File this one under the category of questions that could be answered simply by looking in the mirror. Last week, Brown hosted an American historian who spoke on—what else?—but race. The speaker, Nell Painter, tackled such burning issues as ‘what is whiteness?’ and, in an especially revealing moment of interdisciplinary failure, the professor wondered if ‘white people’ would continue to be ‘white’ with the further depletion of the ozone layer. There’s just one problem—assuming this is even a remotely meaningful question—the ozone layer is starting to recover. She then traced how whiteness has evolved over time—it was news to us that the Irish weren’t ‘white’ until the late nineteenth century or that it was that great social commentator Malcolm X who figured out that there was a ‘single white race.’ All of which built up to her ground-breaking thesis that,“Racial identity is less important than it was in, say, the 1930s.” Well, except of course at Brown University.

Nine years after the debate over slavery reparations rocked the campus, the verdict is in: Brown has decided in favor of reparations, thinly disguised as “social justice.” The University has given $30,000 to three local elementary schools, as the first installment of what The Providence Journal says is a multi-million dollar commitment. The gift was recommended in the 2006 report of the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. Of course, no one in the Brown administration or on the committee is calling this reparations, but how can it be construed as anything but? Merriam-Webster defines reparation as “the act of making amends, offering expiation, or giving satisfaction for a wrong or injury.” As this is meant to make up for Brown’s historic ties to the slave trade, it is most certainly reparations.

Such a move is especially egregious at a time when Brown is raising tuition and cutting $90 million in staff and other expenses in order to deal with the recession. We hope past and prospective donors think twice about about giving to a university that could turn around and use those funds to further a political agenda.