Seen and heard on Commencement / Reunion Weekend

"They tell us '850 killed, 3,500 wounded,' but they don't tell you how many minds are wounded. [The soldiers serving in Iraq] will never get over this. ... You still dream of these things, even after 60 years. You wonder how many children you left without a father. There are things I'll never tell; they're too bad, but other veterans know. ... Nobody wins, and everybody loses. We have to put an end to it." - World War II veteran Donald Hurd, speaking in the forum "From Farm Boys to the Front." Hurd accompanied filmmaker Deborah Scranton '84 and is one of the subjects in her documentary, "Stories from Silence, Witness to War."

"I wanted to throw this book across the room about 12 times. It's not true." - Elizabeth A. Castelli '79, referring to the best-selling "The DaVinci Code" in the forum "Getting Religion: A Look at Religion in Pop Culture." Castelli is an associate professor of religion at Barnard College and a senior research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media.

"It was an expression of grief and of the power of art doing 'Hedda Gabler' [on Broadway] after 9/11. It was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had as an actress. You knew everyone in the audience really wanted to be there. ... We were like cultural firemen." - Actress Kate Burton '79, speaking in the forum "From Brown to Broadway" about the support of New Yorkers for the city's theaters after the bombing of the World Trade Center.

"When I read my work, I jumped around and did all the voices. ... He suggested I write for the theater. I was offended; I thought he meant I sucked." - Pulitzer-winning playwright and honorary degree recipient Suzan-Lori Parks in the forum "A Discussion with Suzan-Lori Parks," recalling the feedback she received from literary giant James Baldwin while taking a creative writing class with him when he was a visiting professor at Hampshire College and she was a student at Mount Holyoke College. She made her first attempt at playwriting that same night.

At the start of her forum on women and heart disease, Barbara Roberts, M.D., tossed up a statistic: For the last 20 years, more women than men have died from heart attacks and strokes caused by hardening of the arteries. A chorus of "wows" went up.

So why is heart disease considered a man's problem?

Roberts, an associate clinical professor of medicine, flashed a slide of the culprit - a sharp-nosed man in a white wig. It's William Heberden, Roberts explained, a London physician who attended King George III. Heberden was the first physician to describe angina, the chest pains that are a common signal of coronary heart disease. Heberden observed angina in 100 patients. Only three were women.

"So from the get-go," Roberts said, "physicians had the expectation that coronary heart disease affected men more than women. Now we know better."

"In 1942, Heart Mountain, Wyo., was the third largest 'city' in Wyoming due to the 10,767 Japanese Americans who were interned there in the relocation center concentration camp. They were a fraction of the more than 110,000 interned during the war. In 1988 the United States issued a civil liberties act and an official apology, and offered $20,000 to all of the Japanese Americans who were alive at the time and survived the camp experience. To date some 90,000 of them have received the token expression of regret and apology." - Evelyn Hu-Dehart, professor of history, director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, in the forum titled "Responding to Historical Injustice"

"Those people who look beyond themselves age well. ... Given the choice of going to the gym or spending time with the grandkids, spend time with the grandkids." - Leo M. Cooney Jr. of Yale University School of Medicine in his forum "Fulfillment in Later Life - Adapting to Changes with Aging"

Slowing, and eventually stopping, the spread of HIV is the moral imperative of this generation, speakers at "The AIDS Pandemic" forum said.

"Fifty years from now, or 100 years from now, this is how the future generation will judge us," said Ira Magaziner, former aide to President Bill Clinton and member of the Brown Class of 1969. "If we gave up and sat back and let millions die, we wouldn't be treated very well. But sitting back was exactly what we were doing for a long time."

"Growing up in the [Mississippi] delta they say if you want to be a doctor, go to Tougaloo. Even today 40 percent of the black doctors in Mississippi graduated from Tougaloo. You have to remember that Tougaloo's student body is, even today, just under 1,000." - Galen Henderson, M.D., director, Division of Critical Care and Emergency Neurology, and director, Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit, at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a 1989 graduate of Tougaloo, member of the Medical School class of 1993, in the forum titled "Fourty Years after Freedom Summer: The Brown-Tougaloo Relationship

Mortarboard modification is a graduation tradition. At the Baccalaureate service and during Commencement ceremonies, students honored it with aplomb.

Decorative touches included fresh flowers, feather boa, stickers, stuffed animals, ribbons, propellers, masking tape and plastic figures that included pirates, sheep and a human brain. One graduate created a fairy garden atop her board, bedecking it with pastel butterflies and silver leaves. Another affixed hers with a wreath of ivy. Another splashed his board, Pollock-like, with primary-colored paint.

One student suspended a pair of swim goggles next to his tassel.

A few students did away with the cap altogether. One donned a safety-orange skull cap topped with a square of cardboard. Louella Hill created perhaps the most elaborate Class of 2004 cap. Using a pilfered party balloon, cardboard tubes and copious amounts of plaster of Paris and paint, Hill fashioned a chapeau in the shape of a sugar beet.

"It's a statement," said Hill, who concentrated in environmental studies. "I'm promoting organic farming." Around her neck, Hill wore a sign that read: "Locally Grown."

Shirin Ebadi's message of peace apparently got lost in translation during her speech, which was delivered in Farsi at the Baccalaureate service May 30. (Ebadi, center, with President Simmons, right, and Chaplain Janet Cooper-Nelson)

The next day, in what President Simmons acknowledged was an unusual move, Simmons told thousands at Commencement that the Iranian lawyer and activist had said that many Christians, Muslims and Jews have caused human suffering because of religious intolerance. But Ebadi's interpreter did not properly convey her remarks, making some students believe she'd rebuked only Jews. Despite the correction, a handful of students stood and turned their backs to the stage when the Nobel laureate received her honorary degree.

But at the Baccalaureate service, the snafu didn't seem to register. After closing her speech with a raised fist and a call for peace, Ebadi received a rousing standing ovation.

"I am trying to drive home the point that one of the lessons the observation of nature teaches you is that life on Earth - all life, including ours - depends on diversity. ... As you go out into the world, keep your eyes, ears and hearts open to diversity, not just in nature, but everywhere you find it - in art, culture, thought and society." - Kathryn S. Fuller '68, president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, at Graduate School Commencement ceremony

"I believe that we have this responsibility not only to keep ideas alive, but also to try to engage the world beyond the academy. A need that becomes increasingly apparent when we witness, for example, politicians manipulating scientific findings for political rather than intellectual ends. What is the point of having a class of learned scholars if the benefit of that scholarship goes unheeded? We have a responsibility to speak." - Miguel Moniz Ph.D. '04, in his address at the Graduate School Commencement Ceremony

Jonathan Doris, M.D., a California cardiology fellow and former Brown resident, delivered an address at the Medical School graduation. The speech was not solemn: Doris is medical advisor for the TV sitcom "Scrubs." Recalling his residency, Doris provided the jokes. The audience, in turn, provided the laugh track. Sample one-liner: "After years of dedication and sacrifice, you have achieved a monumental accomplishment. Each one of you deserves to be here. Now look at your parents and thank them. Remember, you're the reason they don't own a boat!"