Stop Harvard Land Grabs is a group of Harvard students and alumni organizing in solidarity with frontline communities to end Harvard’s destructive farmland investments around the world and demand reparations. As one of the core Harvard/Boston-based organizers since the campaign started in 2020, I've been focusing more on frontline community outreach (aspirationally) and research.
The main content basis for our campaign has come from the research of GRAIN and Rede Social, who produced a report on the Harvard endowment's $1 billion ownership of agricultural properties across the world
. Through that report and news articles gathered from our networks, the team has produced a research library—a list of articles telling some of the story of Harvard's land grabs, mainly around Harvard's stake in Brazilian farmland.
I've helped write this report to serve as a sort of primer for understanding land grabs at Harvard, and also for identifying concretely what we don't know yet about land grabs at Harvard and the affected communities (even though the immense community harm and environmental destruction already proven is already grounds for Harvard to change).
This research is also a gateway to understanding and thinking about how to collaborate with the communities affected by land grabs as well as their allies such as the academics and NGOs who have written the reports, and how to understand how to advocate for the campaign moving forward.
Some key questions moving forward is:
How are we going to collaborate with these communities as we push for change from the Harvard Management Corporation?
What is the support and allyship that the affected communities desire from us? (one benefit of this research is that we can go into these conversations a lot more informed)
Want to print your doc? This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
