Non-anonymous research images of enslaved subjects trigger Belmont Report protections

Evidence

The daguerreotypes were on display at one point but have since been stored away; replicas have been made for public viewing. This was the research paper that Meredith had asked me about earlier—and in it, she argued that since the “Harvard Seven” images were taken against their will to prove a quickly debunked scientific theory that Harvard’s employee Louis Agassiz developed during his tenure at the university, they were liable for the mistreatment of the “dataset,” in this case the daguerreotypes themselves, since they each represent a human being used as a data point. She believed, as I do, that every time Harvard uses those images—which are not anonymous—it violates the Belmont Report’s guidelines to protect an individual’s identity. She also asks for “an immediate withdrawal of and/or voiding of all contracts granting permissions for the publication, reproduction, purchase or further dissemination of subjects’ data and images (until possession of consent is obtained from subjects and/or their legal descendants or representatives).” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1019

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the operative doctrinal claim: an image of an enslaved person is a non-anonymous human-subject data point governed by the Belmont Report, not a museum’s property.
• XREF: Directly advances the reader’s stated goal of stating precisely how litigation frames Harvard’s holding of stolen images as a property question.