Brown Examines Ties to Slavery
Posted on March 15th, 2004
(Source: Brown University)Little Rhody sure is causing quite a ruckus these days. First, as I reported last month, students at Rhode Island's Roger Williams University established a scholarship for whites only. Now, neighboring Brown University has created a committee to examine that school's historic ties to slavery.
Brown president Ruth Simmons, herself a descendent of slaves and the first African-American woman to head an Ivy League school, convened the "Committee on Slavery and Justice." This group will spend two years digging deep into Brown's past to investigate how slaves and the slave trade shaped the university's early years.
And to what end? Well, nobody's quite sure yet, but Simmons is talking about "making reparations" of some sort. According to the New York Times, the committee will "recommend whether and how the university should take responsibility for its connection to slavery." Reparations? Responsibility? Brown's formative years may unfortunately have been tainted by connections to slavery, but to imply that the university is today somehow responsible for actions that occurred 240 years ago seems ludicrous. And suggesting Brown must now make reparations smacks of political grandstanding.
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