MIT history professor Craig Steven Wilder argued that colleges were responsible for reinforcing slavery in antebellum America and that slavery played a pivotal role in establishing American universities.

Drawing upon his book published this September, “Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities,” Wilder described in a lecture on Tuesday what he calls “the extraordinary role the college played in deciding who could be educated and who couldn’t.”

“We don’t expect to look at colleges and see slavery,” Wilder said.

Wilder stressed that universities have an obligation to confront their pasts, producing a “three-dimensional” depiction of their histories as institutions that accept the responsibility of producing knowledge....