Members of the Brown community – Provost Doyle, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and students – it is my great pleasure as President of Brown University to declare the 261st academic year open!

I extend my warmest welcome to members of the entering classes of the Medical School, Graduate School and the College.

Among them are:

• 1,401 talented doctoral and master’s students
• 144 dedicated medical students
• 10 Resumed Undergraduate Education students – individuals who have gained valuable life experience between high school and their entrance to Brown
• 157 very wise transfer students
• And, of course, 1,727 exceptional first-year students, the core of the Brown University Class of 2028!

All of you are spectacular, and everyone at Brown is so excited to welcome you to this beautiful campus, and this great community!

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To all of our new students, I hope you’ve enjoyed orientation and the start of your Brown journeys. No one ever forgets the excitement that goes with the beginning of college or graduate school.  I can guarantee you that, 10, 20 and even 50 years from now, you’ll remember these days. And, that some of your dearest friends will be people you’ve just met here on the Brown campus.

My primary role today is to introduce our keynote speaker, Dean Ashish Jha. But first, I want to offer a few pieces of advice for your time at Brown. 

First, do not rely on Google maps to get you where you want to go. It can lead you badly astray. 

I learned this the hard way when I first arrived at Brown over twelve years ago. I was going to meet with someone in the computer science building—the Tomas J. Watson Sr. Center for Information Technology, called the CIT. Its address is 115 Waterman Street. But the directions to this address led me to a locked loading dock surrounded by blank brick walls. Needless to say, I was late for my meeting! (For those of you studying computer science—the entrance to the building is around the other side, on the quadrangle between Brook and Thayer.)

To compound the problem, Brown students have a habit of giving buildings nicknames. 

For example, if someone asks you to meet them at “The Greg” (which is actually Vartan Gregorian Hall) you’ll get directions to a diner – a Rhode Island institution that makes amazing cakes – a mile and a half away. Bookmark the restaurant for another day. 

And if you put in “New Dorm”, which is the old nickname for “The Greg”, you may wind up at Providence College. 

Maybe, with AI, this will get better in the future. But for now, if you get lost, just ask a live human being! Everyone is here to help you.

My second piece of advice: over the next four years, get out of the Brown bubble. Yes, we have a beautiful, walkable campus that you will come to love. But remember that it’s located in the wonderful city of Providence, in the small but great State of Rhode Island.

Getting out of the Brown bubble means enjoying the city and the state. Check out the Van Leesten pedestrian bridge between South Water Street and the Jewelry District—home to Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School and School of Professional Studies. When the weather gets cold, go ice skating at the Providence Rink downtown.   And when the weather’s warm, check out Rhode Island’s beautiful beaches. The Newport-Providence Ferry terminal is only a 20-minute walk from this Green, and the ferry runs through mid-October. 

But, leaving the Brown bubble is about much more than having fun. It’s also about community engagement, a commitment that Brown takes very seriously. 

The University’s official mission is to serve “the community, the nation and the world” by advancing knowledge and understanding. Note that, in our mission statement, “community” comes first. 

Brown’s relationship with Providence hasn’t always been what it should be. Think of the CIT, with its loading dock and blank brick wall facing the local community. This stands as an apt metaphor for a time when Brown failed to fully embrace the city it calls home.

Fortunately, things have changed for the better.  In 1987, a year after the CIT was dedicated, the University established the Swearer Center for Public Service, with its mission of advancing the public good. And today, we proudly invite the local community to join us at sporting events, lectures, and performances at buildings like The Lindemann Performing Arts Center (which, by the way, has a welcoming public-facing and easily detectable entrance).

Some of you here today came to campus early, as part of the Swearer Center’s Bonner Fellows program. You’ve already made a four-year commitment to community engagement. But, I challenge everyone here to find a way to make your own commitment to the local community.

While you’re at Brown, you can tutor high school students, work on vaccination campaigns, and support immigrant communities. You can conduct research that contributes to improving air quality in Providence, and addressing health disparities. Or, you can join Brown Votes, a nonpartisan organization created and led by students, that will be working hard this fall to ensure that every eligible voter in our community casts their ballot. 

Brown’s distinctive approach to community engagement is grounded in two core beliefs.

