PROVIDENCE, RI – The Foundation for Intellectual Diversity today called on Brown University to suspend a $10 million plan for slavery reparations and instead use the funds to make up its budget deficit.
The Providence Journal reported Dec. 5 that the University had given $30,000 to three Providence elementary schools and planned to raise a $10 million endowment to support future grants to local public schools. The gifts were recommended in a 2006 report of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, which examined Brown’s historic ties to the slave trade.
“We wonder how alums would feel knowing that their donations to Brown could be used to further the political agenda of the faculty and administration,” said Stephen Beale, President of The Foundation for Intellectual Diversity. “We simply do not understand how funding programs at public elementary schools has anything to do with Brown’s mission of educating undergraduate and graduate students.”
Earlier this year, the University announced it was raising tuition by 3 percent and cutting as much as $90 million in expenses over the next five years in order to compensate for declining revenues.
“To blindly pursue a $10 million reparations program during an economic recession is not only frivolous, but deeply irresponsible,” Beale said. “We can have a debate about whether Brown should apologize for its role in the slave trade, but there is no question that the University owes alums and students an apology for the mismanagement of school funds.”
The Slavery and Justice Committee was convened in 2003 after a contentious debate about slavery reparations divided the campus in 2001. When The New York Times reported that Brown was exploring whether it should make pay reparations, President Ruth Simmons issued a denial in an April 28, 2004 op-ed in The Boston Globe:
“The Committee’s work is not about whether or how we should pay reparations. That was never the intent nor will the payment of reparations be the outcome. This is an effort designed to involve the campus community in a discovery of the meaning of our past,” Simmons wrote.
“Sadly, this promise has now been broken,” Beale said. “Once Brown started issuing payments to Providence public schools, this process crossed the line separating serious academic inquiry from political activism. Brown administrators can call these payments whatever they want, but anyone with a dictionary can tell that they are being less than truthful. We urge students, parents, and alums to hold the administration accountable for its words and actions.”
