Former Slave Owner Visits Harvard, BU (Press Release)

Former Slave Owner Visits Harvard, BU

Slave owner-turned-abolitionist to discuss challenges of modern-day slavery at Harvard, Boston University

BOSTON — Former slave owner Abdel Nasser Ould Yessa will visit Boston University and Harvard later this week to discuss human trafficking and slavery. Yessa currently works as the foreign secretary of SOS Slaves, an anti-slavery group based in his native Mauritania in West Africa. His visit to Boston is the culmination of a week-long tour of the United States sponsored by the American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG).

On Thursday, November 17, Yessa will visit the Boston University Medical School at 5:00 PM in room 115. On Friday, November 18, he will talk to students at Harvard University at 11:00 AM in Emerson 105. Both events are open to the public.

Born into Mauritania’s ruling class, Yessa grew up surrounded by his family’s slaves. At sixteen, intellectual exposure to the French Revolution disturbed his world view. “I began to see that what was happening in my country was not normal. I would come home from school and slaves would bring me drinks, wash my hands, and massage my feet,” Yessa recalls. Understanding liberty and equality as universal birthrights, Yessa became an abolitionist, advocating for the freedom of all slaves.

Today Yessa lives in exile in Paris, where he heads the international efforts of SOS Slaves. In Washington, D.C. earlier this week Yessa met with Congressman Chris Smith and Senator Sam Brownback as well as several think tanks and anti-trafficking groups to discuss the possibility of change through implementations in policy.

Asked why he has chosen to address universities on his visit to Boston, Yessa explains: “I think young activists can understand my journey, maybe even better than adults. They can understand how I came to realize that there was something wrong that needed to be changed. And the main force that can change and move society is youth.”

AASG is a nonprofit organization working to abolish global slavery. Through a partnership with SOS Slaves, AASG works to bring an end to chattel slavery, in which slaveholders posses absolute ownership of slaves as well as the right to buy and sell them — a form still practiced in Mauritania and Sudan.

Contact Diane Nguyen 1-800-884-0719 for an interview.