I find the notion of using human skin for a book binding horrible and macabre even if consent was given. One would have to question the mind of anyone who found the practice acceptable.
Just reading the title alone heightened my sensibilities as it immediately reminded me of such Nazis atrocities where they made objects out of the skin of their victims.
That was my emotional self talking and I'd expect it would always be my initial reaction, but when my rational self kicked in moments later I immediately asked what motivated these Harvard idiots to so act, was it out of some kind of perverse political correctness? If not, then what was their motivation?
It seems to me these people are both unprofessional and irresponsible and should not be charged with the responsibility of housing and managing important historical items. The principal responsibilities of museums is to preserve historical artifacts in their original unaltered form as is best possible and keep them safely housed for posterity and for the benefit and education of future generations.
It is not the job of museums to alter museum pieces because they don't like some aspect about them, and to do so clearly smacks of vandalism. If an institution is so offended by some object in its collection then it can either remove it from normal viewing and make it only available to researchers, or alternatively, give it to another museum that does not take offense (there'll always be others willing to take the object off their hands).
Let's put this book into perspective. There are aspects about it that are deemed sordid by today's ethical standards but that does not devalue its historical significance, in fact a knowledge and understanding of how the object acquired these attributes make it all the more important from an historical perspective, ipso facto it will also be more valuable. Vandalizing it will make it less so on every account.
Now let's compare the historical aspects of this book with other objects commonly found in many museums that also could be deemed to have 'sordid' backgrounds. If other museums similarly applied Harvard's sanctimonious ethical attitudes to this class of items in their collections then many thousands of objects would have to be withdrawn from display.
For instance, modern and ancient weapons of war—guns, howitzers, Roman, Greek and Viking swords, and a myriad of other things whose very existence—their raison d'être—is based on ethical standards that many of us today would now consider abhorrent and repugnant but we don't alter or destroy them.
Similarly, after WWII we didn't destroy hideous places such as Auschwitz and Buchenwald but kept them for their great historical significance and to remind present and future generations of the horrors that took place there.
What I find outrageous is that these days many professionals find it acceptable to try to 'correct' history (as in the case of this Harvard book). Why they cannot see and just accept that ethical and societal values were very different in the past than now—and that every era had its own standards and ethical values, many of which were brutal.
Over recent decades there's a collective lemming-like cultural attitude developed amongst many professionals who ought to know better, they refuse to criticize idiocy and outright hypocrisy even at the expense of both their professionalism and their professions, and they often so act out of fear of being labeled politically incorrect.
I'm damned if I know how these people can ditch logic and reason and still live with their consciences.