Messages: Joe Vulopas
This year’s Talbot Speaker, Joe Vulopas, is the founder and executive director of Aevidum—a depression and suicide education awareness initiative launched at the Pennsylvania high school where Mr. Vulopas teaches English. Mr. Vulopas’s goal is spreading awareness about depression, suicide and hope. Aevidum involves trained adults in empowering middle and high school students to understand that depression is a treatable illness; to know the warning signs of depression; to use their gifts and talents to spread the message of hope; and to be advocates for their friends—other...
Read MoreMessages: Bishop John Shelby Spong
This year, Bishop John Shelby Spong continued the Endowment for Religious Understanding speaker series established by the Class of 1952. Bishop Spong spoke with students about accepting people, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. He explained to students that the Bible is sometimes used to dissuade that acceptance, including in Bishop Spong’s own childhood experience. A retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey, Bishop Spong is known as a theologian, religious commentator and author. Growing up in the 1930s in North Carolina, Bishop Spong...
Read MoreMessages: Martín Espada
Tapping into his ancestral Puerto Rico and his 1960s Brooklyn childhood, Martín Espada’s poems weave stories of immigrants, family, music, racism and baseball. As this fall’s Bingham Visiting Reader, he read—with passion and humor—from selected works to students in King Theatre, framing his poems with stories of how they came to be. Mr. Espada has published more than 15 books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest collection of poems, The Trouble Ball, is the recipient of the Milt Kessler Award, a Massachusetts Book Award and an International Latino Book Award. The...
Read MoreMessages: Dr. Jackson Katz
Advocating the “bystander approach” commonly used in anti-bullying campaigns, Dr. Jackson Katz spoke with students this fall, encouraging everyone to use their voices against issues of gender violence. Dr. Katz co-founded the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. The program initially focused on involving college and professional athletes, given the potential there as a positive leadership platform. Today, MVP is the most widely used gender violence prevention program in college and professional athletics,...
Read MoreMessages: Nell Irvin Painter
Distinguished historian Nell Irvin Painter spoke to students about her research in her latest book, The History of White People. The book guides readers through more than 2,000 years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race, but also the frequent praise of “whiteness.” She is the author of several books and countless articles relating to the history of the American South. Her critically acclaimed book, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, won the nonfiction prize of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. A graduate of Harvard University, Painter...
Read MoreBold Plan Sets a Vision for the Next Decade
Meeting in late January, Milton’s board of trustees enthusiastically endorsed Milton’s Strategic Plan. Based on more than a year’s worth of intense thinking and discussion involving all of Milton’s constituencies—faculty, staff, students, parents and alumni—the plan outlines clear, bold priorities, as well as implementation steps. Head of School Todd Bland, announcing the board’s vote to faculty, noted a key consistency: the priorities that emerged from the broad-based planning process align with his own vision. “We’ll build the highest-quality and strongest faculty,...
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