Ruth Simmons greets fellow attendees at yesterday’s annual reading of George Washington’s letter at Touro Synagogue, in Newport.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

NEWPORT — In the historic Touro Synagogue yesterday, Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons put forth a fresh perspective on the written correspondence between George Washington and the congregation as she wove together topics of freedom, slavery, historical consonance and Israeli current events.

The letters between Moses Seixas, warden of the congregation at the time, and Washington are read annually as a celebration of religious freedom.

Seixas’ letter to the president, during Washington’s 1790 visit to Newport, refers to a nation with a government “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Washington’s response echoes those sentiments, assuring Seixas that all Americans “possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”

More than 150 people poured into the country’s oldest synagogue and listened as Nuala Pell, wife of former Sen. Claiborne Pell, read the letter from Seixas, and entrepreneur Jay L. Schottenstein read Washington’s letter.

Simmons, the first African-American president of an Ivy League school, praised the event as one integral to her own period of “study and reflection” and acknowledged that it occurred at a fitting time.

In 2003, Simmons appointed the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice to investigate the ties between Brown University and the slave trade. A response to the findings was published this year. Since then, a committee has been appointed to implement proposed recommendations.

“This event comes at an important moment in the history of Brown University, a moment when we at Brown are reflecting on and designing how we should acknowledge and commemorate our own history … I take from the reading of this letter a splendid example of how our history can be more robustly brought forward to instruct students about the ‘common weal and woe’ that we share across races, cultures, opinions and faiths,” she said.

She touched upon the moral contradictions underlying the noble desires of past leaders who were eager to uphold freedom, despite an indifference to the injustice of slavery.

“We all know that these lofty and compelling ideals were largely omitted from discourse when it came to Africans and Native Americans.… In failing to apprehend the corrosive evil of slavery and the immoral inequities that it was to create for generations of descendants, Washington compromised his legacy as a moral leader,” she said.

She insisted that people must examine moral disconnects in the past, highlighting the work of Brown’s slavery and justice committee. Failing to uncover and discuss the “unseemly aspects” of the university’s history, she said, would make validation impossible for the university’s abolitionist leaders.

Simmons delved into current events when she denounced a recent proposal by the Union of College and University Professors in Great Britain to break off connections with Israeli academics. Simmons was in Israel when the suggestions gained prominence.

Calling the proposal “evil,” she referred to the idea as an attack on individuals “in their role as academics and in their identity with a Jewish institution.”

“Is not fear of this kind of prejudice the inspiration for the letter to George Washington seeking reassurance about his commitment to permit bigotry no quarter?” she said.

Throughout the speech, Simmons took time to focus on her own ties to the Jewish community, citing the importance of the Jewish diaspora to her own African-American, Southern Baptist roots and tearfully thanking a number of Jewish mentors and friends. She mentioned her visit to Israel this summer as an important aspect of a “personal journey.”

“Standing at the Wailing Wall in the hot June sun, I marveled at how greatly my journey from the searing sandy flats of East Texas had been buoyed by the tenets of this generous faith that reached out in so many ways to protect and guide me. Through a robust adherence to faith that embraces all, millions have moved through time, making good on the notion that we are one humanity,” Simmons said.

ndungca@projo.com