Ethics & Human Remains Collections
On April 21, 2021 Billy Penn reported that the remains of children killed during the 1985 MOVE bombing had been stored and used as teaching aids at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Museum without the consent of the victims' family. An example of the ways in which academic institutions normalize scientific racism and state violence against Black people, the ensuing controversy demanded that we critically engage the approximately 10,000 human remains that currently reside at the Penn Museum and similar institutions around the world. What are the historical processes that facilitated the traffic of human remains? What policies govern the use of human remains for anthropological research? How do we hold institutions accountable?