School of Public Health: Commencement April 24, 2008 1. Introduction by Dean Ken Warner 2. Commencement Speech by Dr. Larry Brilliant Introduction by Dean Ken Warner Good evening. I’m Ken Warner, Dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health. It is a pleasure to welcome you to Hill Auditorium for our celebration of the graduation of the class of 2008. This is the first time that we have held commencement in this magnificent, recently remodeled University facility. I hope that the elegance of this historic building will add to your enjoyment of this very special evening. This is the day we rejoice in the achievements of every student who has earned a degree at this most distinguished institution. You have been remarkable students, and we are pleased that you chose the University of Michigan School of Public Health for this phase of your education. 1 For all of you wonderfully supportive relatives and friends, let me tell you a few things about the class that is graduating this weekend. Introduction to Commencement Speaker Larry Brilliant This evening I have the distinct honor and great pleasure of introducing Dr. Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org, who will deliver our commencement address. Tonight’s speaker may look like an ordinary man, but there is nothing ordinary about Larry Brilliant. Dr. Brilliant’s accomplishments are so vast that I could easily spend the next hour or so recounting them; but then you’d be late getting your degrees, and late starting your public health careers. Dr. Brilliant wouldn’t want that. He wants you to get to work right away. And to work very, very hard. That said, I have to spend a little time telling you something about this remarkable human being – probably more time than he would prefer. If you want more details on his life and career than I’m going to provide, check out his Wikipedia entry – yes, he does have one – or read the feature article on him published just last week in Rolling Stone. Let me just tell you a bit about how Dr. Brilliant started his career. Back in the late 1960s, not long after he’d finished medical school at Wayne State University, Larry and his wife, Girija, drove to Asia with a group of friends, in a bus that they’d painted in psychedelic colors. They ended up in India, where they joined an ashram and developed a deep relationship with their guru, Maharaj-ji. Larry and Girija eventually wound up 2 joining the United Nations campaign to vanquish smallpox. They spent a total of nearly 10 years in India, helping officials from the World Health Organization scour the country for hidden cases of the disease. They traveled to dozens of cities and hundreds of remote villages. They endured floods, drought, sickness, and fatigue. And when they were finished, smallpox had been eradicated. Now I don’t mean to suggest that Larry and Girija Brilliant single-handedly wiped out smallpox. They did not. They were part of a massive and historic public health effort, and they did play a major role in that effort. Girija Brilliant could not be with us tonight, as she is recovering from surgery. We send her our love and best wishes for a speedy recovery. We are very pleased, however, to have the Brilliant family represented in the audience in the form of Larry and Girija’s daughter, Iris. Iris is an undergraduate here at the University of Michigan. Those years in India were a turning point for Larry and Girija. The experience motivated them to further their public health education. They were both from Michigan, and as everyone in this room knows, the University of Michigan has the finest school of public health in the nation. So the Brilliants came to Ann Arbor. Girija earned her MPH and PhD degrees from the School of Public Health, and Larry earned his MPH from our school. So that’s how Dr. Brilliant began his remarkable career in public health. More than 3 decades later, that career is still going strong. Indeed, it is scaling new heights. Let me list just a few of the highlights: 3 • While still a student here at Michigan, Dr. Brilliant co-founded the SEVA Foundation, an organization he went on to direct for many years. Since its founding in 1978, SEVA has helped fund two and a half million eye operations worldwide, most of them sight-giving cataract surgeries for people living in some of the world’s poorest countries. In addition to blindness prevention and treatment, SEVA helps indigenous communities in Central America combat poverty and injustice and gives support to Native American communities across the United States. • When a catastrophic tsunami struck southeast Asia in 2004, Dr. Brilliant immediately flew to the region and spent several months living and working in refugee camps in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. • A year later, Dr. Brilliant helped conduct polio vaccinations in India. • He was a first responder for the CDC’s smallpox bioterrorism response effort. • Dr. Brilliant has received awards from the government of India and from the World Health Organization. The University of California recently named Larry Brilliant an International Public Health Hero. • And in 2006, the leaders of the technology and entertainment industries awarded him their prestigious TED Prize, for his work in pioneering new technologies. If you have the chance, google Larry’s TED Prize acceptance speech video. I saw it more than two years ago, and I still feel inspired by it, and I think about it often. 4 Dr. Brilliant was an outstanding student here. I should know. I taught him economics, and a few years later, when he served briefly on the School’s faculty, he taught me epidemiology. He has been a valued member of our alumni ever since he graduated. Recently, he agreed to be a member of the External Advisory Council of the University of Michigan’s new Center for Global Health. I know that his wisdom and experience will be an enormous help to the leaders of that new center as they move forward with their important work. Larry Brilliant will be the first to tell you that he is an unorthodox blend of 1960s idealism, 1990s entrepreneurship, and 21st-century technological know-how. It seems to me that’s exactly the kind of combination the world needs if we are to find solutions to our most pressing problems. Problems like poverty. Health disparities. Global warming. Those are precisely the issues that Google.org, under Dr. Brilliant’s leadership, has made its top priorities. When the leaders of Google launched a search for someone to lead their unique $1billion-plus philanthropic arm, Google.org, they needed a unique and uniquely talented person to run it. That man is with us here tonight, and we are fortunate indeed to have him. Please join me in welcoming our valued alumnus, and my very dear friend, Larry Brilliant. Commencement Speech by Dr. Larry Brilliant Dean Warner, colleagues from the University of Michigan faculty, friends, Class of 2008 parents and supporters, and most of all – to you, the 377 graduates of the 5 class of 2008: thank you for inviting me to share this day celebrating your graduation from the most wonderful school of public health in the land. Graduates, today, as soon as I get out of your way, you will receive a degree that is honored around the world. Today, as you celebrate with friends and family, I have one goal for my remarks: I want you to think of your profession, public health, in the most expansive way that you can. I want you to enlarge the boundaries of traditional public health as wide and long as you can imagine. My wife and I have four Michigan degrees between us. We both received MPHs here and I was proud to be a faculty member for nearly a decade. My office was in the basement at Observatory Lodge, the door plastered with all those colorful hippie decals - peace symbols, a smorgasbord of religions, and the Seva Foundation rainbow decal. Yes. That was my office. Across the street from the University. They wanted to keep me arms length distance from the rest of the School. So that when I got into trouble – inevitably - they would have, er, ahh….. plausible deniability. I had been living in India for nearly ten years, working in the WHO smallpox program. After we eradicated smallpox, I wanted to come to U of M to learn more about international health and epidemiology. When I was a student, Dean Ken Warner taught me Economics. When I was on the faculty, I taught Ken Warner epidemiology. 6 That’s probably why neither of us could ever get real jobs after that! Last year, Ken gave me a gift of that old office door. They said they were tearing down the building but I think they wanted finally to be rid of all those hippie decals. Ken said I was always welcome back, but why did it feel like he was… showing me the door? Well today, you graduates will be walking through a very different door. A door to the future. A door to a noble profession. A door to a 21st century world which needs you so very much. From this moment -- whether your jobs take you to a county health department, a research lab, or door-to-door in a developing country village or slum, or to work in a hospital or academic setting – whatever door you go through you’ll be joining some great women and men who solved some of the world’s greatest public health problems.