One is that community engagement and knowledge production are mutually reinforcing. What we do in the community is not divorced from what we do in classrooms, laboratories and libraries. In fact, our knowledge is the most precious asset we can bring to our community.   

Another is that community engagement must be grounded in mutual respect. This takes self-awareness and humility.  It means acknowledging that we don’t have all of the answers, and that we may not even be asking the right questions.  Building strong, reciprocal relationships with community members and organizations requires that we take the time necessary to build bonds of trust. 

But, I can guarantee you that, if you build the habit of community engagement while you’re at Brown, it will carry through the rest of your life.

My last piece of advice is to do your part to sustain Brown as the open-minded and supportive campus community that we all want. 

University campuses are not designed to be complacent. We purposefully bring together people from widely different backgrounds and with differing views, to test ideas, debate, and sometimes disagree. That’s essential for learning. And, it can create some rocky moments.

In a letter I sent to the Brown community last week, I acknowledged that we’re living through an especially challenging time. National and global events are creating tension and discord across the country and on college campuses. The issues we’re facing invoke deeply held personal beliefs and generate division and dissent that goes beyond what we normally experience.

In times like these, how do we continue to be a cohesive community—again, to call on the words of our mission statement, a “partnership of students and teachers in a unified community”? 

We look to the principles that have long been part of the University’s DNA. 

The first principle is academic freedom and freedom of expression. Since the time of its founding, Brown has valued diversity of thought. Brown’s charter famously declared that it would be open to students from all religious faiths. At the time, in 1764, this was a radical idea, and it set the tone for this university as being a bastion of open-minded inquiry, reflected now in our Open Curriculum. 

The second principle—the twin of academic freedom—is to respect the dignity and humanity of others. To listen to, and learn from, others who might have radically different world views and life experiences.  To reject prejudice and hate. And to respect the rights of others to express themselves and advance their education and scholarship, even if you don’t agree with them. 

Freedom of expression without regard for the views and humanity of others generates cacophony. Respect for others without freedom of expression produces suppression and self-censorship. But, when these principles are put together, that’s when the magic happens. That’s how we achieve the bravely open-minded, caring and kind community that sets Brown apart, even in difficult times. 

I am so glad that all of you are here, to play a part in sustaining and building this wonderful Brown community. 

With that, it is my great pleasure to introduce our Convocation speaker, Ashish Jha, who is Dean of Brown’s School of Public Health. Dr. Jha is a globally renowned public health expert and medical doctor, who continues to treat patients despite the demands of the deanship. He has been a public servant, working in the Biden administration as the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator. 

As Dean of Brown’s School of Public Health, Dr. Jha has launched important educational and research initiatives on pandemic response, health equity, disinformation, health data sciences, climate and health, and more.  The School is growing and flourishing under his leadership, with thriving undergraduate, Masters and doctoral programs.

To many of you who are new to Brown, Dean Jha may already look familiar. That’s probably because you saw him on TV or in your news feed during the pandemic, when he became a household name, widely known for offering common-sense advice on how families and communities could get through the pandemic, safely. 

I think that there are three reasons why Dean Jha became the trusted source of information for so many people during this stressful time.

One is that Dean Jha offered incredibly clear, jargon-free, accurate explanations of the evolving science of the COVID-19 pandemic. He showed us that we didn’t have to have medical degrees or PhDs in epidemiology to understand what was happening. 

That was reassuring.

A second is that Dean Jha listens to others. He took in information not just from public health experts, but from governors, mayors and the people working on the ground working to implement decisions to hear about their experiences and concerns.

That was also reassuring – and very much aligns with the free exchange of ideas that we value at Brown.

The third reason is that he always told the truth, and that truth was always grounded in science. If the science supported doing something—like wearing masks—he offered his recommendation, and then told you why. If the science was still unclear—like how long a COVID-19 vaccine would offer protection—he would say that too and, again, explain why.  

And that was very reassuring. 

This demonstrates an important point. Clarity and honesty in how we talk about science breeds confidence in the value of science. And, as I think you’ll learn from Dean Jha in just a minute, the value of science—which has and will continue to improve the health and wellbeing of people around the world—is enormous.

Dean Jha’s talk is titled, “Curiosity, Courage and Conviction: Your Brown Journey to a Healthier World.” Please join me in welcoming Dean Jha.