Returning to Providence RI and Brown University

I often am asked by friends and others where my favorite place on earth is. Usually I meet their question with hemming and hawing before mumbling something generic about "the West Coast" or "the East Coast" or "England" or "Germany" as my favorite location. Thankfully, however, when they ask me the question it is usually because they want to tell me where their favorite location is. Thus, they ignore my pained expression and, assuming a cherubic or other-worldly countenance, regale me with stories of Rio or Tahoe or Paris or the Great Smokies. I even had one law professor colleague who developed his "top 10" list of favorite world cities, from Marrakesh to Rio to San Francisco, a list that he revised every year while writing cutting-edge books on gender discrimination.

Nevertheless, I was thinking about this question as I returned to Providence, RI during the first week of November, to meet one professor and re-connect with another from my deep past at Brown University (BA in 1974; Ph. D in 1982). As I drove up College Hill and parked my car in the only "free" parking place on Waterman Street (the parking gods must have been looking out for me), I felt a strange sense that, even though I knew I would recognize NO ONE on campus, I was at home. How can you feel completely at home when you know no one? Because of the plastic and, indeed, esemplastic (to use a Coleridge-coined word) power of memory. This power of memory gave me the sense that Providence, RI and especially the campus of Brown University is my place, even though my place will probably never recognize me. Like Scott Joplin, whose 1909 "Country Club Rag" was characterized by Joshua Rifkin as Joplin's longing for or ode to a world which probably never cared whether he existed, so my sense of reverie as I walked through the campus was felt irrespective of whether anyone who passed me knew me or cared that I existed.

And this sense or feeling of belonging also gave me a feeling of empowerment, a sense that I could stride right up to the central office in campus, the nerve center of this chic Ivy League school and announce myself, without appointment or advance notice. So I did. I wandered across the campus green until I reached University Hall on my right. UH, one of the many places where George Washington slept during the Revolutionary War, is a charming 4-story brick building, deeply paneled within, that has since time immemorial housed the adminstrative offices of the University. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, I decided to go to the receptionist outside the President's office. I then posed her a question that left her speechless.

My Question

No, I didn't propose marriage. I asked her a question about a clock. I asked her if I could see the Esek Hopkins grandfather clock. She, who was no doubt trained to field all kinds of questions from all kinds of strange people who showed up at the main reception of an Ivy League school, looked completely nonplussed. I then explained myself. I told her I was a two-time graduate of Brown, and that I had been poring over the report entitled Slavery and Justice, a report just released by the Brown University steering committee on that subject. The committee had been appointed by President Ruth Simmons in 2003 to study the way the University might have been implicated in the slave trade of the 18th century and to propose recommendations on what we should do in 2006 should our forefathers at Brown have been so implicated.

One of the delightful things about that report (there are several points they make that aren't, in my judgment, so well-taken) is that it tells the story of the Esek Hopkins clock. Hopkins, a lesser-known brother of one of Rhode Island's great citizens, Stephen Hopkins, was the captain of slave ships in the employ of none other than the eponymous Brown brothers around the time of the Revolutionary War. When he died, he willed his belongings, including a large grandfather clock, to his descendants. One of them, in 1852, decided to give the clock to Brown. That clock was placed in University Hall and, in fact, was in the very meeting room occupied by the Standing Committee on Slavery and Justice as they did their deliberations. It wasn't until the committee was about two years into its work that someone decided to look up from the papers they were accumulating and ask, "Hey, what's that clock doing here? Does it have a story too?" Then the committee discovered that as they had been doing their 2003-06 work on trying to redress the effects of slavery on Brown's history, the clock of the big slave trader was ticking, marking their every moment. It was almost as if Esek Hopkins was alive today, ticking away until someone would do something either to redress his work or to integrate what he did into the history of the University.

What's A Receptionist to Do?

Thus, the Hopkins clock bulked large in my mental space that morning (Nov. 2, as I recall) as I stood before the receptionist outside the President's Office at Brown University. She quickly hid all traces of confusion or lingering thoughts about my sanity and deftly said, "Well, maybe the President's personal secretary can help you on that one." What a brilliant answer. So kind and helpful. So passing of the buck to an unsuspecting colleague. Quickly she dialed the President's secretary's number. She was in. The receptionist came back and looked at me with a big smile. "Yes, she would be happy to see you now." Translate, "I would be happy to get you out of my face now, Mr. Long, and give you to another helpful woman." So, she turned me over to President Ruth Simmons' secretary. The next essay finishes this story.

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