THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

133rd Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief

Will Kubzansky

Managing Editors Katy Pickens

Alex Nadirashvili

Senior Editors Augustus Bayard

Caleb Lazar

Peter Swope

Kaitlyn Torres

Post- Magazine

Editor-in-Chief Kimberly Liu

News

Metro Editors Emma Gardner

Rhea Rasquinha

Jacob Smollen

Julia Vaz

Science & Research Editor

Haley Sandlow

Senior Science & Research Editor

Gabriella Vulakh

Arts & Culture Editors

Aalia Jagwani

Finn Kirkpatrick

Rya Vallabhaneni

Sports Editor Linus Lawrence

University News Editors

Sofia Barnett

Charlie Clynes

Emily Faulhaber

Grace Holleb

Sam Levine

Neil Mehta

Haley Sandlow

Kathy Wang

Digital News Director of Technology

Swetabh Changkakoti

Opinions

Editorial Page Editor

Head Opinions Editor

Alissa Simon

Opinions Editors

Anika Bahl

Bliss Han

Melissa Liu

Jackson McGough

Multimedia

Illustration Chief

Ashley Choi

Photo Chiefs

Elsa Choi-Hausman

Dana Richie

Photo Editors

Mathieu Greco

Claire Diepenbrock

Rocky Mattos-Canedo

Lilly Nguyen

Kaiolena Tacazon

Social Media Chief

Sahil Balani

Social Media Editors

Julian Beaudry

Emily Faulhaber

Kaiolena Tacazon

Production

Copy Desk Chief

Brendan McMahon

Design Chief

Neil Mehta

Design Editors

Sirine Benali

Maddy Cherr

Ashley Guo

Gray Martens

Business

General Managers

Joe Belfield

Andrew Willwerth

Sales Director

Alexander Zhou

Finance Director

Eli Pullaro

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“I’m not sure that Brown has understood very well how impactful this program has been in Rhode Island,” she said.

“The core mission of public humanities, namely building a bridge between the University and the general public — bringing academic knowledge to the outside and learning from groups often not represented in academia — is as important as ever,” Neumann wrote in his letter.

According to Francis, one particularly impactful project that came out of the center, alongside the Rhode Island Council for Humanities and the Rhode Island Historical Society, was the creation of Rhode Tour, an app and website for Rhode Island history and culture.

“The center (created) these opportunities for students to work at community and cultural organizations that could really benefit,” she said.

According to Lubar, the master’s program put the JNBC “on the map.” He said he hopes the University will “figure out a way” to keep the program’s work going while continuing alumni involvement.

A ‘significant setback’: Discussion on paused master’s program

Angela Feng MA’18, who is working toward a PhD in American Studies with the center, wrote in an email to The Herald that if the University did not rehouse the program, it would present a “significant setback.”

The pause on the program evoked a strong response from public humanities master’s alumni. In a letter to the University reviewed by The Herald, 11 program alumni outlined questions about the future of the program and public humanities at the University, while requesting that alumni are “included as active participants” in the program’s transition. 84 other alumni signed the letter.

In a response reviewed by The Herald, Interim Provost Larry Larson emphasized that the University would “actively explore the possibility of a new institutional setting” for the master’s program.

Larson also pointed to the Task Force on Doctoral Education, which offered recommendations surrounding career advising for graduate students, as a way the University continues to “support graduate students who wish to pursue non-academic jobs.”

The letter from alumni also questioned if the University would continue to “support public humanities investments in the local community.”

A cabinet-level position has been created to lead “community engagement strategy and initiatives” at the University, Larson wrote.

Larson told The Herald that pausing programs can also be a “healthy thing” to “re-engage with faculty and rethink the curriculum a bit.”

“I really appreciated the letter that we got from the alums,” he said. “I thought it was really thoughtful.” He added that he hopes to meet with the working group of alumni who authored the letter to “continue the dialogue.”

Future ‘public-facing’ work of JNBC

While the JNBC will remain physically located in Nightingale-Brown House, the ideologies behind the old and new centers are “completely different,” McLaughlin said. The center previously focused primarily on the master’s program, which had about 1012 students per year, he said.

Under his tenure as director, the center will become a space for visiting scholars from “a whole range of fields,” McLaughlin said. In their year at the center, the visiting scholars will aim to produce “public-facing communication,” he added.

Lecture series, books and digital publications produced at the center will “explain why academic research in a particular field is important to the general public,” McLaughlin said — helping to bridge the “gap” between work that occurs inside academia and its reception in the broader community.

To support those projects, the JNBC will bring in “experts” from the publishing, trade publications and the electronic media industry, he added. But for the center to develop resources to support all faculty — both University-employed and visiting — it will not host visiting fellows next year.

While Lubar wrote in another letter to the community that he is “sad” to see some of the changes at the JNBC, they are meant to signify a shift towards communicating “the value of academic scholarship as such to the public at large.”

“We want … this revised version of the center to think a little about communicating the value of academia (and) the value of academic scholarship to the wider world,” Larson said.

One of those projects will come through a JNBC collaboration with the John Carter Brown Library ahead of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution in 2026, McLaughlin said. “Public-facing” projects will be developed by scholars familiar in the field, he added.

A Herald article published Friday, Feb. 24, “Alpert Medical School photography exhibit showcases ‘shared humanity’ misstated key details about the “What’s Your Thing” exhibit hosted at the Alpert Medical School. The article has been updated, clarified and corrected online, and is available at https://www.browndailyherald. com/article/2023/02/alpert-medical-school-photography-exhibit-showcases-shared-humanity.

The Herald regrets the errors.