Communication Office

This year’s Graduation speaker is Heather C. McGhee ’97. She is an author and public policy advocate who designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America. For nearly two decades, she helped build the policy organization Demos, serving four years as its president. 

McGhee’s New York Times bestselling book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence. 

The speech and debate teams celebrated recent accolades at the Massachusetts Speech and Debate League’s (MSDL) State Championship, including a senior being named a speech state champion and a recognition for the overall speech team.

Talia Sherman ’22 captured the state championship in Dramatic Performance while the team received a third-place sweepstakes award, which measures the team’s overall success in comparison with other schools. Jack Burton ’22 was recognized for his creation and leadership of the MSDL Student Board, and was invited to give a speech, in which he acknowledged the league’s coaches for their work throughout the past two years of online competition. 

In debate, four students competed in the category of Novice Public Forum and were highly successful, advancing into the elimination rounds as quarter- and semi-finalists.

“What does it mean to be human?” philosopher Cornel West asked Milton students. “How do we hold onto integrity in the face of oppression? How do we hold onto honesty in the face of deception? How do we hold onto decency in the face of insult and assault, and how do we hold on to the enabling virtue of them all—courage—in the face of catastrophic bombardment?”

West, a renowned scholar, writer, and activist, joined students taking Philosophy and Literature virtually last week. He discussed how literature can help people understand seemingly insurmountable challenges, or what Samuel Beckett called “the mess” of modern human existence.

Young people are facing catastrophic political, social, and environmental issues, West said. They may find some clarity in the work of artists and thinkers who “wrestle with catastrophe.” A self-described “Chekhovian Christian,” West said he finds healing in work that confronts disaster head-on.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have long endured discrimination influenced by nearly two centuries of history and exclusionary laws, said University of Maryland professor Janelle Wong, who explained that law and policy play critical roles in reversing discrimination.

“The story of Asian Americans has been shaped by these two dominant stereotypes: the ‘model minority’ myth and the ‘forever foreigner’ stereotype,” said Wong, who was this year’s Hong Kong Distinguished Lecturer. “Both of those stereotypes are the products of both history and laws. And the experiences of Asian Americans are deeply connected with other minority groups in the United States. When disparities are shaped by policy, their solutions must also come from policy.”

Fears by white leaders in the mid-19th century that Chinese immigrants would bring anti-democratic and anti-Christian values to the country ultimately resulted in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned immigration of Chinese laborers and later expanded to ban people from all over Asia. Since that time, anti-Asian sentiment and violence has been “embedded” in America, Wong said, noting that it mirrored the timeline but existed on a smaller scale than anti-Black racism and violence.