After months of deliberation, Georgetown University has determined how it will address its 19th-century sale of 272 slaves.
The 16-member Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation made its official recommendations: The university should award slave-descendants preferential admission, the same status first- or second-generation legacy students receive when they apply. Georgetown president John J. DeGioia, according to a Wednesday report, will formally apologize to the community of descendants, dedicate a memorial to their ancestors, and found a new school for the study of slavery. And he supports the panel’s proposal for preferential admissions in theory “but wanted to study how it would work in practice,” according to the Washington Post.
The WEEKLY STANDARD, back in May, questioned how any of the recommended actions, an apology, renaming buildings, a special affirmative action policy or a scholarship program—altogether a strictly Georgetown-centric model for reparations—would really serve the 272 slaves’ descendants: “Georgetown should instead produce a practical plan that is actually sensitive to the needs of the individuals in question. But that won’t happen, if the proposals’ first aim is to ease the guilt of the institution and those connected to it, rather than to effect actual change.”
