Penn would be welcomed into the Universities Studying Slavery consortium, which has about 40 member schools in the U.S. and abroad, said its co-chair, Dr. Kirt von Daacke, assistant dean and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. “Penn’s findings are yet another reminder that slavery and racism in the American past are not Southern stories, they are American stories,” he said, adding that the revelations are less about an individual school’s history and more about “America becoming more connected to its complicated and difficult past.”