A Lesson from BU’s 150th Commencement

On May 21 I officiated at my 18th and final Commencement ceremony as president of Boston University. It was an unruly affair. David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery and our alumnus, was our Commencement speaker and an honorary degree recipient, invited long before the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America […]

My Reflections after 18 Years as BU President

After 18 years as president of Boston University, Robert A. Brown will step down on July 31. In 1936 the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote for Esquire magazine in his essay “The Crack-Up,” “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and […]

All Hands On Deck to Address Climate Crisis

Quick action required on justice, resiliency, mitigation, education COMMONWEALTH, nonprofit journal of politics, ideas & civic life OP-ED BY BOB BROWN, AMOS HOSTETTER, ANNE KLIBANSKI, ALAN LEVENTHAL, BUD RIS, KATE WALSH, AND GWILL YORK | SEPTEMBER 28, 2021 In January, the climate crisis debate in Massachusetts centered on whether the carbon emission-reduction goals and policy […]

A Simple Model for Control of COVID-19 Infections on an Urban Campus

PNAS 2021 Vol. 118 No. 36 e2105292118 Robert A. Brown College of Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215 Contributed by Robert A. Brown, June 26, 2021 (sent for review March 19, 2021; reviewed by James J. Collins and Michael J. Mina) A customized susceptible, exposed, infected, and recovered compartmental model is presented for describing the […]

Computing Center Is Worth Recognizing

BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL February 7, 2019 Massachusetts is known the world over as a hub of scientific discovery and innovation. Each year, the commonwealth’s research enterprise attracts billions of dollars in funding, creating thousands of jobs while spinning out new products and companies. Less known, even within Massachusetts, is the role and importance of research […]

POV: Amazon Needs Higher Education. So Does Everyone Else

It’s easy to see why most handicappers of the competition for Amazon’s second headquarters put Boston high on the list of likely winners. It’s the same reason that General Electric decided to move its headquarters to Boston last year. Boston is the country’s capital of higher education. The area’s dozens of colleges and universities yield […]

Immigrants Need American Higher Education. And America Needs Them

The new administration’s executive order to temporarily ban people from seven Muslim nations from entering the United States is fundamentally inconsistent with the values that are the bedrock of higher education, and indeed, of our pluralistic, welcoming society. The executive order diminishes our nation as a beacon for freedom and opportunity. As an academic community, […]

A Patent-Troll Bill with Bad College Grades

The proposed Innovation Act is too broad and could make university research much riskier. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, COLUMN BY ROBERT A. BROWN AND JAMES P. CLEMENTS | APRIL 15, 2015 Universities conduct the majority of this country’s basic research. They have a long history of discovery that has led to new technologies, health advances […]

Green Day? An Old Mill City Leads a New Revolution in Massachusetts

The Northeast United States just experienced one of the region’s worst natural disasters. Fortunately, because of the confluence of modern computing power and scientific computing methods, weather forecasting models predicted Sandy’s very complicated trajectory and development with a precision that would not have been possible even a decade ago. Many lives were saved as a […]