The nation’s oldest Catholic university is set to announce a series of steps to atone for its “historical ties” to slavery, including by giving preferential status in the admissions process to descendants of slaves.
The president of Georgetown University will make the announcement formal on Thursday afternoon. The New York Times broke the news of the measures, which also includes a formal apology.
“I believe the most appropriate ways for us to redress the participation of our predecessors in the institution of slavery is to address the manifestations of the legacy of slavery in our time,” John J. DeGioia, president of the university, said in a letter to the Georgetown University community.
Georgetown will also create an institute to focus on the study of slavery, and erect a public memorial to honor the slaves who were uprooted from Maryland and shipped to Louisiana in a 1838 business deal that helped to keep the school financially afloat.
Georgetown was founded and run by Jesuit priests in 1789 and relied on plantations in Maryland to finance its operations.
Two buildings will also be renamed — one for an enslaved black man and the other for a black educator who belonged to a Catholic religious order. But the measures do not include a provision for offering scholarships to slave descendants.
Georgetown University joins dozens of other universities, including Brown, Harvard and the University of Virginia, that have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade.
The decision comes after DeGioia assembled a group last fall to consider how Georgetown should address its history. Following high-profile shootings of young black men, race-based activism grew in force on college campuses around the nation.
