PRESIDENTIAL TRAVEL

President Christina Paxson will travel to Hong Kong to celebrate the University’s 250th anniversary with members of the Brown community. Alumni/ae, parents, and friends are invited to attend.

December 4, 2014
5:30 – 7:00 p.m.

The Four Seasons Hotel
Harbour View Ballroom
8 Finance Street
Central
Hong Kong

View the invitation and RSVP to Celebrate@Brown.edu

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INTERNATIONAL BROWN CLUB EVENTS

Early or Mid-January 2015
McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Members of the Brown community in Antarctica will host Louis and Elizabeth Scherck Distinguished Professor of the Geological Sciences James Head in celebration of Brown’s 250th anniversary.
Contact: Ginny McQueen ’81

Each year, approximately 500 Brown students study abroad through more than 120 different programs and opportunities. Some students even design their own Global Independent Study Project. Every summer, dozens of students also participate in international internships.

Former president of Chile and Brown’s Professor-at-Large Ricardo Lagos delivered a lecture on Latin America and what lies ahead for the region. Lagos currently serves as the president of the Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo (Foundation for Democracy and Development), which he founded in 2006.

Former Indian ambassador to the United States Nirupama Rao gave a talk at the Watson Institute for International Studies on "The Politics of History: India and China, 1949 to 1962." In January 2014, she began a one-year appointment as the Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellow as part of the Brown-India Initiative.

William Rhodes ’57 LHD '05 was honored for his 53-year career in banking with Citi, which left a lasting impact on Latin America. He was presented with the Legacy Award at the BRAVO Business Awards, hosted by the Latin Trade Group.

Brian Moynihan ’81 P’14, president and chief executive officer of Bank of America, was included on The Sunday Business Post’s list of 20 Americans of Irish Heritage for their notable contributions to mainstream life in the United States.

Lise Alschuler ’88 received an honorary degree from the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. Alschuler is a past president of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, founding board member of the Oncology Association of Naturopathic Physicians, and director of the Naturopathic Post-Graduation Association.

Moroccan-Iraqi filmmaker and visual artist Tala Hadid ’95 (London) wrote and directed the film The Narrow Frame of Midnight, which follows three people struggling to define their futures in a country torn apart by violence and fundamentalism. The film had its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

With skipper Charlie Enright ’08 at the helm and Mark Towill ’11 as crew, Team Alvimedica won the opening in-port yacht race in the 2014-2015 Volvo Ocean Race in Alicante, Spain. The offshore race began on October 11 with the first leg from Alicante to Cape Town. In all, the boats will cover 38,739 nautical miles over nine months before the adventure finishes in Gothenburg, Sweden on June 27, 2015.

In September, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson ’81 P’14 (middle in the photo) hosted a dinner for alumni in the region at his residence in Islamabad in celebration of Brown’s 250th anniversary.

In November, the Brown Club of Toronto held an event at the Woodbine Racetrack that included a horse race dedicated to Brown’s 250th anniversary.

Photo: Members of the Brown community in Toronto at the event.

Richard Holbrooke ’62 LLD’97 was a distinguished diplomat whose career spanned decades of presidential administrations and international conflicts. During the Carter administration, he was named assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. President Clinton appointed him to serve first as U.S. ambassador to Germany, then as assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, and finally as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. President Obama chose Ambassador Holbrooke to be U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Diplomat—a film that tells the story of his historic vision through the narrative of his son, the filmmaker David Holbrooke—will be released in 2015. It is timed for the 25th anniversary of the Dayton peace agreement, which he negotiated to end the war in Bosnia. Marshall Sonenshine ’82, chairman of Sonenshine Partners LLC, is executive producer of the film.

Donors who wish to remain anonymous have endowed the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke ’62 LLD ’97 Professorship in International Studies in the Watson Institute in honor of the late Ambassador Holbrooke. Jeff Colgan, assistant professor of political science and international studies, is the inaugural Holbrooke Professor.

