UNIVERSITY TO PROBE POSSIBLE HISTORICAL LINKS TO SLAVERY

One of Canada’s oldest universities is embarking on a scholarly inquiry to examine its possible ties with slavery in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The study by the University of King’s College in Halifax will include research by Canadian and U. S. scholars, and is expected to be completed in 2019. University president William Lahey says the idea is to examine King’s past in an open, honest way to make the school as welcoming as it can to people of diverse communities. Lahey says the school is a successor to King’s College in New York City, which became Columbia University. He says Columbia recently published research showing how its predecessor was implicated with slavery and it’s important for the Nova Scotia university to follow up on that work.