The Importance of Reporative Justice

Anma understands that students, too, bring their personal histories into the classroom. She tries to create a space for sharing perspectives and honoring individual experiences. Ama explained that reparative justice isn't just limited to money or land; it can also include amending our historical records. "These issues are not past. There's nothing that's passed about them," she said.

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Though there’s widespread consensus that the slavery and colonization that characterize the history of European relations with Africa represent a legacy of grave injustice, there is much less agreement on how to redress that injustice. Professor M. Amah Edoh, who teaches in MIT’s Department of Anthropology, designed the course 21A.S01 Reparations for Slavery and Colonization with the goal of honestly facing the historical record and openly discussing how best to respond. Because she believes expertise is too often conceived of as something that flows “north-south” from the developed nations toward the developing world, she structured the course to embrace expertise wherever it might be found—recruiting guest lecturers from various disciplines and from institutions around the world, as well as activists currently involved in the quest for reparative justice. She even went a step further, sharing the lecture videos on YouTube while the semester was still ongoing and inviting viewers to contribute their own insights into how to deal with the ongoing legacy of historical wrongs. In this episode, Prof. Edoh describes the motivation for this innovative course structure and reflects on the challenges of grappling with such a sensitive subject.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator Portal

Share your teaching insights

Professor Edoh’s faculty page

Course materials by Professor Edoh on OCW

21A.S01 Reparations for Slavery and Colonization on OCW

Open Learning story on 21A.S01

OCW YouTube playlist for 21A.S01

Africa’s Expertise (YouTube lecture by Prof Edoh)

African Futures Action Lab

How Africa Has Been Made to Mean (2020 episode of Chalk Radio)