In 2003, Brown University President Ruth Simmons appointed a Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. The committee included faculty, students and administrators, charged to investigate and to prepare a report about the university’s historical relationship to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. This was the first major American university to launch such an inquiry into its past and the benefits scholars reaped from slavery. The final report, released in 2006, recommended a series of measures, including the creation of a center for the study of slavery and injustice, rewriting Brown’s history to acknowledge the role of slavery, creating a memorial to the slave trade in Rhode Island, and recruiting more minority students. Currently, other universities — among them Yale, Columbia, and Georgetown — are also engaged in investigating the past and determining how to use it to promote justice.
Dr. Brenda Allen was a member of the Brown Committee and spoke at Duke on February 7, 2017, about the Committee’s work. Currently, Allen is Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Winston Salem State University.
Dangerous Memories: Conversations around the past, social justice and constructing university memory
This series features speakers addressing the challenges of dealing with difficult or hidden histories on American university campuses. Our speakers address how their campuses and museums have confronted legacies of slavery, racism and inequality in a thoughtful way that promotes social justice. This series is held in conjunction with a Bass Connections Brain and Society project that is looking at how memory is constructed at Duke and laying out ways the campus could build a more inclusive story about its past.
