Commencement Forums
All forums are free and open to the public.
9:00 am
How the Genome and the Computer Have Changed the Biomedical Sciences
The Joan and Frank Rothman Lecture
David Botstein, Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics and director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics, Princeton University
David Botstein is a geneticist, educator, and pioneer in integrating multiple diverse disciplines into the study of biology. His work established the ground rules for human genetic mapping and laid the foundation for the human genome project. Dr. Botstein is considered a founder of the field of functional genomics, which permits analysis of the expression of many genes simultaneously, a key to understanding how organisms respond to their environment as well as our understanding of cancer and other complex diseases.
W. Duncan MacMillan Hall, Room 115
The Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice: Retrospect and Prospect
James T. Campbell, associate professor of American civilization, Africana studies, and history
In 2003, President Ruth Simmons appointed a Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice to investigate Brown's historical relationship to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, and, more broadly, to organize public programs that would help people reflect on the meaning and significance of that history in the present. The committee issued its final report last October; President Simmons and the Brown Corporation issued a response to the committee's recommendations in January. Professor James Campbell, the committee's chair, will discuss the steering committee's methods, findings, and recommendations, as well as the report’s local and national significance.
Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101
Vision and Brain: Is the World a Hallucination?
Michael A. Paradiso, professor of neuroscience
What we see is often dramatically different from physical reality. But rather than being mere curiosities, the distortions and errors we experience reveal the clever computations our brains use to process visual information. Vision scientists at Brown are using a variety of approaches to expose how the brain rapidly and flexibly makes inferences about a complex and changeable world. Research in the biological sciences is complemented by behavioral, perceptual, and computational studies of vision.
Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 001
Perspectives on Iraq
Sponsored by the Watson Institute for International Studies
Lincoln D. Chafee ’75, former U.S. senator, distinguished visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies
Deborah Scranton ’84, award-winning documentary filmmaker and visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies
Join former Senator Lincoln D. Chafee ’75 and award-winning documentary filmmaker Deborah Scranton ‘84 for a multifaceted discussion on the war in Iraq. Chafee, the only Republican senator to vote against the war, later conducted a fact-finding mission in Iraq and has continued to analyze U.S. policy in the area as part of his current appointment as distinguished visiting fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies. Scranton, also a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute, gave video cameras to U.S. soldiers in Iraq to glean their “boots-on-the-ground” perspective for her documentary “The War Tapes.”
W. Duncan MacMillan Hall, Room 117
Color Me Cool: Comic Books and Graphic Novels in the U.S.
Ralph E. Rodriguez, associate professor of American Civilization; associate professor in the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
When the first issue of Superman sold 900,000 copies in 1939, publishers had found a new staple – superheroes – and a growing youth market. Morality panics that attempted to link comics to juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, however, temporarily zapped the life from the genre. The alternative comix of the 1960s and ’70s revitalized comics with edgier stories and iconoclastic writers. Today, the best comics are as poignant as great works of literature, as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, a serialized tale of the Holocaust, made patently clear. Recently, the New York Times Sunday Magazine has played its own part in bringing comics into the mainstream. This forum will explore the history of comics and their stylistic intricacies.
List Art Building, Room 120
Brown Goes to the Poorhouse: Dexter Asylum and Today’s Athletic Complex
Robert P. Emlen, University curator; senior lecturer in American civilization; adjunct professor of art history, Rhode Island School of Design
Fifty years ago this summer Brown purchased the last remaining farm on College Hill – 39 acres – for use as a new athletic facility. Constructed by the town of Providence following an 1824 bequest by Ebenezer Knight Dexter, the Dexter Asylum served until 1957 as a rural institution for the care of the elderly poor and mentally ill. Today, the high stone wall surrounding Aldrich-Dexter Field is the only vestige of the old poor farm. University Curator Robert P. Emlen will describe the history of the Dexter Asylum and its development as the Wendell R. Erickson Athletic Complex.
Smith-Buonanno Hall, Room 106
10:30 am
Mass Media in Transition: How Digital Technology and the Search for Content are Transforming the Industry
Sponsored by the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women
Scott Meyer ’91, president and CEO, About Inc.
Lauren Zalaznick ’84, president, Bravo Television Network
Moderated by Amy Finn Binder ’77, CEO and founder, RF|Binder Partners
Nothing has ever disrupted “traditional” media, information, and entertainment as much as the digital explosion. Video content can now be produced and accessed over the Internet quickly and inexpensively. By late 2006, almost 7 billion Internet searches took place per month in the U.S., and an average of 9 million people are logged into music file-sharing services, illegally swapping or sharing an estimated 20 billion songs. How are technology, user-generated content, and other forces changing the media? How can major media companies adapt to this new environment? With many voices of authority and many challengers, who controls the message, and who hears it?
