UNESCO seeks to give impetus to scholarly work on slavery

UNESCO has called for the creation of university chairs for the study of the history of enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade. These chairs, according to scholars in the field, should include institutions and researchers in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean to support a deeper global understanding about one of the worst crimes in human history.

At a time in which there has been a renewed focus on slavery, universities around the world have been invited to submit applications for the establishment of new chairs in slavery by 30 April 2025, as part of the 2025 cycle of the UNESCO Chairs Programme and UNITWIN, which is its university twinning and networking scheme, according to a recent statement.

Between 1501 and 1867, nearly 13 million African people were trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean, forever separated from their homes, families, ancestors and cultures, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.

A UNESCO chair is typically a team of scholars led by a higher education or research entity that partners with UNESCO on a project to advance knowledge in an area of common priority. There are currently about 1,000 UNESCO chairs in various fields of study.

The UNITWIN/UNESCO programme focuses on advancing an integrated system of research, training and activities by encouraging inter-university cooperation across borders.

Professor Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua, based at the University of Ghana’s school of law and the regional director of the Africa Coalition for Academic Freedom, told University World News the idea of creating these university chairs was “laudable”, but not new.

“What the research project does not boldly and directly address is the issue of reparations and reparatory justice. We all know the impact of slavery and we all know how the perpetrators of this human tragedy have refused to acknowledge their sins and agree to a reparation package for Africa and Africans in the diaspora.

“Mere research, which does not address the most critical component of this diabolical practice, is simply an attempt to whitewash the issue,” said Appiagyei-Atua.

His comments also follow a recent announcement by Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa of an academic study into the impact of colonialism on the African country that will culminate in a demand for reparations from former colonial power Britain. However, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves have both stated that the UK will not pay slavery reparations.

Dr José Lingna Nafafé, an associate professor of African and Atlantic history at the faculty of arts, law and social sciences, University of Bristol, United Kingdom, told University World News he was excited about the opportunities the establishment of the chairs presents for studying. Nafafé, a native of Guinea-Bissau, is the co-author of an August 2023 study, ‘Coercion and Enslavement in Motion: An introduction’.

Establishing an alliance of chairs

When the alliance is established, scholars associated with chairs (one chair per university) will do research, encourage dialogues and learning to acknowledge and redress the impact of enslavement and the slave trade in terms of inequality, racism and discrimination, particularly against people of African descent.

The established chairs, together with the universities where the chairs are based, are expected to provide comprehensive perspectives on the consequences of slavery, connecting historical information with contemporary issues.

This relates to understanding the landscape of historical archives, issues around gender and enslavement, implications for contemporary horizontal inequality (inequalities in economic, social or political dimensions or cultural status between culturally defined groups) within countries, the implications for economic and social development in Africa and in Afro-descendant communities in diasporas, according to UNESCO’s statement.

The chairs focusing on slavery will also be invited to join an alliance to support UNESCO’s existing work in this area.

This new alliance will fall under the 30-year-old UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples: Resistance, Liberty and Heritage programme which produced knowledge, conducted research, developed scientific networks and promoted the contributions of people of African descent to the general progress of humanity.

Significance of UNESCO alliance

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a professor in global thought and comparative philosophies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, told University World News the initiative is “part of a wider, global move to address the slave trade and to identify it as one of the most egregious crimes in human history”.

“As such, the alliance is incredibly important, especially at the current juncture, when intellectuals and academics are harassed into submission all over the world,” Adib-Moghaddam, who is also a member of the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab, added.

“We are writing, thinking and resisting at a time when political expediency, so called ‘pragmatism’, is valued more than the truth. At the same time, the new technologies and their purveyors, powered by biased algorithms and ideological AI systems, are overriding the voices of critical scholars who are attempting to question the status quo in the name of a better future for humanity,” he said.

“To confront this emerging regime of untruth and oppressive governance of academic freedom, more global alliances like this one are needed. The solution can only be more education and more self-organisation.

“The slave trade must be treated as a global phenomenon enveloped by an internationalist strategy,” Adib-Moghaddam said.

“With such an inclusive approach, the African alliance will find many friends and allies all over the world, in particular in the Americas, but also among indigenous and marginalised groups as various forms of enslavement continue to cast their dark shadow on various disenfranchised strata of society in the Global North and the Global South,” he added.

Regional UNESCO chairs

Dr Jelmer Vos a senior lecturer in global history at the school of humanities of the UK-based University of Glasgow, told University World News: “Establishing UNESCO university chairs will help sustain the worldwide study of transatlantic slavery, particularly through institutions in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

“I would, therefore, encourage the United Nations to specifically support the creation of chairs in these regions,” said Vos, who is a member of the operational committee of the transatlantic and intra-American slave trade databases, a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history.

“The UNESCO chairs could help reinvigorate research and teaching in African universities on slavery and the slave trade,” said Vos, who is the lead author of a 2021 study entitled, ‘The Demography of Slavery in the Coffee Districts of Angola, c. 1800-70’.

“To help them with that, UNESCO should also support creative thinking about, and making archives available for facilitating access to sources and libraries.

“UNESCO must also help African universities by establishing a network for African scientists specialising in the slave trade, [a] database for African studies in [the field of] slave trade along with digital libraries in the field,” Vos said.

Promoting global collaboration

Gregory O’Malley, a professor of history and the director of the Center for World History at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the United States, said that scholarship has focused more on the US and the British Atlantic trade due to resource disparities in university funding. He is also a member of the operational committee of the Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases of the SlaveVoyages website.

“A fuller understanding of the slave trade requires a global collaborative effort,” O’Malley pointed out, adding, “If UNESCO wants to promote such an alliance of university chairs to study the slave trade, that network needs to be global, including scholars based in Africa, South America and in the Caribbean – not just in Europe and the United States.

“The trafficking of African people in the Indian Ocean should be considered, too, since not all of the African diaspora was oriented toward the Atlantic,” said O’Malley.

“I think a consortium of universities studying slavery (either global or African) is a great idea. The existing USS [Universities Studying Slavery consortium in the US and the UK] has a very narrow focus on universities studying the history of slavery at their institutions – that is, the use of enslaved people to construct university buildings, to clean university facilities, or to serve as personal servants to students.

“The UNESCO project seems aimed at a broader study of the slave trade, and I think that broader goals are better suited to a global collaboration,” he said.

Echoing O’Malley’s view, Vos said: “[The] USS initiative involves universities that have their own legacy of slavery, within their own institutions, meaning they are all old universities (established before slavery was abolished in their respective countries). Most universities in the Global South simply won’t have that history, except perhaps a few in Latin America. The Latin American ones should join the existing consortium.”

The USS consortium consists of about 100 institutions of higher learning in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Scotland, Ireland and England, and aims to share best practices and guide principles as they engage in truth-telling educational projects focused on human bondage and the legacies of racism in their histories.

Efforts by University World News to establish how many chairs were envisaged were unsuccessful. Members of the International Scientific Committee for the project as well as the UNITWIN programme team were not available to comment.