来源：《华盛顿邮报》
原文刊登日期：2022年5月2日
“An institution entangled with American slavery and its legacies.” That was how a faculty committee described Harvard University in a landmark study documenting the school’s extensive ties to slavery. The report detailed how enslaved people worked on the campus for more than 150 years, how the school benefited from deep financial connections to slavery and how its academics promoted racist theories. At a time when some are trying to whitewash U.S. history, this bracing honesty is most welcome.
“一个与美国奴隶制及其遗留问题纠缠在一起的机构。”这是一个教师委员会在一项里程碑式的研究中对哈佛大学的描述，该研究证实了该校与奴隶制的广泛联系。这份报告详细描述了150多年来被奴役的人是如何在哈佛大学工作的，哈佛大学是如何从与奴隶制的深厚经济联系中受益的，以及其学者是如何推广种族主义理论的。在一些人试图粉饰美国历史的时候，这种令人振奋的诚实是最受欢迎的。
The “Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Report,” which the university released last week after nearly 2½ years of work, chronicles a past that starts in the Colonial era, during which more than 70 people were enslaved by Harvard presidents and other leaders, faculty and staff. The report illuminated the lesser-known fact that wealthy donors enriched the school with money earned through slave-trading and businesses that depended on slavery, such as Caribbean sugar and Southern cotton. After the Civil War and into the 20th century, prominent faculty members promoted fake theories of racial differences that were used to justify segregation, and the school was slow to open its doors to Black students as it catered to the nation’s White upper class.
经过近两年半的努力，哈佛大学于上周发布了《哈佛与奴隶制遗留问题报告》。该报告记录了一段始于殖民时代的历史，在此期间，有70多人被哈佛校长、其他领导和教职员工奴役。报告揭示了一个鲜为人知的事实，即富有的捐赠者通过奴隶贸易和依赖奴隶制的企业(如加勒比蔗糖和南方棉花)赚来的钱使学校变得更加富裕。南北战争结束后，进入20世纪，一些著名教师宣扬虚假的种族差异理论，用来为种族隔离辩护。学校为了迎合美国的白人上层阶级，迟迟不向黑人学生敞开大门。
The school pledged to spend $100 million to make amends. The report suggests tracing the modern-day descendants of enslaved people at Harvard, forging partnerships to improve schools in the American South and the West Indies, and creating exchange programs between students and faculty members at Harvard and those at historically Black colleges and universities.
哈佛大学承诺花费1亿美元进行补偿。报告建议追溯哈佛大学奴隶的现代后代，建立合作伙伴关系以改善美国南部和西印度群岛的学校，并在哈佛大学与传统黑人大学的学生和教师之间建立交流项目。
Harvard is not the first university to try to come to grips with its problematic past. Indeed, it has lagged behind others, such as Georgetown University and Brown University, and its efforts came under immediate criticism. Why did it take Harvard so long? The university expected this criticism. “We are not naive. This is an age of deep social divisions, and we know our efforts may be met with criticism and cynicism,” Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the scholar who led Harvard’s effort, wrote. The university can show its commitment to making amends by ensuring its money goes to causes that achieve maximum good for those still struggling under the country’s brutal legacy of slavery and racism.
哈佛并不是第一所试图正视其问题重重的过去的大学。事实上，它已经落后于其他大学，如乔治敦大学和布朗大学，其正视过去的努力立即受到批评。为什么哈佛花了这么长时间？哈佛大学预料到了这种批评。“我们并不幼稚。这是一个社会分化严重的时代，我们知道我们的努力可能会遭到批评和怀疑，”哈佛大学校长劳伦斯·s·巴考和领导哈佛大学报告的学者富美子·布朗-纳金写道。哈佛大学可以通过确保其资金用于为那些仍在美国残酷的奴隶制和种族主义遗留问题下挣扎的人实现最大利益的事业，来展示其作出补偿的承诺。
The fact is nothing — no amount of scholarly research, no amount of money — will ever make amends for the sin of slavery. But Harvard’s good-faith effort to acknowledge that terrible truth should not be condemned; it should be applauded.
事实上，再多的学术研究，再多的金钱，都无法弥补奴隶制的罪过。但哈佛真诚地承认可怕的事实不应受到谴责；它应该受到赞扬。