The University's plans to make amends for its historic ties to the slave trade made front-page news in the Providence Journal this weekend and garnered coverage in nearly 100 media outlets.
The Associated Press wire service ran an article on the University's official response, announced Saturday, to last year's report by the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. That article ran in a wide range of media outlets, including the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and CNN.com. The Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education ran their own stories on the announcement.
The response calls for Brown to establish a $10-million endowment to support public education in Providence and provide tuition waivers for up to 10 graduate students a year who make a commitment to aid local schools, among other actions. The committee's report, released last year, found that Brown had benefited from past ties to slavery and the slave trade and recommended the University take steps to acknowledge and atone for its past.
Vice President for Public Affairs and University Relations Michael Chapman said the total number of media outlets covering the response was roughly the same as the number that covered the report's release last October.
But several major outlets that covered the original report did not run stories on the response. The New York Times wrote its own story and an editorial on the report when it was first released, but the newspaper did not cover Saturday's announcement.
