Harvard Asked to Pay Restitution for Enslaved Antiguans

The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda is demanding that Harvard University pay his country reparations because of the university's past association with a wealthy benefactor who owned slaves from Antigua.

Gaston Browne wrote to Harvard's president last month asking for payment “for the gains Harvard enjoyed at the expense” of Antiguan slaves, according to The Washington Post, which cited reporting by the Miami Herald and The Harvard Crimson.

The Oct. 30 letter to President Lawrence Bacow named Isaac Royall Jr., a plantation owner who supported Harvard’s first law professorship in 1815 and is the current namesake of Harvard’s Royall Professor of Law position.