Feature Stories

Sixty-five alumni and nearly 30 members of the Davis family came to Williams on October 19 and 20 to celebrate the rededication of the Multicultural Center as the Davis Center. Founded in 1989 in response to student protests, the MCC has long supported underrepresented students at Williams. Twenty-three years later, the population of the college is extremely diverse, the curriculum has evolved to include courses, programs, and departments those protestors from the 80s could only dream about.

Today, then, said Davis Center director Lili Rodriguez, “We are faced with a new question: How do we engage all of our citizens?” The center’s new name signals a new mission focused on three pillars: to educate, to support, and to lead.

The weekend’s events kicked off with the annual Davis Lecture, this year given by Danielle Allen, the UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Allen’s talk, on Education and Equality, focused on a close reading of the Declaration of Independence, and was followed by a concert by the celebrated Los Angeles culture-mashers Ozomatli in the Lasell Gym.

On Saturday morning, a series of panel discussions and workshops began with the Davis Center staff reflecting on the history of the center and their vision for the future. To an audience of more than 50 alumni, faculty, and staff, Rodriguez explained that the center was rededicated to honor W. Allison Davis ’24 and John A. Davis ’33 because they “serve as our legacy, as our reminder, and as our benchmark.”

W. Allison Davis graduated summa cum laude and as valedictorian from Williams in 1933. After studying English at Williams and earning a master’s degree from Harvard, Davis was denied a junior faculty position at the college, a rejection he attributed to racial politics and for which he bore a nearly lifelong resentment. Turning his anger into action, Davis changed fields, studying social anthropology and psychology. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1942, and went on to influence policy on low-income children’s access to education, teach in the University of Chicago’s department of education, and publish several important works in the field, including Children of Bondage: The Personality Development of Negro Youth in the Urban South (1940) and Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (1941).

Like his older brother, John A. Davis studied English at Williams and graduated summa cum laude. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia in 1953, and he served as the lead researcher in the Brown v. Board of Education case. He worked in politics and policy development to end discrimination and develop fair employment practices in the U.S. and Africa.   

Rodriguez described the mission of the Davis Center as reflecting the vision of these two men. The center’s aim is “to give students the skill set to inspire them and help them build community,” adding that, “to transform the college culture, we need to be a resource for all students.” Therefore, while the Davis Center will continue to serve as a support network for historically underrepresented students, Rodriguez explained that, “one of the ways we do that is to bring it to the entire community.”

Calling this a paradigm shift—because the MCC has historically been considered a place for students of color—Rodriguez hopes it will be transformative.

Another change is in the curriculum: “We need to teach students that they don’t have to make the choice between scholarship and activism,” Rodriguez explained. To that end, the Davis Center will partner with an academic program or department each year to host a research conference, and Rodriguez and Assistant Director Taj Smith will teach a course each spring.

As German professor Gail Newman, faculty fellow to the Davis Center, explained, “We have to learn deeply about others and think critically about ourselves.”

Michael Reed ’75, vice president for strategic planning and institutional diversity, led a discussion about first-generation college students at Williams, and strategies he has identified they use to navigate their experience in college. Conference attendees then split up to attend various panel discussions about leadership, education, and activism. Bilal Ansari, the Muslin Chaplain at Williams and the associate director of community engagement, spoke about activism on a panel Saturday afternoon, asserting that, “one’s individual passion, when joined with collective compassion, can join together to create change.”

More than 100 students, faculty, staff, and community members attended the ribbon cutting ceremony Saturday evening, where President Adam Falk expressed his gratitude to the Davis family. He said that Williams has “grown a lot in 100 years, but we have enormous work to do.” Some of that work involves the college’s “opportunity to be intentional about its community,” he said, asking: “What is Williams? Who will we be together? How will we be with each other? That is what the Davis Center is here to help us do.”

John Davis ’63, son of John A. Davis, was among the Davis family members in attendance, and explained that his “Dad and uncle Allison would be very happy about this, not so much for themselves, but because it represents a change in attitudes about culture and opportunity” at Williams. “It is a change from the Williams they knew, a change from the Williams I knew.”

Asking the entire Davis family to stand with her on the steps, Rodriguez brought the ceremony to a close, expressing her gratitude to the Davis brothers and their descendants, who “help us carry the burden,” going on to assert that, “we owe it to the next generation to help make their burden a little lighter.”

The conference ended Saturday night with more than 250 people attending Johnnetta B. Cole’s keynote address. Cole is the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, a longtime scholar-activist and public intellectual and former president of both Spelman and Bennett colleges. “The Davis Center doesn’t just do the right work, they do sacred work,” she said. Cole reiterated Rodriguez’s remark about the burden to affect change for the next generation when she said, “We didn’t get promised that it was going to be easy. But what is your alternative to your place in the struggle?”

Cole said she sees that struggle as central to receiving an education. “Excellence in education is only possible if there is diversity,” she said, and excusing her use of slang, went on to add that, “bigotry ain’t in the chromosome; it is learned. And if it is learned, it can be unlearned.” Ending her talk to a standing ovation, Cole said that although we are “still such a mighty long way from the day when no one is judged by the color of their skin, by the shape of their body, by who it is they couple with, by which supernatural force—if any—they worship, by how much money they have, and indeed by whether they are fooling themselves to think they are fully able or admit that they are differently able,” the work of the Davis Center is how we get there.

