What’s the connection between historical slavery and mass incarceration today? How are chattel slavery and human trafficking similar and different? Why does anti-Black racism still persist, more than 150 years after the institution of racial slavery ended? 

Brown’s community of scholars, staff and learners have tackled these and other difficult questions for decades. Since the 2006 publication of Brown’s Slavery and Justice Report, their work has increasingly informed national conversations about historical and contemporary injustices. 

Each year, academic departments, centers and institutes at Brown convene scholars from across the country and world, generating crucial new insights on pressing issues. They make connections between historical slavery and contemporary race and power issues, such as mass incarceration and human trafficking. And they inspire Brown graduates to join the conversation as they become influential curators, scholars, activists and more.

Other departments, centers and institutes at Brown studying related issues of race — and the critical challenges arising from systems of bias rooted in racial slavery — include the Department of Africana Studies, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, among others.