Abstract
In this interview, Johanna Fernandez highlights her undergraduate experience as an activist at Brown University. She spends the first fifty minutes discussing her parents’ backgrounds as immigrants from the Dominican Republic and the effect that had on her childhood growing up in the Bronx, New York. She explains how she was raised differently from her two brothers because she was the only girl, and elaborates on her early education, specifically discussing her attendance at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers, Manhattan Center for Science and Math, the Double Discovery Program at Columbia University, and a program organized by the British American Educational Foundation.
Fernandez moves on to explain why she wanted to attend Wesleyan University, and her disappointment when she was accepted only to Brown. In talking of her time at Brown, Fernandez recalls struggling with her identity and recognizing intense racial segregation among students. She asserts that her classes with professors Dorothy Denniston and Suzanne Oboler were the most influential and frequently claims that Brown provided the most intellectually rigorous environment she has ever encountered.
At the one hour and ten minute mark in the interview, Fernandez begins to describe her junior year and her role as an activist on campus. She remembers holding teach-ins and rallies around the issue of need-blind admissions – the practice of accepting students to the university without consideration of their ability to pay. She describes becoming one of the leaders of Students for Admissions and Minority Aid and attempting to work directly with Brown University President Vartan Gregorian to institute need-blind admissions. Fernandez recounts that after several meetings were cancelled by administrators, the Students for Admissions and Minority Aid held an occupation of University Hall that led to almost two hundred student arrests, including her own. She also discusses working at the Brown Reunion Weekend that same year and feeling deeply offended by the money invested in the one weekend and the overt hypocrisy she witnessed in the name of fundraising. Fernandez concludes her interview by reflecting on whether her activism affected policies on the Brown campus, remembering the hostility of administrators toward her actions, and insisting that today Brown remains a ruling class institution.
See also: Johanna Fernández, class of 1993 (interview 2 of 2)
Part 1
Part 2
Recorded January 10, 2017 in New York, NY
Interviewed by Judith Circus
Suggested Chicago style citation: Fernández, Johanna. Interview. By Judith Circus. Pembroke Center Oral History Project, Brown University. January 10, 2017.
Biography
Johanna Fernandez grew up in Bronx, New York, and attended Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers, Manhattan Center for Science and Math, and the Double Discovery Program at Columbia University. She completed her senior year of high school in Godalming, England, through a program organized by the British American Educational Foundation. After graduating in 1988, Fernandez went on to attend Brown University where she was a leader in advocating for need-blind admissions. She received an A.B. in Literature and American Civilization in 1993 and went on to receive her Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. Fernandez is currently Assistant Professor of History at Baruch College of the City University of New York.