"It has emerged that the physical remains of one, or possibly two, of the children who were killed in the aerial bombing of the Move organization in May 1985 have been guarded over the past 36 years in the anthropological collections of [UPenn] and Princeton."
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"The institutions have held on to the heavily burned fragments, and since 2019 have been deploying them for teaching purposes without the permission of the deceased’s living parents."
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"To the astonishment and dismay of present-day Move members, some of the bones are being deployed as artifacts in an online course presented in the name of Princeton and hosted by the online study platform Coursera."
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"Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology focuses on 'lost personhood' – cases where an individual cannot be identified due to the decomposed condition of their remains."
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"It uses as its main 'case study' the events of May 1985, producing as prime evidence a set of bones belonging to a girl in her teens retrieved from the ashes of the Move house at 6221 Osage Avenue in Philadelphia."
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"The revelation comes just days before Philadelphia stages its first official day of remembrance over the 1985 bombing, following a formal apology issued by the city council last year."
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"The forensic anthropology course in which the bones of a Move child are being used has almost 5,000 enrolled students."
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"It was filmed in February 2019 and is taught by Janet Monge, an adjunct professor in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor in the same subject at Princeton."
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"The Move 'case study' is broken up into five online videos, in which Monge relates the history of the 1985 catastrophe. In one video she picks up the bones and holds them up to the camera. Monge describes the remains in vivid terms."
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"The UPenn and Princeton academic does not inform her students that she is displaying the remains without permission of the girl’s family. She is, however, open about the tragic nature of the confrontation that led to the child’s death in Osage Avenue."
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"Neither Janet nor Consuela have commented on the revelation that their daughters’ remains are possibly being used to teach online anthropology courses. But it is understood that neither of them gave their consent for them to be used that way."
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"It transpires that a Penn anthropologist, Alan Mann, acquired the remains after he was asked in the immediate aftermath of the bombing to provide specialist advice to the Philadelphia medical examiner in an attempt to identify the fragments."
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"Mann kept possession of the bones, and in 2001 took them with him when he transferred to Princeton."
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"The remains appear to have shuttled between the two Ivy League institutions until 2019, when Monge, who had worked closely with Mann over many years, filmed her online course using the pelvis and femur fragments. Where the bones are now located remains a mystery."
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