A granite marker indicates where the U. of Georgia reinterred remains, presumably of slaves, that were discovered during a campus construction project. The university’s handling of the remains has upset some faculty and community members. Dustin Chambers for The Chronicle Review
The University of Georgia is once again embroiled in controversy over its handling of presumed slave remains discovered during a campus construction project. The new tensions, triggered by the Georgia administration’s aggressive response to faculty discontent reported in the local press, are a reminder of the unresolved issues that to continue to bedevil academe’s two-decade-long reckoning with slavery.
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A granite marker indicates where the U. of Georgia reinterred remains, presumably of slaves, that were discovered during a campus construction project. The university’s handling of the remains has upset some faculty and community members. Dustin Chambers for The Chronicle Review
The University of Georgia is once again embroiled in controversy over its handling of presumed slave remains discovered during a campus construction project. The new tensions, triggered by the Georgia administration’s aggressive response to faculty discontent reported in the local press, are a reminder of the unresolved issues that to continue to bedevil academe’s two-decade-long reckoning with slavery.
As The Chronicle Reviewreported last May, the Georgia controversy blew up after the university announced that most of the remains, which had belonged to a 19th-century burial ground, were of African descent. Faculty members hoped the discovery would lead Georgia to undertake a sustained examination of its historical entanglement with slavery, just as many other universities around the country have done.
But the university hastily reburied the remains in secret. Its actions incensed some local African-American leaders. Professors from fields like history and African-American studies, who felt excluded from the decision-making, worried that the university was trying to suppress history.
What has brought the situation back into public view is a report that appeared last month in a local newspaper, the Athens Banner-Herald, that described faculty Senate discussions in which professors questioned the ethics of how Georgia dealt with the remains. The university’s spokesman, Greg Trevor, responded by publishing his own opinion piece in the paper. Trevor scolded the Banner-Herald and pushed back against the professors. He named one in particular: Laurie Reitsema, a member of the anthropology department who has studied the remains.
“Ironically, Dr. Reitsema is now one of the faculty members apparently criticizing the efforts of the institution — efforts to which she was a major contributor,” Trevor wrote in the Banner-Herald. “To the contrary, the extent of the University’s efforts demonstrate that its actions are in no way unilateral, irresponsible, or unethical. It is a shame that some would now endeavor to mislead the campus and local community to believe otherwise.”
Claudio Saunt, head of Georgia’s history department, said that such language is an inappropriate response to concerns raised in a faculty meeting. He described it as “a kind of infringement on academic freedom.”
“It’s not an actual prohibition, but it’s a form of intimidation,” Saunt told The Chronicle. “I don’t think a university administrator should be singling out a faculty member in that way in public.”
Since the Georgia story first erupted, academe’s slavery reckoning has continued to gain momentum. Princeton University debuted an investigation of its slave history. Georgetown University has come under increased pressure to pay reparations. Duke University hosted a major symposium.
The recriminations at Georgia highlight how little the situation has progressed there over the past year.
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The university administration, as before, is emphasizing its support of relatively targeted efforts: a mapping project about changing land use in the campus area dating back to the 1800s, and DNA analysis of the remains themselves. The hope is that this research will yield “information about the lives of individuals who were living in Athens and the surrounding community during that time period,” Trevor says.
On Monday, meanwhile, Georgia’s history department published its own statement in the Banner-Herald pressuring the university, yet again, to go further. The site where the remains were found can be understood only within “the complex history of an institution founded in 1785 in the slaveholding South,” the professors wrote.
According to Saunt, the history department, with support from private donors and a sympathetic dean, is embarking on its own effort to study, discuss, and publicize that story.
“For some reason, there’s an extraordinary amount of caution on the part of the university for something that seems like it should be obvious,” Saunt says. “So many other universities have already forged ahead in this area. I’m not quite sure why there’s so much caution and fear.”
Marc Parry is a senior reporter who writes about ideas, focusing on research in the humanities and social sciences. Email him at marc.parry@chronicle.com, or follow him on Twitter @marcparry.
