What does it mean to study at a university built on histories we rarely acknowledge? That question lingered in the room last Wednesday as students and community members gathered to hear Chris Rabb speak on Columbia, slavery, and the long, unfinished work of repair.

Last Wednesday evening, I sat in the Lehman Center for American History, surrounded by students, faculty, and community members, listening to a story that felt both distant and uncomfortably close. The event, Slavery, Columbia University & the Livingstons: What Reparative Justice Looks Like from One Black Descendant’s Journey, asked us to consider a question that lingers beneath the surface of campus life: what does it mean to belong to an institution shaped by horrific histories we rarely name?

Columbia History Professor Karl Jacoby opened with what he called the “magical alchemy that lies at the heart of historical research.” He is part of the Columbia University and Slavery Project, along with three other history professors. They teach an undergraduate history seminar which pushes undergraduates to complete research regarding our institution’s ties to slavery. Jacoby described the act of uncovering relationships that have always existed, even if they have gone unspoken. It did not feel like magic so much as recognition. The past, as the evening made clear, is not hidden. It is simply unevenly recorded and remembered.

At the center of the talk was the Livingston family, a name woven into both early American governance (including a signer of the Declaration of Independence) and Columbia’s origins as King’s College. Chris Rabb, a Pennsylvania state legislator and author, reflected on uncovering his own genealogical ties to the Livingstons. The Livingstons were, in his words, an “aggressively wealthy” family whose power was built in part through plantation slavery economies in Jamaica. Their legacy is not separate from the university. It is part of its foundation.

Rabb spoke about storytelling as a political act. Who gets to tell the story of Columbia? Whose histories are treated as central, and whose are left out? His own work, and his own lineage, challenge those boundaries. In working with the Columbia University and Slavery Project, undergraduate researchers helped identify him as a living descendant of the Livingston family. Upon reaching out, they discovered he had been conducting his own historical research on his family, for decades.

One of the most striking moments he shared was his first visit to a Livingston family reunion. There, he introduced himself and spoke about the family’s ties to slavery. Many people in the room, he said, had never been taught that history. “Many of these educated folks had no idea there was slavery in New York, or that their wealth was tied to slavery,” he recalled, describing a “level of self delusion and ignorance.” His encounter, on the estate where his ancestors were likely enslaved, asked people to reconsider what they thought they knew about themselves and their family’s wealth.

That tension carried into a distinction Rabb drew between ancestry and heritage. Ancestry is what we inherit. Heritage is what we choose to do with that inheritance. The difference feels especially important in a place like Columbia, where legacy is something to take pride in, but it is often quite complicated. The question becomes harder when that legacy includes harm.

When the conversation turned to reparations, Rabb was careful to shift the framing away from individual guilt. He warned against letting white guilt “intercede,” suggesting that it can stall meaningful action. He admitted that he once opposed reparations himself, believing that his silence couldn’t be bought. What changed for him was a deeper understanding of what reparations are meant to do. They are not about fixing individuals. They are about repairing the conditions of a society shaped by inequality, which benefits us all.

That distinction matters. It moves the conversation from feelings to responsibility. Institutions like Columbia, Rabb argued, have accumulated extraordinary wealth over generations. That wealth is not neutral. It tells a story of exploitation and injustice. His proposal was direct and ambitious: a one billion dollar autonomous fund dedicated to collective justice. Whether or not the exact number feels feasible, it reframes what accountability might look like at scale. It asks institutions like ours to acknowledge the past ills they still hold onto through inaction.

Toward the end of the talk, I asked Rabb about his time as an undergraduate at Yale. He described being placed in Calhoun College, a residential college named after a defender of slavery, which held art with racist imagery. I was curious how he went against such a powerful, seemingly immovable institution, reflecting upon my own time at Columbia in the past three years of turmoil and student repression. “This sucks,” he remembered thinking. He spoke about the weight of being in a place that seemed unwilling to fully confront its own shameful history, what he called a kind of institutional amnesia. His efforts to challenge that environment, including pushing for the removal of stained glass depicting a racist scene, were not easy. “The good fight is a solitary fight, and it is hard,” he said. Still, he insisted that change begins by holding the places we inhabit accountable.

That idea stayed with me. It is easy to treat history as something separate from our daily lives, something contained in archives or lectures. We walk through the walls and paths of this institution concerned with our own present, not reflecting upon how we got here. Not fully considering the legacies we inherit by belonging to a place like this. But sitting in that room, it felt clear that the lines are not so clean. Columbia’s history is more than something to learn about in passing. It is more than fun facts about alumni, or silly traditions. Rather, it concerns power dynamics and historical injustices tied to our nation and world at large. It is something we move through, benefit from, and have the power to question.

Rabb ended with an expansive yet simple suggestion: “talk to your elders, dig and see what stories come up.” His own search began that way, and it led him to a history that eventually connected personal memory with institutional power. It is a reminder that these stories are not as far away as they seem.

If we share a history, as Rabb suggested, then we also share a responsibility. Not just to uncover it, but to decide what repair might look like, and whether we are willing to demand it and see it through.

Header via Chris Rabb