2022 First Readings Introductory Letter

Of Place and Purpose

Dear Students,

At Brown, the First Readings program is designed to serve as an introduction to our shared learning community. It is an opportunity to come together as an incoming class — and as a campus — to explore one text in detail, so that we may have a common touchstone from which to begin and return throughout your studies.

In this context, I am grateful that the 2020 First Readings committee selected the Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, and that this selection was reaffirmed in 2021 and 2022 to facilitate the Report’s formal integration into Orientation. Published in 2006, this report examines the University’s relationship to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, and asks direct questions about how communities and institutions can address and repair injustice. This report was nominated in Fall 2019 by two dozen students, and selected by the committee in March 2020 before the tragic deaths of George Floyd and countless others brought renewed attention to the continuing legacy of anti-Black violence in the United States. I can think of no more appropriate reading to help us define a shared understanding of place and purpose before we can convene in person on College Hill.

The stories that we choose to share with one another help to define our understanding of place and purpose. Equally important, though, are the stories that go unspoken.

Growing up in Rhode Island, my classmates and I were taught that the American industrial revolution began in Pawtucket’s Slater Mill just miles upriver from Providence. On elementary school trips, we were taken to see how running water powered these first textile mills, and from middle school, we learned how the early textile industry was essential to our state’s economy. Each morning on the bus ride to my public high school, we passed a narrow street with a small reservoir on the right and a large 19th-century mill building on the left. As students, we were taught that this mill was important to the history of our town, particularly the village of Peace Dale, but our history lessons were silent about the specific textiles made there and their deep connection to the exploitation of enslaved people. This connection was explored in detail by Susan Oba ’06, one of the undergraduate researchers whose work informed the committee’s report, in her senior honors thesis entitled “‘Mostly Made, Especially for this Purpose, in Providence, R.I.’: The Rhode Island Negro Cloth Industry.”

In reading the Report on Slavery and Justice, you will have an opportunity to learn this story and others, and to revisit histories that you may have thought were settled. Reading this text will be challenging, especially as our nation grapples with centuries of systematic injustice and anti-Black violence, and especially for those who have experienced this injustice and violence first-hand. As a community of students and scholars, it is our obligation — particularly those who have not shared these experiences — to seek out learning and share knowledge. The painful truth is that the narratives most commonly shared about our nation’s history often overlook the pervasive, persistent, and insidious nature of slavery and racial injustice.

In the words of the report authors, “We cannot change the past. But an institution can hold itself accountable for the past, accepting its burdens and responsibilities along with its benefits and privileges.” One of our greatest privileges as members of the Brown community is our ability to study and reflect upon the past as expressed in Brown’s Liberal Learning Goals:

“Coming to terms with history involves far more than learning names and dates and events. It means understanding the problematic nature of evidence, and of the distance that separates the present from the past. It also means thinking critically about how histories themselves are written and who has the power to write them.”

Studying the past together provides us with an invaluable opportunity to better understand the present. Reflecting on the meaning of accountability, justice, and repair can help us transform our collective future. And engaging in difficult dialogue as a community helps to prepare us for tackling the many challenges our world faces. We look forward to the reflection and discussions that will ensue from this reading.

Sincerely,

Rashid Zia ’01
Dean of the College