The murder of George Floyd last May by white police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis triggered a series of protests and a reckoning on race that spread across the nation and renewed discussions about deeply embedded racism in countries around the world.
Two prominent European human-rights activists appeared in a trans-Atlantic Harvard event on Thursday to discuss ways legislation on that continent can and has been used to fight racism. The event also marked both the anniversaries of the Floyd killing and that of the French Parliament’s passage 20 years ago of “Taubira’s Law,” which recognized the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as a crime against humanity.