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A thread on the ways in which the latest college admission scam is not exceptional but rather business as usual for institutions built for elites through the extraction of Indigenous land and Black labor
Harvard, Dartmouth, William and Mary, Hamilton, and Princeton among others were all founded on the philanthropic ideations of “entrepreneurs and gentlemen” looking to turn a profit on the capitalist ventures of “civilizing Indians.”
Harvard, for ex., was founded in 1636 without a single building, teacher, or student and teetered on the brink of bankruptcy until Harvard President Henry Dunster drafted the College’s “papers of incorporation” in 1650.
Despite no prior commitment to NDN's, Dunster included the "education of Indian youth” at the core of Harvards mission. Why? Because global corporations like The Virginia Co. of London and Mass. Bay Co. were betting on the “civilizing mission" to solve “the Indian problem.”
His scheme paid in dividends. The “trustees of the missionary fund” were compelled by the civilizing missing and allocated Harvard the necessary capital to build an “Indian College” on campus.
The building quickly expanded to 2X its original design and 4X the cost, despite the continued absence of NDN students. When the College finally opened (still no Native students) Harvard officials saw no reason to let it sit vacant and filled its halls with white students.
All told, in the nearly four decades of its existence, Harvard’s Indian College housed only four American Indian students.
Dunster’s use of charitable funds earmarked for “the Indian cause” for the education of white settlers established a pattern. Over the course of the 17th and 18th cent. several colleges and universities received large amounts of $$ to educate NDNs, while serving very few.
In 1871, The NY Times featured a story about the Ottawa Indians of Kansas entitled, “An Indian Swindle: History of the Ottawa (Kansas) University Project-How a Tribe Was Cheated Out of Their Lands, Their Money and the Education Of Their Children Under The Guise Of Christianity.”
In the nearly two hundred years following Harvard’s founding, only one Native American student (Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, Algonquin) graduated with a degree and he died from disease shortly after it was conferred.
And don't even get me started on the "Land Grant" colleges. Also, see Craig Wilder's work "Ebony and Ivy" among others for their complicity in the slave trade. #SettlerColonialismIsAStructureNotEvent #ThisAIntNew #CollegeCheatingScandal #collegeadmissionscandal #CollegeGate
