Racial Histories of Higher Education in New England: A Symposium Co-Hosted by The New England Quarterly

September 27

Conference held at the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02215

with a keynote address by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight

Please join us for a symposium on the racial histories of higher education in New England, co-sponsored by The New England Quarterly and the Massachusetts Historical Society and supported by Mass Humanities. As battles have raged over the meaning and fate of Confederate monuments across the south, colleges and universities in New England, generally regarded as liberal bastions, have also been engaged in a deep and consequential reckoning with aspects of their history and ongoing practices that rest on the legacies of slave trade and settler colonialism. This event will highlight the work of a diverse range of historians, as well as university archivists and museum professionals, discussing a range of issues from the Colonial period to the present that shape the industry, experience, and cultures of higher education. They will delve into endowments, admissions, human remains, land use, art and artifacts, reparations, repatriation — and also a long tradition of struggle on the part of Black and Native students, scholars, and activists who have also claimed these institutions as their own. 

Registration

All attendees must register to attend the conference. Note that conference presenters and commenters do NOT need to register.

If you would like to be placed on the waitlist, please e-mail Cassie Cloutier at ccloutier@masshist.org. If space becomes available, we will contact the names on the list on Thursday, September 26. Registration includes the full day of panels, receptions, lunch, and the keynote.

Registration is free for graduate students, teachers, and adjunct faculty. Those interested should email ccloutier@masshist.org to register.

Questions about registration? Email Assistant Director of Research Cassandra Cloutier ccloutier@masshist.org.

Schedule

Friday, September 27

Massachusetts Historical Society

9:00-9:30 a.m.
Arrival

9:30-10:00 a.m.
Welcome Reception (Coffee, tea, pastries)

10:10-11:50 a.m.
Panel 1: "The Settler University"

Chair – Mary Amanda McNeil, Tufts University

Robert Lee, University of Cambridge
“Colonial Extraction for Public Education: The Case of the Connecticut School Fund”

Lisa Conathan, Williams College
“We are the Bearers of His Name: The Williams College Nickname as Colonial Memorial”

Alan Niles, Harvard University
“Teaching Harvard and Native Lands”

Lucy Wickstrom, Tufts University
“’A Portion of Land that Was Part of Nipmuc Territory’: The Struggle for Land in Grafton, Massachusetts by the Nipmuc Nation and the Property’s Acquisition by Tufts University”

11:50 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Lunch

12:40-2:20 p.m.
Panel 2: "Early Black Campus Protest, White Supremacist Afterlives"

Chair - Anthony Bogues, Brown University

Michael Jirik, University of Missouri
“Black abolitionist Critiques of Slavery’s Colleges”

Kabria Baumgartner, Northeastern University
“Education by Petition: Black Students at Harvard Medical School in the 1850s”

Evelynn Hammonds, Harvard University
“Human Remains in Harvard University Museum Collections: The Dilemmas of Building a Culture of Ethical Stewardship”

Donald Yacovone, Harvard University
“David Saville Muzzey, American Identity, and Teaching While Supremacy”

2:20-2:30 p.m.
Short Break/Coffee

2:30-4:10 p.m.
Panel 3: "Race, Law, and the University"

Chair – Daniel Coquillette, Boston College Law School

Bruce Kimball, The Ohio State University
“The Branding of Harvard Law School: Neglecting, Recollecting, and Rejecting Isaac Royall’s Slaveholding, 1936-2020s"

Jonathan Feingold, Boston University School of Law
“Racial Literacy”

Vinay Harpalani, University of New Mexico School of Law
“Anti-Asian Discrimination and the Attacks on Affirmative Action: The Roots of SFFA v. Harvard”

Kent Greenfield, Boston College Law School
"The End of Narrow Ends for Affirmative Action”

4:15-5:30 p.m.
Keynote address by Craig Steven Wilder, MIT

with Mark Peterson, Yale University

5:30-6:30 p.m.
Reception

Sponsored by