Harvard Apologizes and Removes Human-Skin Binding From Book

Bowing to public pressure, Harvard University agreed Wednesday to remove binding made of human skin from a 19th century book held by one of its libraries. The New York Times reports that the Ivy League institution said in a statement that a committee “concluded that the human remains used in the book’s binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history.” The move comes after a scholar publicly pushed the university to remove the binding—the skin of an unknown woman who died in a French psychiatric hospital—from Arsène Houssaye’s The Destiny of Souls and bury it in France. In its statement, Harvard said it will arrange for “a final respectful disposition of these human remains.” The school also acknowledged that it had over the years sensationalized the book and “further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding.”