Dartmouth College is funding new research into the darker corners of its history. The move is part of broader inclusion goals set by the college several years ago.
The dominant narrative about the history of Dartmouth skips over the experience of many minority groups, said Morgan Swan, with Dartmouth’s special collections library.
That includes the role of slaves in building the original college campus, he said, and how Dartmouth strayed from its mission to educate Native American students.
“These are things that you don’t see in the ‘History of,’” Swan said. “It’s always like ‘Eleazar Wheelock showed up and established Dartmouth,’ but it never talks about how he did that.”
This phase of the research project is just a pilot. The college aims to expandthe programnext year.