University faculty and officials said yesterday they are seeking to answer long-standing questions about whether slaves once labored on the campus and plan to produce a report on the issue next year.
Unlike other universities' committee-based efforts to investigate uncomfortable historical puzzles regarding slaves' role in establishing antebellum campuses, administrators here have approved a two-semester history course that will charge 30 undergraduate students with conducting research on the subject.
History professor Ira Berlin, who will lead the class alongside a doctoral student, said that although the history of slavery on the campus has long been unclear, "that this campus and our founders were a part of a slave society should be no great surprise to us."
"If slaves didn't build the buildings, they made the bricks that built the buildings," Berlin said. "And if they didn't make the bricks that built the buildings, then they hauled the clay. And if they didn't haul the clay, they made the wagons that hauled the clay."
Berlin hopes next year's students will uncover more specifics to be included in a report to be presented to university President Dan Mote.
The university's plan to issue a report comes after black faculty and others' criticisms of what has been called a hesitant approach to digging deeper into the university's past. A documentary film produced in connection with the university's 150th anniversary in 2006 acknowledged Maryland Agricultural College founder Charles Calvert's ties to slavery, but resources have long been too scarce to make any more substantial claims.
A historical document provided to a Diamondback reporter by history professor emeritus George H. Callcott, however, implied slavery was commonplace on the campus before the Civil War, and the resulting article intensified pressure to address the issue, Berlin said yesterday. Officials met to plan how to address the issue during the summer.
"As I get around the campus, there seems to be a sense that the university doesn't have a real serious concern about trying to get an answer," university Spokesman Millree Williams told Diamondback editors at a meeting yesterday. "From my view, it's really important that the university put the resources into it and see what we can do."
The General Assembly made Maryland the second state to express regret for its role in the slave trade, but Mote declined to extend a similar gesture from the university. Williams said Mote privately asked faculty and staff to explore ways to more adequately address the issue.
Meanwhile, university archivist Anne Turkos assigned her only assistant to research slavery one day a week but has noted 19th-century historical documents have been scattered and scarce since they were destroyed in a fire nearly a century ago.
That could complicate research for next year's students. If they uncover a significant amount of information, their report will also include recommendations on how university officials should respond to the class' discoveries. But both Turkos and Berlin acknowledged the possibility that the students find the research too difficult to issue a comprehensive finding.
At Brown University, a committee made up of faculty, students and administrators issued a report that attracted nationwide attention and resulted in funding for historically black colleges and universities, outreach efforts in the surrounding community and the creation of a "major research and teaching initiative on slavery and justice," according to Brown's website.
Government and politics professor Ron Walters, who has been critical of the university's response, called the research-based class "a rational way to proceed," but decried its timing.
"This is a very slow response," Walters said. "I think the response when the issue was raised should have been handled forthwith. I almost expected this to be a report rather than the beginning of a process."
Officials set aside $50,000 for the class, which will be overseen by a 12-member panel of faculty, staff and outside experts.
While the report will provide recommendations, where the university will preceed from there remains open-ended.
"It made sense that we got a lot of students involved in this enterprise and that we got a lot of experts, maybe not to come up with answers, but just to see what we can know," Williams said.
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