Ivy League colleges urged to apologise for using bones of black children in teaching material

Move members in front of their barricaded house in Philadelphia in 1978. Photograph: Leif Skoogfors/Corbis via Getty Images

TWO IVY League institutions are facing demands to an issue an apology for their handling of bones of African American children killed by Philadelphia police in 1985.

The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Princeton are at the forefront of the uproar as children’s remains are used as case studies in an online forensic anthropology course. They are shown on cameras as teaching tools. In the latter university, the bones are used without permission from the dead children’s parents.

Concerns have also been raised about the whereabouts of the bones, as fragments belonging to one or possibly two black children held by universities for up to 36 years are thought to have gone missing.

The course called Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology, is presented by Professor Janet Monge, an expert on bone collections who is on faculty at both universities.

In one video, she holds up the pelvis and femur of a girl whose remains were collected from the ashes of the May 13 1985 police bombing of the headquarters of Move, a Philadelphia-based black liberation and back-to-nature group.

Eleven group members and five children died in the fire.

Princeton said it had only become aware of the controversy surrounding the course, available on the platform Coursera – on Wednesday.

However, on late Friday the university announced that it had decided to suspend the course.

Michael Hotchkiss, a Princeton spokesperson, said: “We are in the process of gathering and understanding all of the related facts, and out of respect for the victims of the Move bombing and their families we have suspended the online course.”

Michael Africa Jr, a Move member who was six at the time of the bombing, said in response to the controversy: “There needs to be a full investigation and disclosure from all parties involved.

“We want a formal and public apology from Penn, Princeton and any of the anthropologists involved, and we want reparations – there has got to be some kind of restitution for this insanity.”

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