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Michael Brown's 2007 Commencement Address
DP alum and 1985 Nobel Prize winner reveals the DP's role during his formative years at Penn -- and a pivotal time in the history of the DP.
This is the text of Michael Brown's Commencement address to the graduates of Penn's College of Arts and Sciences on May 13, 2007. Brown is Chairman of the Molecular Genetics Department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1985 for describing the regulation of cholesterol metabolism.
Dean Bushnell, Dean DeTurck, Mr. Flahive, trustees, faculty, graduates and guests. Today is Mothers' Day and I will begin my brief remarks with a tribute to all of the mothers in the audience. As a father, I can only imagine motherhood. But if it's anything like fatherhood, you mothers are very proud of your daughters and sons at this moment. Will all the mothers in the audience stand up and be recognized with applause.
In a few minutes, all of the graduates will have a new mother -- an alma mater -- which means "nourishing mother." You and I are siblings -- we share an alma mater. Forty five years ago I sat right where you are sitting, eager to confront the future yet wondering whether my nourishing mother had prepared me to surmount the challenges that the future would bring. Today, 45 years later, I am invited to present this commencement speech. Hopefully, that honor will fall to one of you in the year 2052.
Most commencement speakers use the occasion to give advice. As a father, I know how fruitless that is. I agree with Mark Twain who said, "It's noble to be good and it's nobler to advise others to be good and less trouble." Or Woody Allen who said, "Giving advice is like having sex. It should only be done by consenting adults and never in public."
Instead, I want to contrast the University of Pennsylvania in my era with Penn today. By knowing the past we can glimpse the future. I will now share a secret that I have kept for nearly 50 years. In 1958 I entered Penn on a football scholarship. I got this scholarship even though I never played high school football. Here's how it happened. Each year the Proctor and Gamble Company donated two full tuition 4 year scholarships to Penn. I received one of those scholarships which made me choose Penn even though I had been admitted to my first choice -- Princeton. After I arrived the dean held a dinner for all of the Proctor and Gamble scholars. Immediately, I noticed that I was different. The other seven scholars were each over 6 foot three and weighed more than 250 pounds. I felt like Steve Martin in The Jerk -- the movie in which he played a white child raised in a black family who slowly realizes he is different. In private, Dean Otto admitted the truth. Unbeknownst to Proctor and Gamble, Penn had been using their scholarships to recruit football players. Their Grade Point averages were so low that Proctor and Gamble began to suspect something. The Dean picked me to raise the grade point average. Fortunately, I succeeded in my task--and so did the other Proctor and Gamble scholars. In my sophomore year we won Penn's first Ivy League championship and tied mighty Navy. I must give the Dean credit. He knew that someday I would appear on Franklin Field, and 49 years later here I am.
I entered Penn in 1958 at the end of the Eisenhower years, between the Korean War and the Vietnam War. My predecessors were the silent generation - the organization men. The McCarthy era had just ended and Penn tolerated no political activism. The university clung to its traditions of 200 years. It was uniformly white, male and Protestant. Women were banned from dormitories and even apartments. They were also banned from the College of Arts and Sciences. They were relegated to a college for women which was separate and unequal. Philadelphia was ultraconservative. When I was a freshman, the local newspaper published an indignant letter from a woman who drove past Penn and was shocked that some of the students appeared on public streets without their ties and jackets.
The character of the university was embodied in its Victorian president with the improbable name of Gaylord P. Harnwell. The Dean of Arts and Sciences was Otto Springer. Could anyone have imagined that the successors of Gaylord and Otto would be Amy and Rebecca?

By the time I graduated in 1962, Penn had descended into a maelstrom of controversy. All of its hallowed traditions were under attack. Penn had lost its homogeneity. How did this happen?
The answer is contained in a Russian word: Sputnik. On October 4, 1957, the Russians launched the first orbiting satellite. Suddenly, America was vulnerable. Now they were ahead of us in space. The Russians had the hydrogen bomb. Who knew what evil they could wreak from that height? In November 1960, my junior year, John F. Kennedy was elected President. I pity your generation, which has never known such an inspirational leader. Kennedy set a goal that motivated all of us. "Before this decade is out we will land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth." What a challenge. But how could we put a man on the moon? The answer was technology, and the ultimate source of all technology is the university. Universities like Penn were forced to open their doors. They had to find talent wherever it could be found - whether it be women, Jews, Asians, blacks, Hispanics, whatever. Although some of these had to fight their way in, eventually they succeeded.
