HARVARD REMOVES BINDING OF HUMAN SKIN

 

Of the roughly 20 million books in Harvard University's libraries, one has long exerted a unique dark fascination, not for its contents, but for the material it was reputedly bound in: human skin.

For years, the volume — a 19th-century French treatise on the human soul — was brought out for show and tell, and sometimes, according to library lore, used to haze new employees. In 2014, the university drew jokey news coverage around the world with the announcement that it had used new technology to confirm that the binding was in fact human skin.

But on Wednesday, after years of criticism and debate, the university announced that it had removed the binding and would be exploring options for a final respectful disposition of these human remains.

After careful study, stakeholder engagement, and consideration, Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used in the book's binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book's origins and subsequent history, the university said in a statement.

The announcement came more than three years after the university announced a broad survey of the human remains across its collections, as part of the intensifying reckoning with the role of slavery and colonialism in establishing universities and museums. In a statement, Harvard's president at the time, Lawrence S. Bacow, apologized for the university's role in practices that placed the academic enterprise above respect for the dead and human decency.

A report released in 2022 identified more than 20,000 human remains in Harvard's collections, ranging from full skeletons to locks of hair, bone fragments and teeth. They included the remains of about 6,500 Native Americans, whose handling is governed by the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, as well as 19 from people of African descent who may have been enslaved.

To read the complete articles, see:
Harvard Confirms Book Is Bound in Human Skin (https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/harvard-confirms-book-is-bound-in-human-skin/)
A statement on Des destinées de l'âme and its stewardship (https://library.harvard.edu/statement-des-destinees-de-lame)
Harvard Removes Binding of Human Skin From Book in Its Library (nytimes.com/2024/03/27/arts/harvard-human-skin-binding-book.html)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
CREEPY HUMAN-SKIN BOUND BOOK OFFERED (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v10n49a29.html)
HARVARD BOOK BOUND IN HUMAN SKIN (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n24a26.html)
HARVARD BOOK NOT BOUND IN HUMAN SKIN AFTER ALL (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n16a29.html)
MORE BOOKS BOUND IN HUMAN SKIN (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n18a31.html)
NEW BOOK: DARK ARCHIVE (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n43a35.html)

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