Brown Alumni Association

Alumni College Advising Program

Alumni Careers & Connections

Giving to Brown

A Fall Celebration to Remember
On September 27 and 28, Brown welcomed alumni/ae and parents from around the world to College Hill for the University’s 250th anniversary fall celebration. Thousands of faculty, students, alumni/ae, parents, and friends participated in semiquincentenary festivities, including forums, campus tours, art exhibitions, student performances, a concert on the College Green, a football game under the lights, and fireworks. Discover more about the celebration through these videos.

Photo: Fireworks light up the sky at the stadium after the Brown football team fought valiantly against Harvard.

Most Entrepreneurial Universities List Includes Brown
Brown ranks seventh on the Forbes 2014 list of the most entrepreneurial universities. The ranking is based on each school’s entrepreneurial ratio, which is the number of alumni/ae and students who have identified themselves as founders and business owners on LinkedIn against the school’s total student body (undergraduate and graduate combined).

Brown among Top 10 Colleges Students Want to Attend
In a new analysis of acceptance and enrollment data, Parchment— a company that specializes in transferring student records from high schools and colleges—ranks Brown 10th among the most popular colleges.

Nobel Prize-Winning Nigerian Writer Speaks at Brown
As part of the Africa Initiative and the Watson Distinguished Speaker Series, Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka delivered a lecture on the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. The lecture was focused on the origins of the group in Nigeria and its subsequent expansion. A Nigerian poet and playwright, Soyinka won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first African to receive the honor.

Ukrainian Crucible Series
In the first event of the Ukrainian Crucible Series, the Watson Institute for International Studies presented "To Care for Our Own: Public Health and Medical Care in the Time of Revolution" by medical anthropologist Jennifer Carroll from the University of Washington. Moderated by Professor of Sociology and International Studies Michael Kennedy, the event included panelist Mariya Bachmaha. Bachmaha, a graduate student, is the inaugural recipient of the Brown-Ukraine Fellowship in Public Health, which was established by Victor and Elena Pinchuk P’14 (Ukraine).

Brazil Lecture Series
In September, the Brazil Initiative hosted "Netmundial, Marco Civil, and CGI.br: The Modern Brazilian Regulatory Environment for the Internet," the inaugural lecture of the Brazil Lecture Series. It featured Virgilio Almeida—Information Technology Policy secretary of Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation—who spoke about domestic Internet regulation policies in Brazil and the country’s expanding role in international debates surrounding Internet governance.

China Initiative Distinguished Speaker Series
In October, as part of the China Initiative Distinguished Speaker Series, economist and scholar Gao Jian, former vice governor of the China Development Bank (CDB), spoke on the Chinese approach to development finance and the role of the CDB in the globalization of China’s cross-border investment and commercial expansion. He was an integral part of the CDB’s historical evolution and provided an insider perspective.

From Providence to Tehran: Using Music and Performance for Social Change
Anchoring the intellectual and humanities programming for the Iranian Studies Initiative, Brown’s Middle East Studies presented "From Providence to Tehran," a panel exploring the intersections of music, performance, and ideas in service of nascent social movements. Moderated by Beshara Doumani, Joukowsky Family Distinguished Professor of Modern Middle East History and director of Middle East Studies, the panel featured renowned Iranian singer Mohsen Namjoo and popular Iranian rock band Kiosk leader Arash Sobhani. This November 13th event was followed two days later by a sold-out concert at RISD Auditorium, "Underground Iran: A Musical Festival."

New Faculty Hires Bring Wealth of International Expertise
Brown welcomed more than 30 new faculty members for the 2014-2015 academic year, nearly half of whom have conducted research abroad. The new hires come from a wide range of backgrounds and cover many different disciplines. Those with international expertise who hold endowed professorships include:

• Jeff Colgan, Richard Holbrooke Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies
  
• Leela Gandhi, John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English
  
• Andrew Schrank, Olive Watson Professor of Sociology and International Studies
  
• Prerna Singh, Mahatma Gandhi Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies
  

An endowed professorship is the highest academic award the University can bestow on a faculty member. It is both an honor to the named professor and an enduring tribute to the donor who established it.

