Race has unequivocally shaped the history of Amherst College and the world its alumni occupy following graduation. As one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the country, Amherst – like many institutions established during the earliest years of the founding of the United States – has played a role in perpetuating our nation’s history of racialized thinking and race-based hierarchies. We know that the College has ties to slavery, the colonization of Indigenous lands and people, and the promotion of scientific racism, not only at the College itself but nationally and internationally as well. As we continue to investigate our story as it pertains to these topics, we recognize that we do so alongside the reverberations of these same issues; resonances of these histories persist into the present day.
At first glance, the notion of researching the history of race at an institution as old as Amherst College seems like a daunting task. Where to begin? What to focus on first? How to go about finding answers to questions about a collective institutional history that, as is the case for many institutions, has tended to highlight the majority demographic while muting voices of those in the minority? When we do begin, and once we do, how will we know where to stop? There is no clear end to this work, nor should there be.
Informally, an investigation into the history of race at Amherst College began in 2012; formally, in 2020. Exploration into this dynamic, problematic, and revealing history involves many approaches and disciplinary lenses. To ground ourselves and our focus, we have anchored ourselves with the Vision and Values statement outlined in 2024 by the Steering Committee on Reckoning with the Racial History of Amherst College. We have also joined the Universities Studying Slavery consortium, a collective of over one hundred institutions of higher learning on both sides of the Atlantic conducting similar self-reflective work, and look forward to continuing to learn from and engage with this wider community.
Reckoning with the racial history of Amherst College will be ongoing. A clearer understanding of the College’s history of race-based dispossession and discrimination will enhance not only the collective awareness of our own institutional story, but will better inform how we move into the future together.
What we know about Amherst College’s relationship to:
- Indigenous Dispossession
- Slavery and Amherst
- Antislavery & Abolition
- Scientific Racism