The Corporation of Brown University has elected Samuel M. Mencoff to be the University’s 21st chancellor. Alison S. Ressler, currently the Corporation’s treasurer, will serve as vice chancellor. Theresia Gouw will become treasurer, and Donald C. Hood will continue as secretary. The new officers of the Corporation will begin their terms July 1, 2016.

The faculty of Brown University has voted to designate the second Monday in October as Indigenous People’s Day. Modifications to the University’s academic calendar require a faculty vote. In April 2009, the faculty renamed Columbus Day as the Fall Weekend holiday.

For more than an hour on stage in the Salomon Center Thursday evening, movie star Michael Douglas and Israeli leader and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky traded thoughts about their Jewish identities and some of the challenges to Israel’s identity on the world stage. The event packed the house, but also drew demonstrators against Israeli policies and actions regarding the Palestinian people.

Noah Elbot, class of 2014, and Max Song, class of 2016, were among 111 candidates named as inaugural Schwarzman scholars. Schwarzman scholars receive a fully funded scholarship at Schwarzman College on the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

One hundred and ten students, mostly sophomores and juniors, took their ceremonial walk through the Van Wickle Gates and will begin their Brown studies tomorrow.

With a $25-million gift, part of the University’s BrownTogether campaign, Brown will establish the Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, combining real-world experience with academic expertise to equip students for lives of innovation and impact.

Film star Michael Douglas and Israeli public figure and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky will speak at Brown University Jan. 28 about Judaism, Israel and anti-Semitism. Free registration is required to attend the event, which is open to the public.

Jonathan L. Walton, a noted social ethicist, scholar of American religions, and professor at Harvard University, will deliver the 2016 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on Tuesday, February 2, 2016. Walton will speak about "Love, Power and Empathy in an iLife Era." His presentation is free and open to the public and begins at 6 p.m. in Salomon Center for Teaching, De Ciccio Family Auditorium.

Brown University’s School of Professional Studies announces a new 16-month program leading to an Executive Master in Cybersecurity degree. Enrollment is underway for the fall session of the new degree program, created for individuals with five to 15 years of managerial experience and responsibility for information security.

A portrait of Ruth J. Simmons, Brown’s 18th president, has been completed and hung in Sayles Hall. The painting, by renowned portraitist Steven Polson, joins the University’s collection of 317 portraits of presidents, chancellors, deans, faculty, and benefactors commissioned throughout Brown's 250-year history. Thirty-five of those portraits currently hang in Sayles Hall.

Eric S. Estes, currently vice president and dean of students at Oberlin College and Conservatory, has been named vice president for campus life and student services at Brown University. Estes will begin his work at Brown on July 1, 2016, succeeding Margaret Klawunn.

Brown University president Christina Paxson, an economist, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

A pair of slavery shackles of the type used to transport captured Africans to slavery in the Americas is on display at the John Hay Library. The shackles, on loan from the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, will remain at the Hay through March 13, 2016, and then return to Liverpool for permanent display.