![]() Max Weiss, Associate Professor, History and Near Eastern Studies Monica Youn, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Lewis Center for the ArtsĮrin Besler, Assistant Professor, Architectureīarbara Nagel, Assistant Professor, German Mitch McEwen, Assistant Professor, Architecture Goldthree, Assistant Professor, African American StudiesĪnna Arabindan-Kesson, Assistant Professor, African American Studies and Art and Archaeology Womack, Assistant Professor, African American Studies and English Wendy Laura Belcher, Professor, Comparative Literature and African American StudiesĪutumn M. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Professor, African American Studies ![]() Naomi Murakawa, Associate Professor, African American StudiesĬhika Okeke-Agulu, Professor, Art and Archaeology and African American Studiesĭan-el Padilla Peralta, Associate Professor, Classics Hunter, Professor, History and African American Studiesīeth Lew-Williams, Associate Professor, History Glaude, Jr., Professor, African American Studies Guild, Associate Professor, African American StudiesĮddie S. ![]() Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Thus far, the University’s response, when asked by the press for comment, has been to deny that the remains are being housed on the campus, as one early report claimed, to indicate that the suspension of the course has been done “ out of respect for the victims of the MOVE bombing and their families,” and to state that policies regarding the use of human remains in teaching and research are being reviewed. Members of the MOVE family are demanding they be returned and that the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton engage in reparative measures. The Penn Museum, where the remains had been held since 2015 and where Monge used them to film the course, has reportedly returned the bones to Mann. This framing supported the militarized scale of the attack on the MOVE house, which included the use of military explosives, and the callous determination to “let the fire burn” that resulted in such death and destruction.Īs of Friday, the University has suspended the Coursera course, and the videos using the bones of the MOVE victims will be taken down. MOVE, which historian of religion Juan Floyd-Thomas has characterized as a “revolutionary Black humanist group,” was organized around a radical commitment to a vision of nature as the truth that would free people from the corruption of “the system.” The group’s spiritual dimensions led the press and Philadelphia officials to characterize it as a cult, a powerful and often racialized label of marginalization in American history. Rather than “restoring personhood” and dignity, Monge’s use of these bones further dehumanizes the victims, recalling the long history of commodification of and experimentation on Black people’s bodies. In one video in the unit, Monge, joined by a Penn undergraduate, handles the bones, pulling at the attached tissue and describing the smell.Īccording to course materials, the course unit purports to consider the “very serious issues of social and political consequences of the events that led up to the assault on the Philadelphia neighborhood and their outcome in a confrontation with law enforcement agencies.” The only resources Monge provides about the broader context are links to an article in an online Philadelphia encyclopedia and to MOVE’s website, and none of the course assignments ask students to engage social, political, or ethical issues. The exploitation of the bones of Black children killed by state violence has appalled us, and Princeton University played a role in this.īeginning in 2019, Janet Monge, associate curator of the physical anthropology section of the Penn Museum and visiting professor of anthropology at Princeton, used the remains without the knowledge or consent of the family as part of a case study in her Coursera course, “Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology,” which is sponsored by the University. It is not simply the failure to return the remains to the family that has caused dismay. The revelation that the remains - which MOVE members believe are of 14-year-old Tree Africa and 13-year-old Delisha Africa - were not buried after the conclusion of the investigation, as the family believed, and have been stored in the museum, labs, and offices, has angered those in the MOVE community and beyond.
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