Ambassador calling for reparation for Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders, has called on Harvard University “to demonstrate its remorse and its debt to unnamed slaves from Antigua and Barbuda,” whose lives were abused to establish the Harvard Law School.{{more}}

In a letter to Professor Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, Sanders recalled that the request of Isaac Royall Jr to Harvard College in 1781 that was used to create the first endowed professorship of law in 1815 came from the labour of human beings enslaved on Royall’s plantation in Antigua.

The Ambassador said he was sure “that Harvard University, like all other institutions with a consciousness of right, has been inspired by the recent acknowledgment and atonement by Georgetown University for the sale of 272 human beings in 1838 to save the University from collapse”. In this connection, he told the Harvard University president, “This is an excellent example for your University to follow, particularly since the founding of Harvard Law School was premised on the brutal, violent, oppressive and dehumanizing use and sale of men, women and children from Antigua and Barbuda”.

Specifically, Ambassador Sanders proposed that “one tangible way in which the University and Harvard Law School should show remorse and repay its debt in a small way, while living up to the high ideals it proclaims, is to offer scholarships to Antiguans and Barbudans on an annual basis.”

He urged the University’s Corporation to implement the proposal he put to them on behalf of the people of Antigua and Barbuda.