Head Honored for International Space Science Collaboration
Louis and Elizabeth Scherck Distinguished Professor of the Geological Sciences James Head received the M.V. Keldysh Medal from the Russian Cosmonautics Federation. Head has led a collaborative effort between planetary scientists at Brown and Russia’s V.I. Vernadsky Institute for more than four decades. The partnership has yielded many valuable scientific discoveries about the solar system.

Photo: Professor Head (middle), wearing the medal, with friends at the Fifth Moscow International Solar System Symposium in Moscow.

Pieters Awarded Medal of International Cooperation
Carle Pieters, professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences, received the Medal of International Cooperation from the Committee on Space Research at its biennial assembly in Moscow, Russia. The medal is awarded every two years to "a scientist who has made distinguished contributions to space science and whose work has contributed significantly to the promotion of international scientific cooperation."

Flanigan Assists in Efforts to Battle the Ebola Outbreak
Professor of Medicine Timothy Flanigan recently traveled to Liberia with the Catholic Diocese of Monrovia to provide aid to those affected by the Ebola outbreak. Flanigan is a specialist in infectious disease and engaged in HIV treatment programs in Ghana and Ukraine. You can read about his experiences in Liberia in his blog.

Heller’s Passage to India
Patrick Heller, professor of sociology and director of the Graduate Program in Development, took a sabbatical in the 2012-2013 academic year and moved his family to India for a year to begin research in 16 of Delhi’s famous slums. He is now working on a book examining democratic deepening in developing countries.

Teller Helps Develop POLIN Museum Core Exhibition in Warsaw
The Museum of the History of Polish Jews (POLIN) celebrated the grand opening of its enormous Core Exhibition in October, with one of Brown’s faculty members present. Adam Teller, associate professor of Judaic studies and history, was the leading scholar for two of the eight galleries in the exhibition, which has been in the works for more than a decade. Teller helped develop the narrative line for the exhibit and collaborated with curators to find materials to fill its galleries.

UCS President Srinivasan Addresses "It’s Okay Not to Know"
At the start of the fall semester, Maahika Srinivasan ’15 from India—president of the Undergraduate Council of Students—addressed first-year students and their families on the College Green. She advised students not to worry if they have questions, concerns, and doubts. That is why they are at Brown—to figure it out.

Rosakis ’17 and Team Receive Best Paper in Strain Award
Alexandros Rosakis ’17 co-authored a paper that won a Journal Strain Best Paper Prize this past summer. Traveling to Cambridge, United Kingdom for the 16th International Conference on Experimental Mechanics, he gave a keynote lecture and accepted the award on behalf of his team: a graduate student, a postdoctoral scholar, a visiting undergraduate student researcher, and a CalTech faculty member.

Students Take Learning Out of the Classroom and Into the Middle East
In 2015, a group of students will take part in an advanced seminar on contested narratives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that includes a trip to Israel and Palestine over spring break. Professor of Judaic Studies David Jacobson teaches the course and will lead the trip, which is funded by a Global Experiential Learning and Teaching Award. Students will have the opportunity to tour the region and meet with Palestinian and Israeli government officials and citizens.

Oil & Water, First Readings 2014
Rather than a book, this year’s First Readings (required for first-year and transfer students) revolved around the film Oil & Water. The documentary spans six years, telling the stories of David Poritz ’12 and Hugo Lucitante, two boys born on opposite ends of the oil pipeline whose experiences in Ecuador lead them to explore future possibilities for marginalized people living in oil-rich countries. Oil & Water raises issues of environmental justice, the rights of indigenous people, the health effects of industrial development, and the role of individuals as agents of social change.

Brown and Chinese Researchers Collaborate
A new study supervised by Robert P. Brown Professor of Biology Mark Bertness and conducted by a marine ecologist from Beijing Normal University—Qiang He—shows that economic growth, not population growth, is a major cause of China’s coastal ecosystem changes. This is the first study to show that Chinese economic development is accelerating the country’s coastal degradation, which has been occurring steadily since 1978—the year the Chinese government introduced sweeping reform to industrialize the country’s economy.