2021 Speaker Series

2021 Speaker Series Inspires Thoughtful Discussions About Racism, Politics and Social Media

During the Winter Term and into the spring, the 2021 Speaker Series tackled a range of difficult and timely subjects, from racism and anti-Semitism to the role of social media, the American presidency and economic policy. This year’s series took on even greater importance in the context of current events, including the Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd, and the 2020 election and its aftermath.

“One of our commitments as a school is to create a place where we all, as adults and students, can learn and inquire about politics and citizenship and policy,” Head of School Peter Becker said at School Meeting on January 7, the day after a violent mob stormed the United States Capitol. “I do think we have to connect — as we think about and ponder these things — our own individual character development to this question of what it means to be a citizen.”

The Speaker Series highlighted that our school is an inclusive place, present where we are, but with a global outlook. Through these presentations, students could see compassion, real viewpoint diversity, respect for everyone’s common humanity, and belonging. They were encouraged to listen to differing perspectives, and to participate in faculty-led discussions about the issues, setting aside stereotypes.

“Learning to navigate a pluralistic, complex world filled with different people and ideas is vital to what we see as our core mission as a school, preparing students to be active citizens in the world,” Becker said.

Uprooting anti-Jewish hate

On January 14, Eric Ward, a longtime civil rights strategist, spoke about the history of anti-Semitism and its resurgence. The Executive Director of the Western States Center and a Senior Fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center and Race Forward, Ward is a nationally recognized expert on the relationship between authoritarian movements, hate violence, and preserving inclusive democracy.

“What’s unique about anti-Semitism is that it’s not a religious form of anti-Jewish bigotry. It is one which makes Jews Eric Ward, civil rights strategist a racialized other, where they are seen as another race, similar to the racism that African Americans, Latinos, and others experience. I often liken it, too, to

the growing Islamophobia and anti-muslim bigotry in the United States and elsewhere,” said Ward, who sees anti-Semitism as being at the core of the White Nationalist movement. “It is so central to that hate group, that I believe as a racial justice activist that Black people and other communities of color who are often marginalized will never win our equality if we are not also active in the struggle to uproot this form of anti-Jewish hate.”

Focus on the positives

On February 4, Laura Tierney, the founder and CEO of The Social Institute (TSI), spoke to the community about how to use social media and technology in positive ways. The school partnered with TSI this year to bring to students its #WinAtSocial program, which includes a gamified social media curriculum, co-created with over 50,000 students at 60 schools nationwide.

During her presentation, Tierney encouraged students to develop healthy habits around social media, and to think about how they can set themselves up for great opportunities in the future, because of the decisions they are making today. “I think it’s time that we flip the script and we focus on the positives, not just the negatives. Laura Tierney, I think our collective challenge is to The Social Institute think about how we make decisions that actually fuel our health, our happiness, and our future success, thanks to social media and technology,” she said.

The hardest job in the world

CBS News Senior Political Analyst and “60 Minutes” Correspondent John Dickerson spoke to students, faculty, parents and alumni about the American presidency on February 11, just two weeks after the inauguration of President Joe Biden. His presentation was based on the research for his third book, The New York Times bestseller, “The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency.”

In their advisory meetings the next day, students were asked to discuss whether they agree that the president has the hardest job in the world, and what standards presidents should be held to by the voters. They were asked what responsibilities we have to help our fellow citizens, and how they feel about politics becoming filled with emotion over reason, as Dickerson described during his presentation.

The attack on the U.S. Capitol in January was “the ultimate representation of this emotion-based politics,” Dickerson said during his talk. “The emotion became such a central part — and continues to be such a central part — of our public life that it not only fuels people’s anger in response to politics, but it has replaced, in some situations, facts and reason as the thing that is at the foundation of our politics.”

John Dickerson of CBS News

The future of the Republican party

On February 25, author and businessman Edward Conard spoke about the definitions of conservatism, conservative economic policy, and the future of the Republican Party. A graduate of the University of Michigan and Harvard Business School, Conard is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former partner at Bain Capital. He is also the author of two New York Times 10 best-selling books, including “The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class,” and a contributor to “United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality.”

“Notwithstanding former President [Donald] Trump and his followers forming a third party, it’s easy to imagine the conservatives nominating a candidate in 2024 who can energize the Trump blue-collar Republicans without assaulting the sensibilities of moderate voters,” Conard said, asserting that is Edward Conard, author and businessman

possible from an economic perspective if the U.S. embraces policies supporting high-skilled immigration to speed economic growth.

“To protect capitalism and the extraordinary success that it has afforded the world, we need to quit assuming that free enterprise will grow America’s blue-collar wages like it did in the 1950s,” he said, encouraging students to pursue training and create new jobs.

Help wherever you can

On April 1, one week before Holocaust Remembrance Day, Holocaust survivor and Connecticut resident Judith Altmann shared her incredibly moving story. Born in Czechoslovakia, Altmann was 14 when Hitler invaded in 1939. The youngest of six children, she was taken with her parents in April 1944 to Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps, where she encountered Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death.” From there, she was transferred to labor camps at Gelsenkirchen and Essen, and was saved by an SS woman who valued her ability to translate in six languages. After surviving the “death march,” Altmann ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and was barely alive when she was liberated by the British army in 1945.

Now 97, Altmann has shared her story of survival and resilience with an estimated 100,000 children in hundreds of schools. “My advice to you: learn all you can. The knowledge of languages I spoke saved my life. Because of that I was picked to be saved. So study all you can, and help wherever you can. If you see a person needs help, do that,” said Altmann, who has dedicated her life to reminding others what hate and discrimination can achieve, and helping wherever she can.

Jeremy Cohen ’87 and Justin Dunn ’13

Learn from listening

On January 28, Justin Dunn ’13, a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners, and Jeremy Cohen ’87, Vice President and Group Director of Partnership Activation at Major League Baseball, shared two different perspectives on their MLB careers, and the life skills and lessons they learned from their time at The Frederick Gunn School.

Looking back, Cohen said he has learned to always keep his options open. “You learn that the hard way. You learn to listen to people, you learn to talk to as many people as you can. You can learn a lot more from listening than you can from talking.” he said.

Reflecting on his trajectory to the MLB, Dunn said he put a lot of pressure on himself, which was detrimental to his performance. At 23, he learned to listen to others, to filter out his doubts, and ultimately figure out what worked best for him, lessons that are as applicable in life as they are in baseball. “As I get older, I’m learning that you’re all you have. When you understand yourself, it doesn’t matter what anyone has to say to you. You’re content with who you are in life in general, and no one can take you off that path.”