As part of this year’s Gaudino danger initiative, the Williams College dance department companies came together with choreographer Adam Hendrickson, a former New York City Ballet dancer, to create a “choreographic experiment.” The dancers had only three hours to create a work that they performed in front of 500 people as the opening piece to the New York City Ballet’s performance on Oct. 19, 2012, at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance.

A New Work: A Choreographic Experiment
Choreography by Adam Hendrickson
Performed by Brittany Baker-Brousseau ’11, Tre’dez Colbert ’14, Emily Cook ’13, Sierra McDonald ’16, Lillian Podlog ’15, Ayanna Smith ’13, Madison Weist ’15, Kallan Wood ’10
Musician: Gary Rzab

On Friday, Oct. 5, President Adam Falk cancelled classes, and the bells rang out “The Mountains,” signifying the start of Mountain Day 2012!

Students hiked over Mount Greylock, grabbed lunch at the all-campus picnic, joined an adventure race, enjoyed an evening polar bear swim.

Check out the complete schedule of events. and visit the Outing Club’s website for more information on activities throughout the year.

And to find out more about the history of Mountain Day (which began more than 150 years ago as Chip Day and Gravel Day and has since evolved to the annual tradition of a spontaneous break from classes), take a look at this page from College Archives.

Happy Mountain Day, everyone!

Share your #mtnday experience!

KKTV Fox 11 reporter Phil Shuman ’79 attended both the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

You have to love politics to attend a national  convention. Hotel rooms 30 miles out of town. Security checkpoints and 12-foot-high steel fences. Metal detectors  on virtually every corner. Enough police officers with automatic weapons to invade a medium-sized country. Secret Service dictating your every move. Hot air inside; hotter, humid air outside. Crowds. Lines. Traffic. Hurricanes. Rainstorms. Did I mention the 12-foot fences?

I don’t want to sound negative, but three days of this (mercifully shortened from four)—all to nominate a presidential candidate who’s already been selected by his party—seems like a lot of time, effort, and tax dollars that could be put to more productive use.

Having traveled to both Tampa and Charlotte on assignment as a local TV news reporter from Los Angeles, it’s definitely exciting to be “in the room” when the big speeches happen. At the same time, conventions are outdated, expensive, logistically challenged dinosaurs. They’re gatherings of tens of thousands of  party loyalists, politicians at every level, untold numbers of staffers, and omnipresent PR types who love to hear themselves talk, wave banners, have parties, touch base with their friends from the good old days, and hope they show up in the background of a Fox or CNN or MSNBC broadcast. The conventions’ time seems to have come and gone, at least from my perspective in the Fox affiliates skybox and on the ground, waiting in those endless security lines.

Going back to the ’40s, conventions actually performed the role for which they were designed: to vote for and nominate a candidate from the party to run for president. But now, the delegates have already been “pledged” in the primary and caucus processes, so the candidates have already been selected. As a result, there’s no suspense or indecision or controversy or uncertainty. The last time we saw a Democratic battle was in 1980 in New York City, when Teddy Kennedy decided to challenge sitting president Jimmy Carter’s nomination. Kennedy lost. The Republicans had their last contested convention battle in 1976, when Ronald  Reagan tried to boot Gerald Ford after Ford, the incumbent, failed to win enough delegates during the primaries to ensure a nomination. Again, no luck. Since then, conventions have been entirely predictable.

In a time of shrinking budgets and economic hardship, what may be even more outrageous is how much we taxpayers spend on conventions. Each party got at least $18 million in taxpayer funds for its side’s candidate, then each raised tens of millions in private donations. What’s more, since the conventions are officially designated as “National Security Events” (think Super Bowl), the federal government picks up the tab for keeping everyone safe, to the tune of $50 million per convention.

And yet…

There are payoffs. During the conventions, more people are tuned into the race for president than ever before, at least for the hour or so of the final night when the candidates make their highly anticipated speeches. The prime-time hour of TV coverage gets good, solid ratings, and people are able to focus on the merits of the candidates and their platforms, unfiltered by slick campaign ads.

We get to think about important things, such as who has a better vision for the future of the country. While national media figures like Sean Hannity or Brian Williams or Wolf Blitzer get to sit down with the candidates themselves, a local reporter like me can ask the Mayor of Los Angeles, Democratic convention co-chair Antonio Villaraigosa, about what all this means to Southern California. (His answer: in large part a more rapid distribution of transportation dollars and the fact that President Obama is a “friend” to Los Angeles). I can talk to someone so far out of the limelight that they walked around almost unnoticed, like former Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis. I think he had one of the best sound bites of the two conventions when he told me, briefly, in Charlotte: “We had to put up with Romney for four years. … That story has to be told.”  I was able to ask the Rev. Jesse Jackson, mobbed by the media wherever he went in Charlotte, about the pride he felt in seeing President Barack Obama on stage, and about the path that led through such figures as Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., Strom Thurmond, Jackson himself, and the president, and about how a generation ago North Carolina would have never hosted a Democratic convention. In Tampa, it was a chance to get Karl Rove’s reaction to the much-anticipated Mitt Romney speech and the curious Clint Eastwood performance. (When I asked Rove to rate the night on a scale of 1 to 10, he answered, ”I hate those kinds of questions.” OK… ) Overall, it was good perspective.