The new arrivals shattered the complacency of Penn. My class of 1962 was in the vanguard -- sandwiched between the silent generation and the baby boomers. In deference to my football scholarship I became a sports reporter for the Daily Pennsylvanian. By my senior year, I had become the editor in charge of the op-ed page. Although I was a pre-med chemistry major I spent 60 hours a week at the D.P. We were a rowdy group --Animal House with an agenda. From our pages we questioned all of Penn's hallowed traditions including the segregated fraternity system, fraternity hazing, the separate college for women, and the tradition of bestowing high-sounding honors on socially prominent students. Most of all we attacked the men's student government: hand-picked toadies who were the mouthpiece of an oppressive administration.
The pressures of publishing a daily newspaper were formidable. When news didn't exist we created it. On one dull afternoon we had nothing for the front page. So we formed a student committee to draft President Harnwell to run for mayor of Philadelphia. The next day we ran a banner headline: "Harnwell Boomed for Philly Mayor." Of course, the only people doing the booming were us. The next day we got to run another headline: "Pres. Declines to Run; Students Remain Firm."
As you can imagine, we were not popular -- either with our fellow students or the administration. The editor in chief was Melvin Goldstein. He rose to fame when his fellow students hung him in effigy.
The last straw fell in February, 1962 when we published a hilarious but slightly risqué parody issue of the weekly women's newspaper. By today's standards is it was totally tame, but Dean Otto was offended. At that time, the University owned the DP. The Dean told our printer to stop printing. The newspaper was closed. The dean made one fatal mistake. He did not disconnect our telephones. Our office became a war room. We called the Philadelphia newspapers and television stations. We called the New York Times. We called dozens of college newspapers. The next day a plethora of editorials condemned the University for restricting freedom of the press.
One television station agreed to send cameras to cover the story. But only on the condition that we provide some action to film. We were too unpopular to organize a protest against the administration. Instead we sent our freshmen staffers running through the dorms announcing a protest demonstration against the DP and handing out colorful protest signs. At the appointed time the protestors gathered, the TV cameras rolled, and I stood on a podium to make a passionate speech in defense of a free press -- some of which appeared on national TV.
Within a week the University backed down. They allowed us to reopen on condition that Goldstein resign and that I would become the editor-in-chief. Little did they know that I had edited the parody issue that sparked the controversy.
After the suspension was lifted I wrote an editorial entitled "Growing Pains." It began as follows: "Pennsylvania is growing up. The days of her awkward adolescence fade. Nostalgically she leaves behind the comfortable collegiate atmosphere to become a mature university -- and she is having growing pains. She is in pain because she is losing her homogeneity." The editorial went on to predict greatness for Penn as it opened its doors to new people and new ideas.
Why do I tell this story today, when you are impatient to get your diplomas and set out on life's journey? I tell it because life in college does not predict life in the real world. People grow up. The banished editor Goldstein went on to become a prominent attorney in Washington, DC. Other editors became wealthy lawyers, businessmen and even federal bureaucrats. One of them even became a conservative politician. 20 years after graduation, when my Nobel Prize was announced, I received a congratulatory note whose return address was only "The White House." The sender was our most radical staff member, an avowed anarchist, who had become a high official in Ronald Reagan's state department.
Graduation is life's starting line. Whatever you have accomplished or failed to accomplish in college is history. Your alma mater has prepped you with the tools you need for success. Use these tools to do something important.
I want to close with a final comment about Penn. At graduation in 1962 I was invited to write our class history for the yearbook, the Record. I will end by reading the last paragraph -- as true today as it was 45 years ago. "Four years had passed since first we entered the Pennsylvania family. Four years with the speed of four minutes, yet they had left their mark indelibly upon us. We had grown to near maturity in an environment that was rapidly approaching the ideal. No matter where the future would lead us, we would always be Pennsylvanians.
Thank you, and good luck.