Declaring that “the impact of slavery and segregation reaches into every facet of modern life,” administrators at Brown University announced on Saturday a number of new institutional projects, including programs to assist local public schools and a possible new research center on slavery and its legacies.
Several of the newly announced projects were recommended last fall by the university’s Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. That committee was charged with assessing the university’s founders’ entanglements with the slave trade and with debating various potential forms of reparation.
In its report, released last October, the committee stopped short of recommending payment of reparations to the descendants of slaves but called for “acknowledging and taking responsibility for Brown’s part in grievous crimes” (The Chronicle, October 27, 2006).
In a 24-page response released on Saturday, the university announced it would offer up to 10 new fellowships for graduate students in education who commit to teach for at least three years in Providence-area urban public schools. The university will also create a $10-million endowment to be known as the Fund for the Education of the Children of Providence. That fund will be administered by the university in consultation with the superintendent of the Providence public school system.
One of the steering committee’s central recommendations was the creation of a new academic center on slavery and justice. In its statement this weekend, the university did not wholly commit to such a center. The announcement says that the university will undertake “a major research and teaching initiative,” but adds that it is not yet certain whether that initiative will take the form of a full-fledged center or simply “the significant enlargement of an existing and coordinated set of programs,” such as the department of Africana studies and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.
In an interview on Sunday, James T. Campbell, an associate professor of American civilization and Africana studies who was the chair of the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, said that he was not disappointed that the university has not yet embraced a full-fledged academic center. On the contrary, he said, “the way they’re going about this is very responsible, very prudent. It’s useful to take a look at the academic resources that we have now and to think carefully about how best to pursue this initiative.”
In general, Mr. Campbell said, he was pleased with the university’s actions. “They seem to have embraced both the spirit and the substance of the committee’s recommendations,” he said, “and in some cases, they went beyond them.” The $10-million endowment, for example, is more ambitious than the school-support programs that had been envisioned by the committee, he said.
In other academic initiatives, Brown pledged to strengthen its exchange program with Tougaloo College, in Mississippi, and to expand a program that provides technical assistance to other historically black colleges.
The university also announced that it would work with state and city officials to create a memorial to the victims of slavery in Rhode Island. And the university will revise its official history “so that it creates a more complete picture of the origins of Brown.”
In an e-mail message to The Chronicle, Alfred L. Brophy, a professor of law at the University of Alabama who has written about reparations, praised the new proposals. “These are precisely the kinds of community-building, positive actions that one hopes will emerge from such a study,” he wrote.
Mr. Brophy added, “I look forward to the days when other leading institutions with connections to slavery -- like Yale, the University of Virginia, William and Mary, and Randolph-Macon College -- have similar investigations of their past and reach out to the community in positive, forward-looking ways as well.”
Background articles from The Chronicle:
