harms it caused and returning the benefits it reaped from those harms. If we're going to be serious about the notion that corporations and other organizations - as their own distinct entities - enjoy rights such as freedom of speech (Disney) and freedom of religion (Hobby Lobby), those non-human perpetual entities should also have responsibilities to go along with those rights, since they existed and benefited from practices that we cannot hold flesh and blood humans responsible for due to the basic facts of mortality.

So, good on Harvard for taking responsibility for its role and benefiting from an involuntary massive labor theft committed when it was "younger". Let's hope that its redress is meaningful.

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