In celebrating you, today we are celebrating your continuous journey towards the creation of the future. We are celebrating knowledge as a means to learning , to autonomy, to dignity, to individual and collective freedom. We are celebrating hope, the human spirit, human potentiality, the joy, agony and ecstasy of learning and discovery. We celebrate our community with humankind.
Today is a double holiday.
It is Commencement Day and Memorial Day. Memorial Day is a national remembrance day, a day of gratitude for sacrifices of past generations, their contributions to future generations, to us. Today we also remember Brown University's historic losses, as well as recent losses. The same year as the Declaration of Independence , this college lost its first student in the American Revolution. Twenty-one Brown men lost their lives in the Civil War.