Brown repents its slavery past

Brown University should come to terms with its past connections to slave labor and the slave trade through a memorial and a center dedicated to the study of slavery and justice, a committee recommended in a report released Wednesday.

The 106-page report is the result of three years of historical inquiry and ethical debate by the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. It represents the most complete investigation to date into Brown's connections to slavery and makes Brown one of only a handful of major universities to acknowledge those ties.

"We cannot change the past," the report said. "But an institution can hold itself accountable for the past, accepting its burdens and responsibilities along with its benefits and privileges."

Appointed by Brown president Ruth Simmons — herself a descendant of slaves and the first black Ivy League university president — the 17-member panel worked to uncover the truth about the university's ties to slavery and generate discussion on the issue. In her mandate to the committee, Simmons explained that she hoped it would "help the campus and the nation come to a better understanding of the complicated, controversial questions surrounding the issue of reparations for slavery."

Before going to Brown, Simmons was a vice provost at Princeton and an acting director of the University's Program in African-American Studies. When Brown's committee was appointed in 2004, President Tilghman told The Daily Princetonian that Princeton "has no plans for forming a similar committee."

The report details the slave trade that existed in colonial Rhode Island and the connections members of the Brown family had to slavery. One member of the family, John Brown, was an unapologetic slave trader and defender of slavery. Brown was treasurer of the university for more than two decades in the late 1700s.

"Few if any institutions in our society are as quick to erect memorials as universities," the report said. "The Brown campus contains literally hundreds of statues, stones, portraits, plaques and other markers, each placed by one generation to inform and edify generations to come. Yet there are no memorials acknowledging the University's entanglement with the trans-Atlantic slave trade."

Besides the memorial and center, the committee recommended that the university more actively recruit students from Africa and the West Indies, while continuing its aggressive efforts to bring African American students to the campus.

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The report also urged the university to "tell the truth in all its complexity" by sponsoring public forums to discuss the report and teaching new students about the university's history as part of freshman orientation.

Overall response to the release of the report has been positive, but Simmons noted that the recommendations will still be open to debate in public forums and other committees. "When it is appropriate to do so," she said in a letter to the Brown campus, "I will issue a university response to the recommendations and suggest what we might do with regard to the findings."