List Art Building, Room 120
Adaptation and Change in the Wake of Katrina
Scott S. Cowen, president, Tulane University
Norman C. Francis, president, Xavier University of Louisiana
Marvalene Hughes, president, Dillard University
Moderated by John Logan, professor of sociology
Three New Orleans college presidents discuss how their universities reacted, adapted, and underwent profound changes throughout their recovery from Hurricane Katrina. They will also look more broadly at how Katrina affected the other institutions that they are connected to or dependent upon. Professor of Sociology John Logan will moderate the panel.
W. Duncan MacMillan Hall, Room 117
Arts Education and the Transformation of a City
Sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations
David N. Cicilline ’83, mayor, City of Providence
Tyler Denmead ’98, founder and executive director, New Urban Arts
Donald King ’93, founder and artistic director, Providence Black Repertory Company
Jason McGill ’02, associate director, Everett Dance Theatre
Sebastian Ruth ’97, founder and director, Community Musicworks
Moderated by Roger Nozaki ’89 MAT, director, Swearer Center for Public Service
Providence has been heralded during the past decade as among the most livable cities in the country. The city’s vibrant arts scene in particular has been credited with bringing about significant positive change. Directors of four nationally recognized arts organizations discuss the Providence renaissance with Mayor David N. Cicilline ’83, with a focus on the role of the arts in transforming the lives of urban youth.
Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 001
Inside Heroes: One Show, Three Perspectives
Sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations
Bruce Evans ’87, vice president, current series, NBC Entertainment
Nate Goodman ’84, director of photography, Heroes, NBC
Masi Oka ’97, actor (Hiro Nakamura), Heroes, NBC
In its first season, NBC’s hour-long drama Heroes has garnered significant critical acclaim and audience following. Three alumni – an executive, a cinematographer, and an actor - share their professional perspectives on what it takes to work and succeed in Hollywood, and why Heroes is a television hit.
Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101
Portrait of a Surgeon: One Woman’s Journey Through the World of Medicine
The Ruth B. Sauber Distinguished Alumni Lecture
Nora Burgess ’74, ’77 M.D.
Nora Burgess specializes in adult cardiac surgery and is currently assistant physician-in-chief and medical chief financial officer at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco. She was one of the first 20 women to be certified by the American Thoracic Surgery Board and the first physician in her HMO to be a CFO.
W. Duncan MacMillan Hall, Room 115
WBRU to ESPN Two GOOD Four-Letter Words and a 30-Year Journey
Chris Berman ’77, sportscaster, ESPN
In May 1977, Chris Berman ended his stint as sports director of Brown’s FM radio station and graduated with a degree in history. In 1979, he began a new job with a fledgling cable TV organization. The rest, as they say, is history – both broadcasting and sports history. Berman will recount memories, observations, and lessons learned from two fascinating worlds, and he will also answer questions from the audience.
Sayles Hall
Studies in Movement: New Technologies for Interactive Performance
Sponsored by The Cogut Center for Humanities
Joseph Butch Rovan, composer, associate professor of music
Studies in Movement, Butch Rovan’s new multimedia chamber opera, pays homage to the French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904). Marey invented methods to track the beating heart; developed a rapid-fire camera to capture birds in flight; and photographed human locomotion, breaking down the multiple discrete gestures that compose an act of walking, jumping, or speaking. His findings contributed to modern aviation and the modern film industry, ultimately transforming modern vision.
The forum will present a broad picture of Marey himself and conclude with an overview of the custom technologies created for the performance and samples from the work in progress.
Grant Recital Hall
1:00 pm
From Gaspipes to Web sites: Seventy Years of Brown Radio
Susan Smulyan, associate professor of American civilization
Rita Cidre ’07, former general manager, WBRU
Jason Sigal ’07, general manager, BSR
Amanda Murray, graduate student in public humanities and curator of the Radio at Brown exhibit
Paul McCarthy ’01, producer, Radio at Brown audio documentary
Join alumni from WBRU and BSR, current student managers of both stations, and a radio historian to view an exhibit about Brown radio and discuss what has made broadcasting at Brown unique. The panel will trace Brown radio history from the dorm-room broadcasts in 1936 to the modern-day stations of WBRU and BSR, which reach hundreds of thousands of listeners and are staffed by more than 100 students. The exhibit grew out of an undergraduate Group Independent Study Project last fall. An audio documentary featuring interviews with radio alumni will be available at the forum and online at http://bsrserv.bsrlive.com/alumni/.
