United Academics Announces Brace Award Winners for 2008-2009

United Academics (AAUP/AFT), the faculty union at the University of Vermont, has awarded the fifth annual scholarship for students at UVM in honor of an early 19th-century Black Vermonter, Jeffrey Brace. Each year the United Academics Jeffrey Brace Book Award provides $500 certificates to be used for books and supplies by students who exemplify not only academic excellence but also an active commitment to achieving social justice. The United Academics Jeffrey Brace Book Award for 2008-2009 goes to three exceptional students dedicated to environmental activism, culturally sensitive development in Sudan, and an end to tax breaks for weapons manufacturers. They are Keith Brunner, an Environmental Studies major from River Edge, New Jersey; Alexandra "Sasha" Fisher, a native of New York City with a double major in Human Security and Studio Art; and Jean Marie Pearce, a History major from West Glover, Vermont.

Keith Brunner: "When you damage an ecosystem, you damage communities"

In his environmental activism, Keith Brunner gives the maxim "Think globally, act locally" fresh meaning. Last spring, after organizing 40 UVM students to travel to Washington D.C. for a global climate change conference, Brunner returned to campus to launch a campaign urging UVM to break its contract with the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, whose paper products are made from clear-cut old-growth forest in the Canadian Boreal. This campaign, he emphasized, is concerned not only about trees but also people: 80 percent of Canada's First Nations people depend on the boreal forest for their living.

"People need to see that when you damage an ecosystem, you also damage the communities that rely upon that ecosystem," Brunner, a junior, explained.

When it came to the campaign to rid UVM of Kimberly-Clark paper products, noted fellow UVM student and activist Hillary Jane Archer, Brunner was tireless in reaching out to the campus community.

"Keith was always more than willing to do tabling, not just to get signatures that would influence UVM decision-makers but because he wanted to interact on a personal level with students and faculty," Archer said, adding, "His gregarious character and graceful charm were always helpful during campaign events."

Alexandra "Sasha" Fisher: "She spent countless hours doing whatever was needed."

Sasha Fisher arrived at UVM determined to put into action her desire to support developing nations. That chance came when, through a guest speaker in her Anthropology of Human Rights course, she learned of the New Sudan Education Initiative (NESEI). As an intern for NESEI and president of its UVM club, Fisher planned the multi-state "Future Beyond Genocide" tour and, at UVM, Sudan Week's educational and activist events. This summer she traveled to Sudan, to witness a school opening and investigate the potential for micro-lending programs, which she has studied through her self-designed major in Human Security. The field of Human Security considers the preservation of culture, traditions, and values, along with improved economic indicators, as crucial considerations in development.

"It's about how to create development that's good for the people in the region it affects," Fisher explained.

The UVM junior exemplified her cooperative approach to program development on her recent visit to the Sudan, said Mari Wright, communication director for NESEI.

"She spent countless hours doing whatever was needed to get the school open in time," said Wright. "She also spent hours interviewing students and teachers, to better understand and capture their important stories."

Jean Marie Pearce: "An unwavering passion for social justice."

It is because her upbringing instilled in her such pride and appreciation for Vermont -- and also because she has come to recognize that her home state shares with the nation and world the same problems with exploitation, oppression, environmental devastation, and war -- that Jean Marie Pearce returned to Vermont from a West Coast college to complete her education at UVM. Through her participation in the Student Labor Action Project, working to press the university to pay livable wages to all campus employees, and the campaign to end state tax breaks for weapons manufacturer General Dynamics plus an internship with the Vermont Workers' Center, Pearce has had one overriding goal: to bring the actions of her university and state into line with their social justice image.

"She has an unwavering passion for social justice," said Jen Berger of the Peace and Justice Center in Burlington, adding that along with passionate commitment the UVM junior also brings "her intellect, combined with a willingness to learn."

Pearce emphasizes that when enough people in a community get involved, change is possible. "There are concrete things that our community can do to be healthy and prosperous," she explained. "We can only do these things for ourselves from within."

UVM students and social justice: In the tradition of Jeffrey Brace

"The University of Vermont is lucky that each of these students is flourishing in the community," said Professor Stephanie Kaza of the Rubenstein School of the Environment and Natural Resources, one of three judges for this year's awards. Also on the award selection committee were Professors Alice Fothergill, Sociology, and Trina Magi, UVM Libraries. Especially notable about this year's recipients, the judges stress, is how all three students have already made measurable gains in the issues of social justice for which Vermonter Jeffrey Brace -- former slave, Revolutionary War Veteran, farmer, and memoirist -- also fought.

Born in West Africa, Jeffrey Brace was captured in 1758 by slave traders and eventually sold as a slave in Connecticut. Brace enlisted in the Revolutionary Army in 1777 and fought for American liberty for five years before being honorably discharged and, only then, manumitted. Following the war, like many veterans, Brace and his wife moved to the new State of Vermont to take up farming. Virulent racism drove him and his family from their first homestead in Poultney to St. Albans where Brace established a new farm. Brace's struggles for personal and social justice are detailed in one of the earliest biographies of a Black American still in existence. The Special Collections of the University of Vermont contains one of the few copies of this important and rare book, The Blind African Slave.

Jeffrey Brace did not seek out struggles for social justice but neither did he fear them. Although stolen from Africa, he fought for national independence. Although a veteran, a farmer, and a Vermonter, Brace had to continually fight for his rights as a citizen in the country he had helped create. He fought this fight in words, using the courts and the press. It is in memory of this important early Vermonter that United Academics seeks to facilitate the pursuit of academic excellence and social justice by the students of the University of Vermont which is exemplified by Keith Brunner, Sasha Fisher, and Jean Marie Pearce.

Click here to return to UA's main Brace Awards page.

Last updated October 1, 2009