Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity to move into Carr Hall

Author: Stephanie Joyce

On Nov. 3, members of the College community received an e-mail from Acting Provost Tim Spears about plans for a new Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity to be located at Carr Hall. For many, this was the first news that there were plans for such a Center, but it came at a fitting time. The following day Americans elected Barack Obama as the first black President of the United States.

Shirley Ramirez, Vice President for Institutional Planning and Diversity, latched onto the election as an example of the possibilities that the Center offers. "If the Center had been up, running, functional, with a Director, I would imagine incredible synergy happening. Students would be able to go to the Center and engage in issues," she said. "Not only would they do an intellectual analysis of what's taking place with race and politics in America, but how that is affecting us as a community."

Racial and ethnic diversity has grown at Middlebury over the last few years, with 23 percent of the Class of 2012 identifying as domestic students of color and an additional 12 percent as international students. The Center at Carr Hall aims to address the intersection of domestic and international issues of race and ethnicity through interdisciplinary study by faculty and students. Directed by a yet-to-be-appointed American Studies faculty member, the Center will house faculty offices, lecture and classroom space, and the International Student & Scholar Services office.

Voicing concerns that the growing number of centers and academic interest houses on campus create greater divisions rather than dialogue, Matt Rojas '11 said of the new plan, "Having a Center makes it specifically okay to talk about the issues at that Center, but the discussion is not spread out over campus."

Ramirez responded to this concern, emphasizing that as a primarily academic forum, the Center will aim to treat "diversity as a legitimate academic and scholarly area… [rather than] just celebrating diversity or putting on cultural programs" and will thus achieve broader dialogue.

The Center is funded by a $1.2 million grant from the Mellon Foundation that will support two new faculty positions, one in American Studies and one in international studies, in addition to programming for the Center.

Quoting the grant proposal, Spears said that the new Center "reflects a growing understanding that it is not enough to teach our students how to experience other places, we must also teach them how to understand the experience of otherness that many groups and individuals experience within the United States."

These possibilities surrounding the new Center were articulated by Bill Noble '11, who noted, "We're in a really strange place with respect to race and ethnicity here at Middlebury. Race, religion and ethnicity are very geographic in essence and at Middlebury everyone is out of their geography. On the one hand this makes it harder to talk about race because it isn't constantly an issue, but on the other hand this constitutes a special opportunity to talk about these issues."

The steering committee for the Center, currently comprised of four faculty members, will be conducting a search for the new Director of the Center over the coming months, in order to have the Center up and running by the fall of 2009. Ramirez emphasized that the memo sent out to students, faculty and staff was an invitation to the College community to engage the steering committee with their ideas and wishes regarding the Center. "The Center is intended to engage and create synergy, it's not to marginalize, to further create another silo for the other … and to do this we need community input."