Brown's History, Out of the Shadows

Wednesday, November 22, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time

James T. Campbell, an associate professor of American civilization, Africana studies, and history at Brown University, was chairman of the committee that investigated Brown's past ties to slavery.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Thomas Bartlett (Moderator):
    Hi everyone. I'm Tom Bartlett, a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Ed. I would like to welcome James Campbell, the head of Brown University's committee on Slavery and Justice. He's here to answer questions about the committee's recent report and other questions on the topic of historical ties between universities and slavery. Let's get started ...

James T. Campbell:
    As you probably know from the article in the Chronicle, I was a member of Brown University's Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, which recently issued its report. I am happy to answer questions as best I can, but I want to stress that I am only one member of a seventeen person committee. Though the committee filed a unanimous report, the opinions that I express here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my committee mates. I would also urge anyone interested in the committee's work to read our report, which is available as a free download (in pdf form) at the committee's website: www.brown.edu/slaveryjustice There are various supplementary materials included on the website that you might also find interesting, including scanned images of historical documents and video excerpts of many of the committee's public programs.

Question from Biko Agozino, The University of the West Indies:
    Should Brown University and other institutions that benefitted directly from slavery set aside fully funded scholarships for qualified students of African descent? Why not if not?

James T. Campbell:
    We talk about this issue at some length in our report. As we explain, Brown is a need-blind, need-based institution, which means that every admitted student is guaranteed whatever financial assistance they require to be able to attend. A corollary of this is that Brown, like other institutions in the Ivy League, does not provide financial assistance on any basis other than demonstrated financial need. For this reason, the committee did not recommend setting aside special scholarships for African American students. But we did recommend that the university work aggressively to increase the number of African American students on our campus, particularly from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and to increase the proportion of scholarship aid (as opposed to loans and work-study) in the financial aid packages of needy students. We also recommended dramatically increasing the financial aid resources available to students from Africa and the West Indies, who, like other international students, are currently excluded from the need-blind / need-based system.

Question from TeaMo:
    Can you please list all Universities who are known to have slavery profit ties? Who has more, North or South?

James T. Campbell:
    I'm afraid that I don't really have a list to hand. But I think that the burden of the committee's report is that any American institution founded before 1865 is going to have a history entangled in some fashion with slavery. Part of what we try to do in our report is to specify the particular nature of Brown's links, which reflect the central role of Rhode Island in the transatlantic slave trade. Other institutions, North and South, will have their own particular histories. One interesting case, to which we refer in the report, is the University of Alabama, where the task of "disciplining" slaves on campus was formally entrusted by the Board of Trustees to the faculty in the 1830s. The Faculty Senate at the university recently voted a resolution of apology on this issue.

Question from Simon Lewis, College of Charleston:
    At the College of Charleston we're coordinating a commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of the international slave trade for academic year 2007-8 as a way to open up discussion about the acknowledgment gap in Charleston's presentation of itself to the world--i.e., as a city of gracious living rather than as the painful birthplace of African America. We're working with numerous private, city, state, and national tourist entities all of which are already making very encourgaing moves. I wonder whether you have any suggestions for us or any advice about particular pitfalls to avoid.

James T. Campbell:
    That's a great question, and one I'd be happy to discuss with you at greater length. I guess the first thing I'd do is to warn you that the issues you are broaching are painful ones, and ones that are likely to elicit a variety of highly emotional responses. I certainly don't question the legitimacy of these feelings, but part of what we worked very hard to do at Brown was to try to carve out a space where people could discuss slavery and its legacy in an at least somewhat dispassionate way -- indeed, that was one of the central elements in President Simmons's charge to the committee. I'd also remind everyone involved that facilitating dialogue means listening respectfully to opinions with which one might strenuously disagree. It's not easy, but ultimately it's hard to imagine how this nation can make any progress on these issues if we don't first learn to discuss them openly.

Thomas Bartlett (Moderator):
    We've received some great questions already -- would love to have some more ... ask away!

Question from Thomas Bartlett:
    In preparing this report, was the committee generally in agreement on the recommendations? Were there some who felt the recommendations should have been more (or perhaps less) prescriptive?

James T. Campbell:
    I'm under a slight constraint here, since one of the things that we on the committee agreed to do was to keep our internal deliberations private. But the short answer is that, yes, we did all agree on these recommendations. We certainly debated what to include and what not to include, and in the case of recommendation one -- on the propriety of an institutional apology -- we frankly acknowledged some of our differences of opinion. But after three years working together, we were all pretty much in agreement about what we wanted to say. Among other things, we agreed that all our recommendations should pertain specifically to Brown. We also felt it was important that the recommendations flow organically from the substance of the report. You can read for yourself to see whether we succeeded in achieving that goal.

Question from Thomas Bartlett:
    What has surprised you about the reaction -- either nationally or from the Brown community -- to the report?

James T. Campbell:
    After three years in the public eye, we had a pretty good idea of what to expect. As we note in the report, there is a powerful tendency in this country to reduce the discussion about slavery, its continuing legacy in our country, and what responsibilities if any flow to us in the present as inheritors of that legacy to the narrow question of monetary reparations. In our report, we try very hard to broaden that discussion, but it was predictable that many people would go immediately to the recommendations to see how we dealt with that issue. I guess the other thing I'd mention is how weird it was to answer questions from reporters who hadn't even bothered to open, much less to read, the report. But that too is inevitable -- universities operate on different schedules than most media today.