So, would I advocate for ending the conventions? Not necessarily. Would I advocate for shortening them considerably and narrowing the scope, cost, inconvenience, and number of speakers? Sure. And given that none of that is likely to happen—and it will probably be business as usual four years from now—would I want to go to the conventions again? Absolutely.

Phil Shuman ’79 is a reporter with KTTV Fox 11 News in Los Angeles.

Bicentennial Medalist Erin Burnett ’98, host of CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront gave the keynote address at Williams’ Convocation ceremony, which marks the beginning of the academic year and celebrates the senior class and its accomplishments.

You can also view remarks by Burnett’s fellow 2012 Bicentennial Medalists:  Travel industry pioneer and philanthropist David Paresky ’60, internationally recognized pediatric endocrinologist Norman Spack ’65, Kenya’s Jeremy Academy founder Charles Waigi ’72, and U.S. Department of Agriculture deputy secretary Kathleen Merrigan ’82.

Learn more about our medalists and view complete video coverage of the 2012 Convocation ceremony.

Imagine taking a class at Williams on Black poets of the 20th century, studying jazz and cultural developments of the interwar period, or researching the Harlem Renaissance and the flowering of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago and Detroit, all the while having access to first editions and ephemeral publications by major figures of these eras.

This is now possible at the Chapin Library of Rare Books. A trove of poetry, plays, prose, anthologies, studies, and recordings by both the most significant and less well-known Black artists of the times has been acquired from the estate of Paul Breman, a London collector, publisher, and antiquarian bookseller.

The Breman Collection includes files of books, pamphlets, and broadsides by Paul Laurence Dunbar, W.E.B. Du Bois, Gwendolyn Brooks, Countee Cullen, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), and Williams’ own Sterling Brown ’22. Among the 4,000 volumes is the life’s work of scores of other poets, playwrights, novelists, artists, and musicians who have defined Black arts and culture over nearly 100 years.

Bob Volz, Custodian of the Chapin Library, calls the Breman Collection, “one of the most focused and skillfully crafted collections of printed sources that I have encountered in over 45 years as a rare book librarian.”

The Breman Collection is organized around material assembled to compile two anthologies of poetry and was the foundation of Breman’s pioneering Heritage Series of Black Poetry. Breman began the Heritage Series in London in 1962 and over 13 years published 25 volumes devoted to presenting the voice of a single Black poet.

Breman’s early interest in the origins of Black songs developed into a life-long passion about the past, present, and future of Black poetry. Interested in the songs of touring American jazz musicians he heard as an undergraduate while attending the University of Amsterdam in the late 1940s, Breman set out to uncover and collect other verbal literature from Blacks in America, the Caribbean, and English speaking Africa. He developed long-lasting friendships with many of the authors he published and Breman’s personal correspondence with these authors can be found along with Christmas and Birthday cards in the front cover of many of the books.

Philosophy major Andrew Langston ’13, English and environmental policy major Rylee Bethea ’14, and Oxford-bound English major Abigail Adams, ’14 have been working all summer with Volz to organize this material so that the collection can be ready to use by professors and students from across the disciplines at Williams this fall.

Langston says, “Many of the poets Paul Breman collected weren’t widely published outside of his own Heritage Series, and others only appeared in anthologies. Williams students now have the opportunity to read the work of these underground writers, as well as Breman’s own correspondence with many of them. I would call it a ‘once in a lifetime experience,’ but there is nothing preventing students from seeing the collection again and again.”

Rashida Braggs, assistant professor of Africana Studies, is looking forward to using the collection in her teaching. She says, “As a scholar of African American cultural expression in Europe, the Breman Collection is of particular importance to me. I can envision myself thrilling at the sight of a photodocumentary on W.E.B. Dubois’s visit to the Netherlands (found in the Heritage Series) or using my basic German to decipher tidbits from the Dutch paperback study, Blues en andere wereldikje Volksmuziek van de Noordamerikaanse neger. My Africana Studies courses could also make great use of these documents; specifically “Groovin’ the Written Word: The Role of Music in African American Literature” and “Black Migrations: African American Performance at Home and Abroad.” Observing an original edition with a photo, note, or signature makes figures like Langston Hughes come to life for students, and I look forward to the opportunities for more interactive and engaging learning that the Breman Collection at Chapin Library offers.”

Volz notes further, “Breman first heard a frequent female voice in the jazz blues, and then detected the same while studying spirituals and slave songs. Consequently, he was eager to locate what turned out to be the substantial body of later Black female writing that adds another dimension to the collection. A great deal of this was published only in his unparalleled collection of more than 300 anthologies of Black poetry.”