Why are a world leader and the head of a major university working together to seek apologies for slavery?
Who are they? British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons. Together, they are putting pressure on world leaders and institutions to address the ramifications of slavery.
Blair is one of few world leaders to attempt an apology for his country's participation in the slave trade. And Brown is setting itself apart by sponsoring research into its ties to slavery.
"Brown stepping forward and Prime Minister Blair's expression of sorrow are strong indications of the growing interest in looking at past slavery and the obligations of institutions to do so," says Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, and founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.
Blair, in a statement to The New Nation, a weekly black British newspaper, said the slave trade was "profoundly shameful" and that nations should "condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition ... [and] express our deep sorrow that it could ever have happened."
Brown's report goes much further. Created by the Steering Committee on Slavery, which was organized in 2003 by Simmons, who is black, it offers an in-depth discussion of Brown's connections to slavery. The 107-page report details artifacts donated to the university from slave owners, that the institution's first president arrived with his personal slave, that the university's first endowment drive featured a sail down the coast to raise funds from slaveowners in South Carolina, and the Brown family's links to the slave trade.
"Brown's is by far the most comprehensive study because it far outstrips anything in terms of depth of research and amount of effort put into it ... money for conferences, faculty, students all brought to bare," says Alfred L. Brophy, author of Reparations: Pro and Con and a law professor at the University of Alabama.
Beyond the revelations, the Steering Committee on Slavery, which is comprised of faculty members and students, suggested a set of measures to redress the institution's past. It also compiled and distributed a complete documentary of a slave ship's voyage to Africa to schools throughout the state.
"We were given an open-ended charge that did not dictate our conclusions but asked us to establish the facts," says James Campbell, chair of the Steering Committee and associate professor of American Civilization Africana Studies and History at Brown.
At other institutions, independent groups of students and administrators launched research into links to slavery. For example, an independent group of Yale University graduate students researched that institution's links to slavery and published their findings, entitled "Yale, Slavery & Abolition," on the web site, sans a university-sponsored study.
Yale, Harvard and Princeton representatives were not available for comment, according to spokespeople at the universities.
"The problem is that if these efforts are not driven by campus administrations, then they tend to lose focus over time," says Brophy. "If what you're relying on is individuals coming together and working on this, that only has as much momentum as the people behind it."
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