This spring, something extraordinary and worthy of imitation occurred on Georgetown University’s campus in Washington, D.C.

On April 11, two-thirds of the undergraduate student body who took part in a referendum voted “yes” to create a reparations fund for the descendants of 272 slaves the university sold in 1838 to save the university from bankruptcy. When the Maryland Jesuits sold these human beings into further bondage on brutal Louisiana cotton plantations nearly two centuries ago, they received $115,000 in return, or about $3.3 million today. Fast forward to the present, and Georgetown’s endowment is valued at nearly $1.8 billion — a premier American institution of higher learning built with blood money.

The effort to make amends for the university’s trafficking in human misery and subjugation was the work of the GU272 Foundation. The organization, founded by the descendants of that wicked sale, asked Georgetown students to increase their university tuition fees by $27.20 each semester to honor those whose lives financed the college’s continued existence. As Shepard Thomas, a member of a student group who advocated for the referendum and a descendant of some of the original 272 slaves sold in 1838, told The New York Times, “The school wouldn’t be here without them.”

Georgetown’s students have shown colleges and universities, particularly those that also profited from slavery, one way to right the wrongs of the nation’s original sin. In the name of reparatory justice, private and public universities should underwrite the establishment of reparations funds — similar to the Georgetown initiative — to ensure that students of African descent do not leave these institutions in debt.

Members of the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), such as myself, want to work with student leaders in petitioning the administrators at universities whose establishment was made possible by wealth generated from slavery, slave trading, and the unpaid labor of people of African descent to make restitution to African Americans in the name of racial healing. There have been presidential commissions and task forces at Brown, Harvard, Columbia, and other universities that have investigated and reported on the wealth these institutions accrued due to their direct or indirect participation in slavery and slave trading.

As a result of these inquiries, there have been efforts to change the names of buildings named after slave owners and traders, such as Yale’s Calhoun College, and other symbolic actions. However, given the persistence of extreme racial disparities in wealth between Black and white college graduates, there is need to address the income gap through the application of reparatory justice, which calls for repair, remediation, and restitution to those who historically and currently have been unjustly damaged and targeted for exploitation.

Economists have found that the income levels and unemployment rates of African-American college graduates are the same as those for white high school graduates. It is also reported that African Americans graduate from college with the highest student loan debt. In The Atlantic, Duke University economist William J. Darity reminds us “that completion of a college education leads blacks to carry twice the level of student loan debt than whites after a four year degree.” In addition, the default rate on student loans is much higher for African-American graduates, negatively affecting their creditworthiness at the outset of their professional careers.

At the same time, the descendants of the enslaved workers do not want the successors of their ancestors’ original oppressors to determine the form of reparations and reparatory justice. Georgetown University is a unique situation where the descendants of those enslaved workers are still being identified. In the case of Harvard, Yale, and other universities and colleges that benefited from the slave trade, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to locate actual descendants of the enslaved workers. Some could be found, but not many.

Credit: Library of Congress

Therefore, it is the responsibility of the current generation of African and African-American students to collect on “The Debt” that is owed. In the case of Brown University, whose founders accumulated their wealth through active participation in slavery and slave trading, the administration has pledged to use the school’s substantial endowment funds to ensure that no student — African American or non-African American — leaves the university in debt.

The students at other private schools with huge endowments need to organize and petition college and university officials to demand support for the establishment of an independent foundation devoted to receiving and disseminating reparations funds so that no African-American student graduates from these colleges and universities in debt. 

But what about the problem of low-income African Americans graduating from flagship state universities or other public colleges and universities in debt, crippling their ability to purchase a home, start a family, and save for the future?

Those who are interested in pursuing reparatory justice should mobilize and demand the formation of reparations funds to cover the financial needs of graduating students and alumni. African-American students can make this demand on the basis of their extreme underrepresentation at these tax-supported universities in the past and currently.

For example, while African-American taxpayers make up 6.5% of California’s population, African Americans were only 3.8% of the enrollment at the University of California in 2017 (10,785 out of 273,180). NAARC members will work with students interested in creating reparations funds to be used to increase the number of the African-American students enrolling in these institutions and in making sure that these students do not graduate from these schools in debt.

