Corporate Reckoning: How Businesses Can Address Historical Wrongs

Survivors and descendants continue to demand reckoning from governments, universities, museums and seminaries for participation in a variety of historical wrongs. Increasingly, corporate executives also find themselves called upon to atone for their predecessors’ moral transgressions. While many business leaders can address inherited failed product lines or dysfunctional teams, fewer know how to handle demands that their enterprise address legacies of mass atrocity such as slavery, genocide, or colonialism. When survivors and descendants demand reckoning, many corporate leaders initially shirk the responsibilities that follow from these requests. They may claim that history belongs to the historians, that their company’s activities were legal at the time, or that too much time has passed. If it comes to it, courts will rule in their favor, they reassure themselves. Others avoid these issues simply because they have no idea how to address them.

In this webinar, Sarah Federman provides a pathway forward that serves companies and those affected by these historical harms. The atonement model she presents is developed in her new book, Corporate Reckoning (MIT Press, 2026), which offers case studies across atrocities, industries, and geographies.

Demands for reckoning ebb and flow, but these histories do not disappear. Taking responsibility for irreparable harm is not easy or comfortable. Despite the dilemmas and difficulties, the only way out is through.