Question from Ted:
    My gr-gr+++ grandfather, Nicholas Cooke, was colonial governor of Rhode Island and owned slaves. His portrait is in the Brown library. My feeling is to leave history as it is and use it as a platform to move forward.

James T. Campbell:
    How interesting. I am familiar with Governor Cooke. As for moving forward, I don't disagree at all -- the question is how we do that. Indeed, this is the primary question that we examine in the report, not only in the context of American slavery but in the context of many other societies around the world that have confronted (or failed to confront) painful pasts. If I thought that this exercise was little more than guilty hand-wringing about the past, then I wouldn't have had anything to do with it. On the other hand, I think that having an accurate and truthful understanding of one's past is crucial to a society's ability to move forward. I hope that we made this clear in the report, but you are in a better position to judge how successful we were than I.

Question from Chris Byrd - Oracle University:
    Have many other institutions ever gone so far as to investigate their past? Especially if it seems to have some unsavory element?

James T. Campbell:
    When you look around the world you can find lots of examples of institutions and societies that have undertaken to confront painful histories. Examples from the United States are a bit harder to find -- we try to suggest some of the reasons why in our report -- but you can find them even here. One might look at the recent truth commissions launched by the cities of Wilmington and Greensboro, North Carolina, or at the work that was done by reporters at the Hartford Courant. Plus the Episcopal Church has just launched a three year self study to explore the church's historical relationship to slavery and the slave trade. Universities have been a bit slower to act, though there are some examples here too, notably Emory, which is in the middle of a five-year project called (I think) "Transforming Community." All these examples and more are discussed in our report. Given the values that universities profess -- about truth seeking, reasoned dialogue, and historical continuity -- one would think they would stand in the van of this movement, but for the most part they haven't. Whether the experience of Brown will make it more possible for other institutions to launch these kinds of inquiries remains to be seen.

Question from Thomas Bartlett:
    Sylvia Brown, a descendant of the Browns for whom the university is named, spoke at a recent forum about the report. She had some kind words but also seemed dismayed that it did not include more positive aspects of Brown's legacy. Thoughts?

James T. Campbell:
    Yes, Ms. Brown spoke eloquently. Her main concern was that the report said nothing about the activities of her family after slavery, including the various philanthropic activities that they have been involved with in the twentieth century. I understand her point of view here, and I sympathize -- the Browns have given an enormous amount to this university and to this nation, and to see their history reduced to one unsavory chapter is surely very painful. On the other hand, the later history of the family clearly fell outside of our charge, which was to investigate the university's historical entanglement with slavery. Under the circumstances, all we could really do was to try to report the history in a careful and properly contextualized way. I hope we did that.

Question from May Penuela, University of Colorado:
    I do have a question about the use of the study and opportunities to gather historical data about the political economy of the slave trade. Not having had the opportunity to read the report, did the committee's investigation of the Brown family's ties to the trans-Atlantic slave trade extend to an analysis of profit/wealth accumulated by Brown's founder?

James T. Campbell:
    Yes, we looked as carefully as we could at the role of slavery and the slave trade in the creation of wealth in the 18th century. Part of our point was that it's very hard to separate, since most of the Rhode Island economy was wrapped up with slavery in some fashion. There is more about this in the report, which you can download for free at www.brown.edu/slaveryjustice

Question from Celia,Texas Woman's University:
    Of all the findings that came out of your investigations for the report, which surprised you the most?

James T. Campbell:
    A very good question, and one I've pondered myself. I was suprised to learn just how pervasive slavery was in the economy of 18th century New England, though I probably shouldn't have been, given that I teach about this subject. I was also amazed to learn about the wide variety of reparative justice initiatives that have unfolded in recent years around the world, many of which offer some useful lessons to the predicament of the United States. One of our main objectives in the report was to bring this wider experience to bear on the slavery reparations debate in the United States.

Question from Sarah Kreckel:
    Have you had any conversations with the state of Rhode Island about steps the state can or should take to commemorate or atone for its history? As a corollary, have you received any negative feedback about the report's recommendations from the Rhode Island or Providence governments? Essentially I am asking about the impact of the report on Brown's "host" city and state.

James T. Campbell:
    Certainly nothing negative so far, at least that I'm aware of. I would certainly hope that ongoing discussions of these issues will not be confined to our campus but will reach deeply into the wider community. One suggestion we've gotten from a couple people is that the slave trade memorial that we propose should not be located on the Brown campus but rather off campus, so that more people have an opportunity to see and reflect upon it. Plus the various proposals we recommend in regard to outreach to local public schools will require active collaboration between the university and city and state officials.

Thomas Bartlett (Moderator):
    Thanks to James Campbell for participating in our chat this afternoon (even though it's Thanksgiving eve!). If you'd like to read the Brown report -- which you should because it's truly fascinating stuff and engagingly written to boot -- you can go to:

http://www.brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/

Thanks for all your good questions.

James T. Campbell:
    Thank you all for your comments and questions. In closing, let me again invite everyone to check out the committee's website: www.brown.edu/slaveryjustice. You'll find not only the full text of the report, but also a variety of supplementary materials that might be of interest. You will also find an email address -- slaveryjustice@brown.edu -- to which you can submit additional comments, criticisms, and suggestions. If I have one hope about this whole business, it is that the dialogue we have tried to nurture here at Brown over the last couple years will continue on our campus and in the nation. So please stay in touch and thank you again for writing. JC