Reparatory justice is aimed at addressing the extreme disparities in wealth, income, formal education, health outcomes, home ownership, and other areas between African Americans and white Americans. Scholars have determined that these disparities can be traced directly to the enslavement of African Americans before 1865 and the racial exclusion and discrimination that continues into the 21st century. Pursuing reparations to address Black student debt, both at public and private schools, should be at the top of the political agenda of African Americans — as well as all progressive elected leaders and students who understand why African Americans are so underrepresented in America’s colleges and universities.

V.P. Franklin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Education, University of California, Riverside

For several years, a little-known start-up based in New York has been amassing a database of billions of our faceprints — unique biometric identifiers akin to a fingerprint or DNA profile — drawn from personal photos on our social media accounts and elsewhere online. The company has captured these faceprints in secret, without our knowledge, much less our consent, using everything from casual selfies to photos of birthday parties, college graduations, weddings, and so much more.
 
Unbeknownst to the public, this company has offered up this massive faceprint database to private companies, police, federal agencies, and wealthy individuals, allowing them to secretly track and target whomever they wished using face recognition technology.
                                                     
That company is Clearview AI, and it will end privacy as we know it if it isn’t stopped. We’re taking the company to court in Illinois today on behalf of organizations that represent survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, undocumented immigrants, and other vulnerable communities. As the groups make clear, Clearview’s face surveillance activities violate the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), and represent an unprecedented threat to our security and safety.
 
Face recognition technology offers a surveillance capability unlike any other technology in the past. It makes it dangerously easy to identify and track us at protests, AA meetings, counseling sessions, political rallies, religious gatherings, and more. For our clients — organizations that serve survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, undocumented immigrants, and people of color — this surveillance system is dangerous and even life-threatening. It empowers abusive ex-partners and serial harassers, exploitative companies, and ICE agents to track and target domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, undocumented immigrants, and other vulnerable communities.
 
By building a mass database of billions of faceprints without our knowledge or consent, Clearview has created the nightmare scenario that we’ve long feared, and has crossed the ethical bounds that many companies have refused to even attempt. Neither the United States government nor any American company is known to have ever compiled such a massive trove of biometrics.
 
Adding fuel to the fire, Clearview sells access to a smartphone app that allows its customers — and even those using the app on a trial basis — to upload a photo of an unknown person and instantaneously receive a set of matching photos.
 
Clearview’s actions clearly violate BIPA. The law requires companies that collect, capture, or obtain an Illinois resident’s biometric identifier — such as a fingerprint, faceprint, or iris scan — to first notify that individual and obtain their written consent. Clearview’s practices are exactly the threat to privacy that the legislature intended to address, and demonstrate why states across the country should adopt legal protections like the ones in Illinois.
 
In press statements, Clearview has tried to claim its actions are somehow protected by the First Amendment. Clearview is as free to look at online photos as anyone with an internet connection. But what it can’t do is capture our faceprints — uniquely identifying biometrics — from those photos without consent. That’s not speech; it’s conduct that the state of Illinois has a strong interest in regulating in order to protect its residents against abuse.
 
If allowed, Clearview will destroy our rights to anonymity and privacy — and the safety and security that both bring. People can change their names and addresses to shield their whereabouts and identities from individuals who seek to harm them, but they can’t change their faces.
 
That’s why we’re teaming up with lawyers at the ACLU of Illinois and the law firm of Edelson PC, a nationally recognized leader in consumer privacy litigation, to put a stop to Clearview’s egregious violations of privacy. We are asking an Illinois state court to order the company to delete faceprints gathered from Illinois residents without consent, and to stop capturing new faceprints unless it complies with the Illinois law.
 
There is a groundswell of opposition to face surveillance technology, and this litigation is the latest chapter in an intensifying fight to protect our privacy rights against the dangers of this menacing technology. Across the nation, the ACLU has been advocating for bans on police use of face recognition technology, leading to strong laws in places like Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley, California, and Springfield and Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as a statewide prohibition on use of the technology on police body cams in California.
 
We won’t let companies like Clearview trample on our right to privacy.

Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project

The COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe and upended normal life. In the four months since the first U.S. case was reported, more than 1.5 million people have been infected and 100,000 people have died in the United States. To mitigate risk, public health authorities tell us to get our groceries and prescriptions delivered, wave to grandma from the window, and generally avoid all unnecessary trips and close physical interactions outside the home.        
 
Consistent with these guidelines, federal agencies have taken every opportunity to encourage telemedicine use and give clinicians the flexibility to forgo unnecessary in-person encounters in accordance with their clinical judgment. They have waived various rules requiring in-person visits, even for controlled substances like opioids.
 
But there is one striking exception: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to subject mifepristone, a safe, effective prescription medication used to end an early pregnancy or treat a miscarriage, to a uniquely burdensome restriction that is jeopardizing the health and lives of patients and clinicians, with particularly dire implications for low-income communities and communities of color.
 
The FDA requires that the mifepristone pill be dispensed only in a hospital, clinic, or medical office: Patients who have already been evaluated by a clinician through telemedicine or at a prior in-person visit are not allowed to fill their prescription by mail. Instead, they must travel to one of these clinical settings to pick up the pill — even if they are receiving no in-person medical services at that time, and even if they will swallow the medication later at home (as the FDA permits).
 
For months, leading medical authorities have implored the FDA to suspend this restriction and give clinicians who provide abortion and miscarriage care the flexibility they need to protect their patients during this crisis. But the administration is intransigent.
 
That’s why today we filed a lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of medical experts and reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates, led by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), challenging the FDA rule that forces patients to take on unnecessary COVID-19 risks as a condition of receiving medication abortion and miscarriage care.
 
Of the more than 20,000 drugs regulated by the FDA, mifepristone is the only one that patients must obtain in a clinical setting, yet may self-administer unsupervised at home. It’s easy to see why no other drugs carry this restriction: There is no medical reason to dictate where a patient is standing when handed a pill they will put in their pocket to swallow later at home.
 
There is likewise no reason to impose this requirement on mifepristone, which has been FDA approved for 20 years and used by more than 4 million people. In the FDA’s words, mifepristone’s “efficacy and safety have become well established by both research and experience, and serious complications have proven to be extremely rare.” In fact, the FDA permits mifepristone to be sent to patients’ homes, in larger quantities and doses, when used for a purpose other than early pregnancy termination. 
 
Yet the FDA has maintained this unnecessary restriction throughout the pandemic — despite CDC guidance specifically encouraging patients to fill prescriptions by mail-order delivery wherever possible, and despite a national medical consensus that mifepristone prescribers need the same flexibility as other clinicians to forgo medically unnecessary in-person visits, consistent with their best clinical judgment, during this crisis.
 
As is virtually always the case when it comes to restrictions on abortion, the harm here is not borne equally. Low-income people and people of color, who comprise a majority of people seeking abortions, bear the brunt of the FDA’s restrictions. At the best of times, arranging transportation and child care in order to travel to a health care facility to pick up a pill is difficult or impossible for many patients. Some must travel hundreds of miles — or even take a flight — causing severe delays and blocking some patients from accessing abortion care at all.
 
Now, during a historic unemployment crisis with many schools and day cares shuttered, the FDA is forcing patients to take on life-threatening — and entirely unnecessary — risks in order to access essential health services. This is particularly dangerous for communities of color, who, due to longstanding inequities in access to and quality of health care and other manifestations of structural racism, are dying from COVID-19 at drastically higher rates.
 
Our coalition of plaintiffs represents tens of thousands of clinicians providing abortion and miscarriage care to patients across the nation, and the department chairs of obstetrics and gynecology at nearly 150 universities. It includes activists and organizers dedicated to removing barriers to high-quality pregnancy-related care that disproportionately harm marginalized communities. They have asked the FDA to do the right thing on mifepristone, but the agency has refused.
 
Pregnant people should not have to needlessly jeopardize their safety in order to access essential medication abortion and miscarriage care during the pandemic. We’re going to court to ensure that in this time of crisis, people do not have to subject themselves to unnecessary risk to access the reproductive health care they need.

Julia Kaye, Staff Attorney, Reproductive Freedom Project