Brown University issued an exhaustive documentation last week of its founders’ role in the slave trade, and recommended setting up a memorial on its campus in Providence, R.I., and establishing a center for the continuing study of slavery and justice.
Coming after three years of meetings, however, the report — by a 16-member Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice — may be more notable for what it doesn’t do: It falls short of offering an institutional apology, and while it discusses the issue of reparations at length, it makes no recommendation on whether to offer such payments to the descendants of slaves.
While many people had written to the committee suggesting that Brown set up additional scholarships for African-American students, the committee said it could not recommend doing so because the university is “need blind” in admission decisions. Brown commits to providing whatever financial aid the students it accepts might require, the report explains, but does not offer assistance on any basis other than need.
The report recommends, however, that the university dedicate more attention to the recruitment of students from Africa and the West Indies, the origin of most of the slaves who ended up in Rhode Island. It also says Brown should set a goal of becoming need-blind for international students, as well as domestic ones.
The committee was established in 2003 by Brown’s president, Ruth J. Simmons. She is the first African-American to lead an Ivy League institution and is herself a descendant of slaves.
Five months before she became Brown’s president, in 2001, The Brown Daily Herald, the student newspaper, created a firestorm by printing a paid advertisement written by the conservative activist David Horowitz, who opined that paying reparations was wrong.
Toward Truth
The university is named for Nicholas Brown Jr., a scion of a prominent mercantile family instrumental in the early industrial development of Providence.
The Browns were slave owners, the report says, although it adds, “by the standards of Rhode Island’s mercantile elite, the Browns were not major slave traders.” However, several members of the university’s governing board at the time had greater slave holdings, and their donations led to the building of the institution.
The report delves at length into the history and politics of public apologies and the paying of reparations, but offers no conclusions about either.
“Every recommendation in the report forms a sort of reparation,” said the committee’s chairman, James T. Campbell, an associate professor of American civilization, Africana studies, and history. The report says that Ms. Simmons stressed to the committee that it was not to determine “whether or how Brown might pay monetary reparations.”
“The most important contribution of this report is broadening the discussion of these issues.”
He said there were some members of the committee who favored issuing an apology, as some other institutions have done. But no consensus was reached.
The committee agreed, at a minimum, the report says, “to acknowledge formally and publicly the participation of many of Brown’s founders and benefactors in the institution of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as well as the benefits the university derived from them.”
It recommends that the university express humility about the issue from now on. “Tell the truth in all its complexity,” the report admonishes.
The report also recommends that the university make a discussion of its ties to slavery a part of its future freshman-orientation programs, issue a revised version of the institution’s history, offer its assistance to other universities making similar inquiries into their historical ties to the slave industry, and establish an annual day of remembrance.
Mr. Horowitz, who perhaps sparked the debate, was relieved to hear that Brown would not commit to reparations. “It tears the community apart over something that happened very long ago,” he said.
He described Ms. Simmons as a “very cagey” and “very intelligent” person who may not have wanted to offend potential donors by including a commitment to paying reparations.
Ms. Simmons sent an e-mail message to all students and employees, urging them to continue to discuss the issues raised. “When it is appropriate to do so,” she wrote, “I will issue a university response to the recommendations and suggest what we might do with regard to the findings.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 53, Issue 10, Page A27