Princeton Seminary to pay $27 million in reparations

Background: The Seminary clarified that it neither owned slaves, nor used slave labor to construct its campus, per a historical audit. However, it invested in Southern banks and its donors benefited from slavery. Founding faculty members also used slave labor and supporting sending free black men and women to Liberia.

Along with the Princeton Seminary, Georgetown University and the Virginia Theological Seminary have moved to pay reparations as well.

• Other schools, like the University of Virginia, are studying the impacts of slavery and their institutions participation in the practice. Students at the University of Georgia are also calling for their school to pay reparations.

Why now: Princeton Seminary's approval of a multi-year action plan comes after a report was published in Oct. 2018 that served as a "confession," according to John White, the Seminary's dean of students and vice president of student relations.

What's next: The plan will roll out immediately. Efforts include:

• 30 new scholarships and the addition of five doctoral fellowships for students who descended from enslaved African people.
• Hiring a director for the Center for Black Church Studies.
• Renaming the library for Theodore Sedgwick Wright, the first African American to attend Princeton Seminary.

"To sustain this programming in perpetuity, $27.6 million will be reserved in the endowment," according to a Seminary news release.

Go deeper:

• Poll: U.S. public opposes reparations and decriminalizing illegal entry
• The world's long history of reparations
• Schumer announces support for reparations bill