John Hay Library, Lownes Room
From Brown University to Grey’s Anatomy:
A Conversation with Kate Burton ’79
Kate Burton ’79, actress
The journey of a working actress, from her undergraduate days at Brown to the Yale School of Drama to Broadway and to Hollywood.
Sayles Hall
Virtual JFK: Vietnam, If Kennedy Had Lived
Sponsored by The Watson Institute for International Studies
James Blight, professor, international relations (research)
janet Lang, associate professor, international relations (research)
James Blight, janet Lang, and Koji Masutani ’05, all affiliated with Brown’s Watson Institute, are collaborating on a project called Virtual JFK: Vietnam, if Kennedy Had Lived. The project addresses the question, “What would President John F. Kennedy have done regarding the conflict in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and had been re-elected in November 1964?” This is the most debated what-if in the history of U.S. foreign policy. The resulting film is purely historical, but the resonance with America’s predicament in Iraq is powerful.
Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 001
Taking Progeria from Obscurity to the Cutting Edge: A Parent-Scientist’s Perspective On Saving Children with a Premature Aging Disease
The Charles O. Cooke, M.D,. Distinguished Visiting Lecture
Leslie B. Gordon ScM’91 MD’98 PhD’98, assistant professor of pediatrics research, the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University; Medical Director, the Progeria Research Foundation
Most biomedical researchers work with the hope of saving human lives one day. Leslie Gordon is working to save her son, Sam, and children like him who suffer from Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome — a rare, fatal genetic condition characterized by accelerated aging in children. Dr. Gordon, a Brown-trained pediatrician, has pioneered research on this disorder, identifying the gene that causes it and helping to develop the first possible drug treatment.
W. Duncan MacMillan Hall, Room 115
Can We Understand the Brain? And, If We Can, How Would it Affect Our Understanding of Ourselves?
The Maurice and Yetta Glicksman Lecture
Leon N. Cooper, professor of physics and neuroscience
How does experimental and theoretical work on the cellular and molecular basis of learning and memory storage affect our understanding of ourselves?
W. Duncan MacMillan Hall, Room 117
Racial Stigma, Mass Incarceration, and American Values
Glenn C. Loury, professor of economics
Professor Loury will begin with a historical, political, and sociological study of the role race has played, and continues to play, in the post-1970 transformation of America's punishment policies, arguing that backlash against the ”disorder“ of the 1960s has become subtly and powerfully ”raced).” He will then examine the ethics of punishment in a divided society, elaborating a social scientific and an ethical critique of the politics of personal responsibility that emerged out of the culture wars of the 1980s.
Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101
Identity Soundtracks: Race and American Popular Music
Tricia Rose ’93 Ph.D., professor of Africana studies
Popular culture is a complex place where cross-racial conversation happens. In this forum we will discuss key problems in this meaningful and complex space.
List Art Building, Room 120
The Sixties Without Apology
Paul Buhle, lecturer in American civilization and history
The SDS Comics Show, a student-created exhibit at the Carriage House Gallery of the John Nicholas Brown Center, 357 Benefit Street, will be open from 1–4 pm on Saturday, May 26. In this forum, Paul Buhle will explore the origin and development of the exhibit in his class “The Sixties Without Apology” and the effort to create a graphic representation of 1960s social movements. Buhle was the founder of Radical America, the SDS journal, and is the editor of several nonfiction comic art volumes, including a forthcoming adaptation of Howard Zinn’s People’s History and comic biographies of Emma Goldman, Che Guevara, and Isadora Duncan.
John Nicholas Brown Center
3:30 pm
Alumni Voices: Taking Responsibility for Global Change
Sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations
Steve Glenn ’87, CEO and founder, Living Homes
Mary Lou Jepsen ’87, founding CTO, One Laptop Per Child
Chad Nelson ’92, environmental director, Surfrider Foundation
Moderated by Steven Hamburg, professor of environmental studies
On both a local and a global scale, Brown alumni are working to improve the state of our planet environmentally and socioeconomically. This panel discussion will highlight the efforts of several alumni in the public and private sectors to ensure a sustainable global environment for generations to come.
W. Duncan MacMillan Hall, Room 115
Beyond the Scoreboard: The Psychology of Winning
Sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations
Sara Carver-Milne, head coach, gymnastics
Sean McCann ’82, Sport Psychologist
Moderated by Mike Noonan, head coach, men’s soccer
How do athletes sustain their focus? How do coaches inspire victory? What messages and lessons can you use to teach yourself and your children? This panel will discuss these questions and others surrounding the concept of winning and building a winning attitude, both on the field and in life.
W. Duncan MacMillan Hall, Room 117