The University hopes to name a director of the center for the study of slavery and justice this fall, five years after the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice recommended doing so. The decision should be announced within four to six weeks, according to Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughin P'12.
The creation of the center, one of the initiatives recommended by the committee in 2006, was approved by the Corporation in 2007 but has stalled in the absence of a director. The search process had to begin anew when the candidate originally chosen rescinded the University's offer.
"It's been immensely frustrating that it has taken so long," President Ruth Simmons said.
Though it has taken nearly four years, the University is getting closer to completing the recommendations, which included an on-campus memorial to the slave trade and outreach and support for Providence public schools.
The memorial oversight committee also hopes to name an artist within the next nine months, according to Jo-Ann Conklin, director of the David Winton Bell Gallery and a member of the memorial oversight committee.
Near completion
For Simmons, the pace of the process has been trying. "It's been an odyssey," she said.
The University offered the directorship to a candidate a few years ago. The candidate — whom Simmons and McLaughlin declined to name — accepted the offer but later reneged due to personal circumstances. Now the University is in negotiations with a second final candidate, hoping for better results.
Simmons said the potential director envisions a center with a wide purview.
"With regard to issues of justice, this person would like to have not only a center that is the site for discourse on these issues worldwide, but also the locus for discussions on the campus," she said.
Academically, the center would house researchers with a variety of interests, including leading scholars on slavery and justice — who would hold temporary appointments at the University — and postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.
The candidate also hopes the center develops a relationship with the Providence community through programs for the public, something the original recommendation did not focus on, Simmons said.
Though Simmons has not been happy with the amount of time spent planning the center, she said the wait has had its benefits. She has seen an increase in exhibits and discussions on slavery from a variety of organizations, from the Smithsonian Institution to the United Nations.
"We started all this before that happened, and yet, now, I think what we're doing reaps the benefits of the worldwide attention that's been paid," she said. "I think the establishment of this center is today even more timely than when the committee first recommended it."
‘A space for contemplation'
According to former Chancellor Artemis Joukowsky '55 P'87, who sits on the memorial oversight committee, the memorial recalling the University's history with slavery poses particular challenges.
"We don't want to make anyone feel offended or guilty or victimized," Joukowsky said.
The committee's initial artist selection recently fell through, Conklin said, forcing it to restart its search and redefine what its members were looking for in a memorial.
"The report on slavery and justice was very clear that this should not be a memorial that elicits guilt," Conklin said. "They wanted it to be a learning process and that it should be a space for contemplation and learning."
Conklin said the committee hopes the piece will be finished by 2014, in time for the University's 250th anniversary. She also said the memorial will cost the University under $500,000.
Initially, the committee hoped to find a location for the memorial near University Hall — records show that four slaves belonging to University donors helped with its construction, Conklin said. But due to lack of space, the committee is now looking at locations near the Walk and the current location of the Plant Environmental Center next to Hunter Laboratory. The Plant Environmental Center is scheduled for demolition in fall 2013.
Wherever the location, the committee is focused on choosing a piece that best represents the University, Joukowsky said.
"What will represent Brown well 50 years or 100 years from now?" he asked. "We're very, very careful of what we put out."
Slow and steady
Two Brown initiatives in the Providence public schools that came out of the report continue to expand, albeit slowly.
Currently, the Fund for the Education of the Children of Providence, which awards grants to local schools, has an endowment of $1.26 million, according to Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar '87 MA'90 PhD'09, assistant to the president and a former member of the committee overseeing the fund.
The initial recommendation called for the fund to be endowed with $10 million, but its progress toward that goal has been slow.
"Given the economic context right now, it's kind of hard," she said. "If you look at the documents from the slavery and justice report, the response and the charge of the committee, it was always assumed that this was going to take time."
The fund has given around $250,000 to schools in the Providence area, Joukowsky said.
"We try to find — and this is the most important thing — we try to identify contributions to public education that directly impacts the students," he said. The grants are intended to "give them the opportunities that their predecessors could not have had," he said.
The Urban Education Fellows program, the other educational initiative to come out of the report, also continues to help local students, according to Kenneth Wong, professor of education and chair of the department.
The program allows a handful of graduate students to gain master's degrees in either teaching or urban education policy for free in exchange for three years of service in local schools upon graduation.
Wong said he has seen fewer applicants from the teaching side of the program because of the recent financial turmoil in the Providence school system and its attendant consequences for job security.
But Wong said he still feels the program is beneficial to both the students and the schools they go on to help. "We hope these graduates are going to be leaders in the future," he said.
Continued responsibility
Though the implementation of the committee's recommendations has progressed tardily, Simmons sees a silver lining in the delays.
"Throughout the period of time, people have remained committed to the effort, and it's given us time to think about space for the center and all of the mechanics of it," Simmons said. "So I think in some ways if the person who has the offer says yes, he'll get off to a faster start because we've actually had time to get things organized better."
A university like Brown has a duty as a "center of inquiry"to bring up topics like these, ytid="17">Joukowsky said.
"The University has to play a special role to make people aware of many things that they don't think about all that much," Joukowsky said. "If the University does not think about these, who will?"
