The passing down of institutional knowledge is integral to holding our college accountable. Universities and colleges benefit from the transitory nature of student life. Every four years, an almost new cohort of students makes up the Bryn Mawr community, complete with their own perceptions of how the institution works and what it is capable of. It is our responsibility as current students, faculty, and staff to pass our knowledge down so that the next generations of students are not only informed of, but empowered by, our shared history.
Bryn Mawr is not unique; it was founded in the shadow of the Ivy League schools and is structured under the same principles as many other universities. We cannot allow ourselves to be surprised at the negative transgressions of our university because it was structured to be racist, classist, and imperialist. It is structured to ignore its students, it is structured to silence our right to free speech, and it is structured to oppress. Whether it be the destruction of Perry House or the crackdown on pro-Palestine protestors, Bryn Mawr College has shown our community that it has not and will never prioritize the interests of its students.
Therefore, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves and those around us. We must not allow ourselves to be surprised by the immoral choices of an institution built upon racism, classism, and an insatiable hunger for money. We must put time and energy into familiarizing ourselves not only with the history of Bryn Mawr, but the history of universities as a whole, their strategies of repression and exclusion, and the ways we can fight against them.
In this section, there is a curated list of readings, starting with a section relating to Bryn Mawr. The following section relates to divestment and offers information regarding how and why universities spend and invest their money. The last section relates to university complicity on a broader scale, from the role that the University of Chicago has played in gentrification to the flow of information from Israeli universities to the IOF.