Join our panelists, San Francisco-based authors Julia Flynn Siler '82, Ravi Chandra '89, and Ho Lin '92, for an evening dedicated to writing at Booksmith's event space, The Bindery!

The authors will discuss their experiences getting published, read excerpts from their recent books, and take questions from the audience about these and other writing topics. A cash bar will be available. Admission is free, and guests are welcome.

About the Authors

Ravi Chandra '89

Ravi Chandra '89 is a psychiatrist and author in San Francisco. He blogs about spirituality, psychology and culture for Psychology Today, and Asian American film and culture for the Center for Asian American Media. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and in 2016 received a proclamation for his community work from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Ravi's latest book, Facebuddha, is about transcendence in the age of social networks. He is currently working on books about narcissism, loneliness and travel. Read more about Ravi at www.facebuddha.co.

Ho Lin '92

Ho Lin '92 is an author, editor, musician and filmmaker who currently resides in San Francisco. He is the co-editor of the literary journal Caveat Lector, a well-worn traveler, and a fan of the New York Giants and green onion pancakes. His debut novel, China Girl, is about a modern woman adrift in modern China. Learn more about Ho on his website, www.holinauthor.com.

Julia Flynn Siler '82

Julia Flynn Siler '82 is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. As a veteran correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek magazine, Ms. Siler spent more than two decades in the Europe and the United States, reporting from a dozen countries. She is the sixth recipient of the annual Mayborn Biography Fellowship, which, in partnership with Biographers International Organization, provides a creative residency in Santa Fe and was previously a National Endowment for the Humanities “Public Scholar.” She is currently working on Daughters of Joy: America's Other Slaves and Their Fight For Freedom, forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf in 2019. For more information, please visit www.juliaflynnsiler.com. Ms. Siler concentrated in American Studies while at Brown.

RSVP for free here.

Data Science as a Liberal Art

Our ability to generate, process, and interact with data has placed us in the midst of a great societal transformation. From self-driving cars, to 'smart' digital assistants and appliances, to automated medical diagnostic tools, abundant new machines blur the boundary between our own decisions and data-driven artificial intelligence. This 'data revolution' raises as many questions as it answers: How do we guarantee results? How do we distinguish correlation from causality? How do we re-envision academic inquiry with this data genie out of the bottle? In this talk, Professor Brock will introduce Brown's Data Science Initiative, presenting plans to engage such questions from a critical perspective and reaffirm the value of a liberal arts education to train a new generation of leaders.

Jeffrey Brock is Professor of Mathematics at Brown University, and the Director of Brown's recently launched Data Science Initiative, a collaborative effort at Brown to form a campus hub for trans-disciplinary research and education in foundations and applications of data science. Brock’s research focuses on low-dimensional geometry and topology, particularly on spaces with hyperbolic geometry. He received his undergraduate degree in mathematics at Yale University and his Ph.D. in mathematics from U.C. Berkeley. After holding postdoctoral positions at Stanford University and the University of Chicago, he joined the Math Department at Brown in 2004. He has had continuous National Science Foundation support since receiving his Ph.D and was awarded a John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2008. Brock served as Chair of the Mathematics Department at Brown from 2014-2017 and was recently elected Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He is also jazz bass player, an avid sculler, and father of three. He lives with his wife Sarah and their children in Barrington, RI.

This event is generously hosted at Salesforce by Anna Heery '12, Pablo Quintanilla '02, and Shae Selix '12.

Register for the event here: https://bcsf-dsi-jeff-brock.eventbrite.com

We are so excited to announce our newest Alumni event group: the Brown Brunch Runners! 

The instructions: choose a running distance, meet at the assigned location at the assigned time, run with your fellow alumni, end all together at The Dorian: a great brunch spot in the Marina. 

Run #1

• 10:30am for 2.5 miles
• Meeting Point: Warming Hut Cafe 983 Marine Drive
• Route: Through Crissy Field along the water

Run #2

• 10:45am for 1 mile
• Meeting Point: 3398 Baker St
• Route: Around the Palace of Fine Arts)

Please sign up for a distance and see the running routes here! Everyone will be responsible for their own brunch cost.

Creative Expression & Diversity: Faculty Reflections

Friday, February 19th
7 PM - 9:30 PM
University Club of SF // 800 Powell Street

Liza Cariaga-Lo, Vice President for Academic Development, Diversity, and Inclusion, will moderate a Brown faculty panel discussion exploring how diversity enriches innovative thinking, critical analysis, and problem-solving in performance, design, research, and teaching at Brown. BCSF is pleased to be one of only seven alumni communities to host this special series! A reception with drinks and light dinner fare will be followed by the speaking program and Q&A. Faculty panelists include Ralph Rodriguez, Professor of American Studies and English, Courtney Martin, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, and Daniel Kim, Professor of American Studies and English.

For more information and tickets please head here! If you can't make it to the Friday event, Brown is hosting the same event in the South Bay on Saturday the 20th. 

This Unity event is sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Brown Alumni Association’s Multicultural Alumni Committee, and the Brown Club of San Francisco.

Celebrate Brown's 250th with readings by contributors to The Brown Reader. Monday, Dec 8th!

In celebration of Brown University’s 250th anniversary, fifty remarkable, prizewinning writers and artists who went to Brown provide unique stories—many published for the first time—about their adventures on College Hill. Funny, poignant, subversive, and nostalgic, the essays, comics, and poems in this collection paint a vivid picture of college life, from the 1950s to the present, at one of America’s most interesting universities.

The evening features a panel of 3 contributors to The Brown Reader, including Robert Arellano ‘91 MFA ‘94, Andrew Sean Greer ‘92, and Brian Christian ‘06, moderated by Shawn Wen '09. Copies of The Brown Reader will be available for purchase, along with other selected works by the authors.

Reserve your seat / copy here!