Brown University about 1770 showing President’s House and University Hall, built in part by slaves.

journal files

John Brown, a slave trader who financed the university that bears his family name.

NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

PROVIDENCE

More than three years after Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons, herself a descendant of slaves, established a committee to examine and expose the university’s historic ties to slavery, the university released its 106-page report without fanfare yesterday.

The 17-member Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice comprised administrators, faculty and students. It sponsored dozens of public programs, studied how other countries reconciled painful pasts, and explored whether Brown should make amends. In the end, the committee did not advocate monetary reparations. Instead, the group issued a series of recommendations, which will be discussed in a campus forum Nov. 1. Simmons said she will respond to the report and its recommendations “when it is appropriate to do so.”

“Given the nature of this project and its implication for our community, I believe we would all benefit from the broadest feedback from faculty, students, staff and alumni,” Simmons wrote in an e-mail thanking the committee for its work. “Whatever forms our recognition of this history takes should be responsive and meaningful to our community,” she wrote.

About a third of the report focuses on Brown’s deep ties to slavery and the slave trade; a third explores modern day slavery and reparations; and the remainder is recommendations and footnotes.

The recommendations include:

•Publicly acknowledging the participation of Brown’s founders and benefactors in the slave trade by revising Brown’s history to incorporate its connection to slavery and by the creation of an on-campus memorial.

•Establishing a university center for research on slavery.

•Adopting a more transparent and socially responsible investment strategy and policy for accepting gifts.

•Recruiting more economically disadvantaged students and diverse faculty, and offering more financial aid to diverse and international students. This includes actively recruiting students from Africa and the West Indies, “the historic points of origin and destination for most of the people carried on Rhode Island slave ships.”

PERHAPS MOST SURPRISING is the committee’s recommendation that Brown intensify and consolidate its efforts to improve education in Rhode Island, particularly the public schools in Providence.

Struggling urban school districts reflect the country’s history of racism and segregation, the report says.

“To appreciate the dimensions of the crisis, one need look no further than Providence, where 48 of the city’s 49 public schools currently fail to meet federally prescribed minimum standards for academic achievement,” the report states. “This situation represents a direct challenge to Brown University. One of the most obvious and meaningful ways for Brown to take responsibility for its past is by dedicating its resources to improving the quality of education available to the children of our city and state.”

Brown’s previous and current efforts — tutoring and mentoring programs, arts and literacy initiatives and teacher training programs — are well intentioned, but “highly decentralized,” “ill-coordinated,” and “chronically underfunded,” the report states.

“If Brown is to make a meaningful impact in local schools, it will require a sustained, substantial commitment of energy and resources for many years,” the report states.

The committee suggests that Brown create more classes for teachers and allow public school teachers to take one Brown course a semester free of charge. The group also wants the university to expand its Brown Summer High School program, which prepares Rhode Island students for college-level work. The committee recommends an increase in financing for the university’s master’s degree in teaching program, including full tuition waivers for students who commit to teaching in local public schools for three years. The group also recommends that Brown faculty offer enrichment courses in local schools and help schools develop new programs.

The committee urges the university to expand its new urban education policy program. The committee also advocates expanding internships for Brown undergraduates interested in teaching; coordinating with other colleges in Providence that are active in the schools; and providing administrative and staff support for the education initiatives.

THE SLAVERY AND JUSTICE committee was born of controversy and garnered national attention when it was established.

Simmons acknowledged in her letter yesterday that a campus tempest in 2001 over slavery reparations and free speech prompted her to create the committee in 2003.

Conservative speaker David Horowitz placed an advertisement in the Brown Daily Herald denouncing slave reparations. Students removed the newspapers in protest, and the campus was quickly engulfed in a debate about sensitivity and tolerance. Horowitz spoke at Brown two years later without incident.

“The work of the … committee was meant to demonstrate that, using valid research methods, open and candid discourse, and interdisciplinary collaboration, the campus could arrive at reasoned conclusions about the University’s history — a history that was at the time unclear in many regards,” Simmons wrote.

National media stories about the committee played up the idea of Brown paying reparations to slave descendants, a move some alumni protested and one that Simmons herself dismissed in an opinion piece published in The Boston Globe.

The report was initially scheduled to be released more than a year ago, but was postponed at least twice.

The sheer size of the group was one of the reasons for the delay, according to Ross E. Cheit, a committee member and associate professor of political science and public policy.

The committee met often at University Hall, built in part by slaves.

But it also met during half-day retreats, in encounters that began to feel like a sequestered jury. About a year and a half into the discussion, “we decided how we would deal with dissent,” Cheit said. “After we all agreed to disagree,” the group moved toward a unanimous decision, he said. “Compromises were made and the language was changed, but ultimately we all signed on.”

The committee chairman, James Campbell, said the report is designed to spark debate, not end it.

“We hope it will become the basis of a continuing dialogue,” he said. “This isn’t the last word. It’s the first.”

In its report, the committee concluded that universities are uniquely positioned to help societies explore the legacy of “crimes against humanity” such as slavery and racism, and therefore institutions such as Brown carry a special burden.

“If this nation is to ever have a serious dialogue about slavery, Jim Crow, and the bitter legacies they have bequeathed to us, then universities must provide the leadership,” the report states.

The forum, which is free and open to the public, will be held Nov. 1, from 4 to 6 p.m. in Salomon Hall, Room 101.

To view the report: www.brown.edu