When Brown University released its landmark 2006 report documenting the institution’s historical involvement in slavery, many of its recommendations were one-time fixes: revising the university’s official history, creating memorials, and the like. Some, however, required longer-term engagement, such as the creation of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ), a research hub focusing on the history of slavery and its contemporary impacts.

‘Indefinite’ presents Walker’s sociological findings on sleep hygiene, role of racism in jail culture

Book discusses consent, politics, violence of Antebellum era New Orleans

Policing and criminalization of sex work hurts massage workers, even when they aren’t sex workers.

The shootings of Asian massage workers in Georgia this month have been framed as part of a surge of anti-Asian violence during the Covid-19 pandemic. But they’re also part of a longstanding problem: the violence against and the surveillance of migrant massage workers.

These women are vulnerable because of their race, their gender, their immigration status — and for the type of work they do. Asian massage parlors have long been a target of law enforcement and anti-trafficking organizations who see “illicit massage businesses” as loci of human trafficking.

Nearly all of these organizations have called for the increased surveillance and policing of massage businesses, and the result has been hundreds of raids across the country which have terrorized and criminalized massage workers. These systemic forms of violence cannot be divorced from the brutal killings of massage parlor workers in the Atlanta area on March 16.

A newly created research position is designed to shed light on some of the most deeply troubling elements of human history while exploring new ways of envisioning the future. Applications are currently being accepted for the two-year Historical Injustice and Democracy Postdoctoral Research Associate position, a joint project of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) and the Watson Institute—just one example of the growing relationship between the two, according to Edward Steinfeld, director of the Watson Institute.

Brown University, Williams College and the Mystic Seaport Museum scholars will use maritime history as a basis for studying the relationship between European colonization, dispossession of Native American land and racial slavery.

Annual Financial Report 2020
Like most institutions of higher education, Brown University faced enormous financial and operational challenges in Fiscal Year 2020 in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet despite the trying circumstances, Brown remains financially strong and fully committed to pursuing its ambitious plans for excellence.

The annual financial report offers an overview of the University’s financial statements, success in fundraising and investment performance. Covering Fiscal Year 2020, this year’s report highlights the ways in which the financial markets and growth of the economy created opportunities for excellent financial results for Brown, even in the midst of an unprecedented global health crisis.

The struggles of those who survive epidemics do not end when they leave the hospital, said Adia Benton ’99, an associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern University.

At a talk hosted by the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice Tuesday, Benton discussed her experiences with survivors of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone — specifically, how the deadly disease brought the survivors new problems.

Doctors on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis describe an unprecedented health emergency that has exposed the societal wounds among the poor and people of color that have persisted for centuries.

"Consumer and corporate-focused approaches to labour exploitation and trafficking are ineffective," writes Dr. Elena Shih.

Instead, universities have taken the lead on what they call reparative justice. Georgetown University apologized to descendants of slaves who were sold to pay school debts and recently pledged to raise $400,000 a year for programs to help those descendants. In October, Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey announced a nearly $28 million plan, including scholarships to descendants of enslaved Africans.

For a scholar of public health like Professor Ronald Aubert, the work of the interdisciplinary CSSJ Race, Medicine, and Social Justice Research Cluster is of critical importance. The research cluster is conducting desperately needed research in the fields of public health,  probing how racism pervades medicine and how the racialization of medical “evidence” that guides clinical practice has largely been ignored.

“At our core, we believe that human trafficking and labor exploitation are driven by a system of racialized global inequality, exacerbated by unequal development and excessively punitive policy that often govern border control,” explains Professor Elena Shih, the Manning Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies and faculty leader of the CSSJ’s Human Trafficking Research Cluster.

“This is a different way of learning and engaging in history,” notes Professor Zach Sell of the work of the Atlantic Slave Trade Research Cluster. Since 2017, the CSSJ has been engaged in an ongoing collaboration with Firelight Media to produce a groundbreaking, multi-part documentary series entitled Creating the New World: The Transatlantic Slave Trade.

On the 400th anniversary of the start of slave trade in the British American colonies, students and faculty at Brown’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice are engaging in research for a PBS miniseries directed by renowned documentarian Stanley Nelson, hosting a two-day symposium on the lasting effects of slavery and more.

More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.

For Rutgers University PhD Candidate Kelsey Lizotte, reparations are about far more than a monetary exchange.

Although the destination has a reputation for being a bit melanin deficient, the historical presence of Black people in one of the first and pivotal slave states, is loaded with the contributions of the enslaved Africans that literally built the city of Providence and subsequently its textile industry.

Immediately upon opening its doors in 2012, Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) launched a rich yearlong series of programs that asked critical questions about the trans-Atlantic slave trade, its legacies and ramifications for the present.

Beginning next Wednesday, Dartmouth will host a two-day lecture series as part of a conference titled “Reflections on the Afterlives of 1969.”

Anthony Bogues, a professor at Brown University who studies the history and consequences of slavery, said American society is caught between countervailing forces: an increase in overt racism, including recent racist tweets from US President Donald Trump, on the one side, and greater efforts to come to terms with the nation's history of racism and legacy of slavery on the other.

An exhbition of photos and stories from six Providence families of African descent shows how immigration changes home cooking traditions.

CSSJ exhibition Liquid Knowledges is featured in Biscayne Times. The exhibition includes work by Haitian artist Eduoard Duval-Carrié, who will be participating in a workshop with the CSSJ later in April.

Elena Shih is interviewed by Thomas Thurston about her work on human trafficking rescue efforts and the politics of labor, gender, and sexuality on last week's Slavery and It's Legacies podcast, out of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University.

Initiative creates awareness of Rhode Island’s historic role in slavery

The Providence City Council has passed a resolution in support of an effort to memorialize the city’s role in the slave trade. 

Global Slavery and Exhibitionary Impulse was de titel van een symposium (11/12 juni 2015) waar ik een presentatie gaf over de manier waarop het Amsterdam Museum in 2013 slavernij toonde als interventie in de Gouden Eeuw tentoonstelling. Hoe vertaal je exhibitionary impulse? Als het tentoonstellen van slavernij of misschien eerder de neiging tot het tentoonstellen?

Rhode Island’s Episcopal Church is about to unveil plans for a museum and teaching center dedicated to the slave trade. The state has a long and difficult history of involvement  in slavery.  RIPR political analyst Scott MacKay discussed the proposal with Episcopal Bishop Nicholas Knisely, whose wife happens to work for Rhode Island Public Radio.

More than two dozen experts at three events this month will talk about what has become, arguably, the nation's number one topic: Race.

Speakers present on colorblindness, schools as common settings for racial struggles

Soon, some of the nation’s brightest students will learn whether or not they have been accepted for early admission at the country’s most elite universities. Few of these young people, however, are aware of how many of these hallowed institutions of higher learning have troubling aspects to their storied history, including Harvard, Yale, and my alma mater, Brown: Each has ties to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.