UK university to atone for profits of hundreds of millions of dollars gained from historical slavery

A Scottish university will launch a "program of reparative justice" after discovering it gained tens of millions of pounds from historical slavery, with activists hailing rising attention on modern slavery for stirring fresh debate about past horrors.

Glasgow University researchers estimated that it received up to 200 million pounds (262 million US dollars) in today's money in the 18th and 19th centuries in the form of thousands of donations from benefactors whose wealth derived from racial slavery.

The university has announced a program of "reparative justice," and will create a center for the study of slavery as well as a memorial in its grounds in the name of the enslaved.