Author: admin1798

Knowing and being consistently yourself—in private and in public—is the key to making healthy choices, says Cindy Pierce, this year’s Margo Johnson Endowed Speaker. Ms. Pierce, a social sexuality educator and comic storyteller, discussed the pressures that come with “hookup culture” on high school and college campuses, telling students they have the power to set boundaries and build healthy relationships that fit their lives, instead of focusing on meeting external expectations. Ms. Pierce is the author of Sex, College and Social Media: A Commonsense Guide to Navigating the Hookup Culture; Sexploitation: Helping Kids Develop Healthy Sexuality in a Porn-Driven World; and the coauthor of Finding the Doorbell: Sexual Satisfaction for the Long Haul. “A lot of young people are using social media to present a view of themselves that isn’t real, just to feel like they’re enough. In a lot of cases, it’s not cruelty or outright bullying that makes for a negative social media experience. It’s a low-grade, constant reminder of what you could be, should be, or would...

Graeme Wood, last spring’s Class of 1952 Speaker for Religious Understanding, is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and lecturer in political science at Yale University. His Atlantic cover story, “What ISIS Really Wants,” was the most-read piece on the internet in 2015. Mr. Wood spent the last few years reading and analyzing Islamic State propaganda and speaking with its followers from around the world. Mr. Wood is the author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters With the Islamic State. He has been a Turkey and Kurdistan analyst for Jane’s, a contributing editor to The New Republic, and books editor of Pacific Standard. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The American Scholar, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, and the International Herald Tribune. “Savagery we were unaccustomed to seeing was put on camera. The Islamic State wanted us to see, in high definition, and show the entire world. This was disarming to many in my profession. For media and journalists there has been a learning curve in how we approach this story, this content, and how we cover it as...

Exploring the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and immigration, poet and activist Franny Choi read several of her poems at an assembly sponsored by the Asian Society and GASP student groups. Ms. Choi, the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone, shared work about life as the queer daughter of Korean immigrants. Ms. Choi has received awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Kentucky Women Writers’ Conference for her work, which has been published in Poetry Magazine, The Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Margins, New England Review, and others. Her work has been featured by the Huffington Post, PBS NewsHour, Feministing, and Angry Asian Man. She was a 2016 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellow and former co-director of the Providence Poetry Slam, one of the most highly regarded spoken-word poetry communities in the nation. As a Project VOICE teaching artist, she has taught students of all ages and experience levels. “Our liberation is all tied up in the same thing. If one of us is not free, then none of us is...

When you find something you love, you’ll never be bored, Matt Trammell ’09 told students this spring. Matt is a music writer and the nightlife editor for The New Yorker. His work includes following both rising and well-known artists through New York City’s concert scene; reviewing new albums; connecting good music to the culture that it reflects; and sharing that perspective with the world. During a visit to campus, coordinated by English department chair Tarim Chung, Matt attended classes and met with student groups and publication leaders. Milton was the first place he learned that he could write well, he says. At New York University, Matt realized that he could marry his lifelong love of music and his skill for writing into a career, taking a freelance job writing album reviews for Rolling Stone. After NYU, Matt worked at FADER magazine, prior to his role at The New Yorker. “Every person is as original as they allow themselves to be. To look at something that’s happened in your life, and to draw meaning from it that hasn’t already been assigned to you, is work you’re going to have to do, regardless of whether you’re writing a memoir. It’s going to help you find out what you want and what you have to...

Victories in pharmaceutical research may be life-changing, or they may be very small, says Dr. Angelika Fretzen, senior vice president of product development at Catabasis Pharmaceuticals. This year’s Science Assembly speaker, Dr. Fretzen discussed Catabasis’ research into a drug to regenerate muscle and lessen the effects of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Prior to joining Catabasis, Dr. Fretzen was vice president of pharmaceutical chemistry and development at Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, where she led the development and approval process for the irritable bowel syndrome drug Linzess. She was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. She holds a Diploma (M.S.) in chemistry from the University of Würzburg in Germany and her Ph.D. in organometallic and synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Fretzen also has an MBA from Suffolk University in Boston. “If you are open to finding what fascinates you, what will grow into a passion over the years of your life, the next steps will come to you. You don’t know exactly what those next steps are going to be, but discovering that passion is perhaps the most important thing you could do at this stage in your...