Though students and Rhode Island residents praised the final report of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice during a public discussion last night, it remains unclear how future community dialogue will be facilitated and how the report's recommendations will be implemented.
The committee released the report on Oct. 18 after nearly three years of research and discussion. Its recommendations - which include a center for the study of slavery, a memorial commemorating the slave trade and public acknowledgement of the University's historical ties to slavery - were not subject to much criticism at the event. Eight of the committee's 17 members addressed comments and questions from the audience, which filled half of Salomon 101.
The committee's chair, Associate Professor of History James Campbell, opened the two-hour forum with a word of thanks to local organizations for their help researching the report and then promptly turned the event over to the audience.
"This is the last thing this particular committee will be doing as a unit," Campbell said. Though the forum was publicized as the first in a series of public discussions, no agenda has been set, and the committee is not currently slated to organize any future events, according to Campbell.
"We're done, but we also thought that having issued a 100-page report, it was incumbent upon us to answer your questions," Campbell said.
Campbell said the forum also signified a transfer of the committee's work to the community itself.
For much of the meeting, Providence residents and a few students offered lengthy comments but posed few questions.
Several leaders of local organizations - including the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and the Providence chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - praised the committee's acknowledgement of Rhode Island's ties to slavery.
Representatives from Brown's various educational initiatives lauded the report's recommendation for increased involvement in local public education and mentioned the University's current efforts in area schools.
Lamont Gordon, who, as director of education outreach, is exploring how the University can better engage with local schools, urged audience and committee members to submit suggestions for the program he runs.
Joaquina Teixeira, executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, asked the committee to make its work useful nationally by integrating the history of slavery in Rhode Island and New England into school textbooks. A local fifth grade teacher said she hopes to incorporate the committee's work in her lessons.
Few offered any criticisms of the committee or its report.
Committee member Arlene Keizer, associate professor of English, said she had anticipated the audience would not just praise the report but instead question "all the things we missed talking about."
One Rhode Island native thanked the committee for illuminating the history of black Rhode Islanders like himself but asked why the committee had put aside the possibility of monetary reparations when it was created. "When will the debt be paid?" he asked.
In response, Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity, said the committee had sought to make recommendations that would be appropriate for an educational institution.
Next stepsHow exactly dialogue is to take shape in the coming months remains unclear. Several audience members expressed concern that the recommendations and discussion the committee seeks to spark might not come to fruition without some form of continued guidance.
President Ruth Simmons wrote in an Oct. 18 campus-wide e-mail that she "will issue a university response" suggesting possible action regarding the report and its recommendations "when it is appropriate to do so." In an Oct. 21 interview with The Herald, she said, "We might have an outline of what our response might be" by next semester.
Campbell said on-campus discussion of the committee is the "conversation that we need to nurture," but neither he nor the committee's other members offered clear indications of how that dialogue would unfold.
When Herald opinions columnist Ben Bernstein '09 suggested that most students aren't talking about the report and asked the committee how it planned to engage students in its work, Neta Crawford, an adjunct professor at the Watson Institute and member of the committee, said repeatedly: "organize."
Both attendees and committee members said discussion spurred by the report is no less important than potential action.
"The process is the most important thing ... the opening up of a conversation that has been shut down, erased and that has to continue in some way in addition to whatever concrete follow-through that the University Corporation should decide to take on," Crawford said.
Campbell and Allen both said the report's acknowledgement of slavery in Rhode Island is significant in itself because national dialogue about the institution and its legacy is so limited. Campbell said media response to the committee's creation in 2003 and the tendency to short-circuit discussions about slavery to talk of monetary reparations demonstrate how far Americans have yet to go in addressing slavery. Many Americans still conceive of slavery as a Southern phenomenon, said committee member and Professor of Public Policy and Political Science Ross Cheit said.
"You can't repair until the record is straight," he said.
A response from the Brown familyDescendants of Rhode Island slave-owners also responded to the committee's report. Katrina Brown, a descendant of the DeWolf family - which was once the biggest slave-trading family in the nation - said she hopes the University will pursue the report's recommendation to create a center to study slavery.
Sylvia Brown, an 11th-generation member of the Brown family, read a public statement, marking the first official statement from the Brown family since the committee's creation nearly three years ago.
Brown noted that members of her family find its ties to the Rhode Island slave trade "just as harrowing and uncomfortable as the next person." But she noted they are proud of their ancestors' work in the abolitionist movement and her grandfather's effort to desegregate the U.S. Navy in the 20th century.
She said she read the report while in Nepal working on a child welfare project and urged the committee to contribute to efforts to eradicate "contemporary manifestations of this historic evil."
After the forum, Campbell told The Herald that he saw Brown's statement as one of the most powerful moments in the committee's nearly three-year endeavor.
"I thought that was just one of the most extraordinary and eloquent statements," he said.
He said he was also pleased with the student turnout and thought the event was a success. "I just couldn't be happier," Campbell said.
