<p>many prominent parents are very involved with Brown. </p>
<p>chris mathews has given several talks on campus in the last few years. dustin hoffman, peter boyle, gary trudeau and christopher reeves all gave keynote addresses (respectively) at the last four parents weekends. </p>
<p>danny devito and rhea perlman frequent many of their daughter's plays--actually max hoffman is in the theater department too and his dad has come to a few productions. tim robbins and has participated in two university events that i know of (a public affairs conference and the ivy film festival)</p>
<p>some parents are responsible for bringing other prominent speakers to campus--a talk with martin scorsese was moderated by a brown parent, for instance. president clinton spent a good part of last weekend at brown without charging his normally astronomical speaker's fee (in fact he spoke for free) at the bequest of a brown parent/alum.</p>
<p>itzhak perlman serves the university as a trustee because his kids went here...i'm sure the list goes on and on</p>
<p>from a really old george street journal article:
<a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George_Street_Journal/Famous.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George_Street_Journal/Famous.html</a></p>