The Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology stands with all people and organizations working to end racism and social injustice through peaceful protest, legal action, policy change and systemic reform. We also acknowledge the role of the Museum, and especially its founder, Louis Agassiz, in fostering ideas of racial disparity and inequality that underlie historical attitudes towards African Americans and other people of color—ideas that we soundly reject. As an institution devoted to education, research and public outreach, we are committed to developing over the next year additional programs that will earnestly evaluate these attitudes and promote contemporary solutions, and to offering new educational and research opportunities in the Museum for people who until now may have felt unwelcome or even excluded.
African Americans in evolutionary science: where we have been, and what’s next by Joseph L. Graves Jr.
Are natural history museums inherently racist? by Josh Davis
Time for New Norms: Museums must address their systemic inequities if they want to be truly inclusive—and relevant—institutions. American Alliance of Museums
People are calling for museums to be abolished. Can whitewashed American history be rewritten? CNN
Addressing the British Museum’s Colonial History and Hollow Solidarity With Black Lives by Bayryam Mustafa Bayryamali
Collection of Louis Agassiz information by Christopher Irmscher
Morton, Agassiz, and the Origins of Scientific Racism in the United States by Louis Menand. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
Scientist in Full: The fruitful, flawed Louis Agassiz book review by James Hanken
Exploring the North’s long history of slavery, scientific racism Harvard Gazette