Tell-It Report: Harvard Researcher Claims He Was Fired for Finding ‘Too Many Slaves’ Linked to University

Richard Cellini believes he and his team were ousted because finding “too many” direct descendants would bankrupt the institution.

(Envato/ContrabandCamp)

In Gullah Geechee communities, a "tell-it" was a designated lookout, community warning system and the most trusted source for news and information. The Tell-It Report is ContrabandCamp’s weekly roundup of the Black stories that deserve more attention — from politics to entertainment.

A Harvard University researcher believes he was fired for finding “too many slaves” that were owned by the institution's affiliates.

More than half a million Haitians are at risk of deportation after the Department of Homeland Security revoked their temporary protective status.

Read the full stories below:

Harvard researcher claims he was fired after finding “too many slaves”

Richard Cellini believes that he was fired from his role as descendant researcher at Harvard University for one reason, he told The Guardian: “We found too many slaves.”

As part of the university’s efforts to atone and reconcile for its ties to enslavement, the school hired Cellini to lead research for its Slavery Remembrance Program. Their main role was to identify the direct descendants of those enslaved by Harvard affiliates.

The university was already aware of 70 enslaved people with ties to its dark past. Since Cellini started working with Harvard in late 2022, Cellini and the genealogical institute American Ancestors found more than 900 people enslaved by university staff and leadership and nearly 500 direct living descendants, according to the outlet.

Prior to Harvard, Cellini worked with Georgetown University to locate the descendants of 272 enslaved people sold to raise money for the institution in the mid-1800s. He and his team found more than 10,000 direct descendants as a part of that work. Georgetown later took steps to atone for its ties to slavery.

Cellini claimed that during informal meetings with Harvard Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara Bleich, she told him repeatedly, “not to find too many descendants.” The researcher said that when he pushed back and asked for guidance on what the university wanted, he claimed that Bleich said she didn’t know but that “we shouldn’t report too many descendants.”

“At one point, the fear was expressed that if we found too many descendants, it would bankrupt the university,” he told the outlet.

After an investigation into the comments, Cellini told The Harvard Crimson, “I have told officials at the highest level of the University that they only have two options: fire me, or let the HSRP do this work properly,” in a September statement.

Bleich denied Cellini’s claims, telling The Guardian that Harvard never told him to limit the number of direct descendants that could be identified. Cellini was given a 2025 budget until Harvard halted his work completely in January, though his team continued their genealogy research with American Ancestors. He said he wasn’t given an explanation for his team being fired.

He had just come back from Antigua, where he visited five plantations with ties to the university and found 100 more names of enslaved people, The Guardian reports.

Cellini said there’s much more left to uncover. He estimated that there could be 10,000 living descendants with ties to Harvard, calling his findings “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Trump administration ends deportation relief for Haitians living in the U.S.

More than half a million Haitians living in the United States are at risk of deportation. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that they were no longer eligible for temporary protected status (TPS), Associated Press reports.

TPS allows people from countries deemed unsafe to legally stay and work if they are already in the U.S. Haiti was one of 17 countries that qualified for those protections.

A DHS spokesperson told the AP that the “environmental situation” is safe enough for Haitian citizens to return. Since the administration claims that conditions in Haiti have improved, Haitians are exempt. Last week, however, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti urged U.S. citizens to leave the country, and a travel advisory issued by the Biden administration in 2024 is still in effect, recommending that U.S. citizens “do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.”

Tessa Petit, the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition and a Haitian immigrant, told Newsweek that she is “in shock” and “disgusted” by the revocation.

“This is a complete lie stating that the situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,” she said. “This is a lie.”

About 521,000 Haitians, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, are at risk. TPS for Haitians ends on Aug. 3, and the termination will be effective Sept. 2.

Since the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, leading to years of violence and political turmoil.

“This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,” the DHS spokesperson told the AP.

This is the Trump administration’s latest move in its attacks on immigrants. Trump’s crackdowns have targeted Haiti, especially. While campaigning, he made racist and erroneous claims that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets. In early June, Trump issued a travel ban that restricts Haitian citizens from entering the U.S.

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