This winter’s Kingswood Oxford public speaking competition took place virtually on February 8. For the sixth year in a row, Roxbury Latin’s team earned the Googins Cup, awarded to the school that places first overall in four categories of competition: Persuasive Speaking, After Dinner Speaking, Impromptu Speaking, and Ethical Dilemmas.

The four RL boys contributing to the team’s success this year were John Wilkinson (I), Nick Raciti (II), Vishnu Emani (II), and David Sullivan (II). In addition to their team success, two boys earned individual recognition: David not only placed first in Impromptu Speaking, and second in After Dinner Speaking, but he also placed first as the Top Overall Speaker in the competition, which included 52 students from eleven schools across New England. John also earned a third place finish, in After Dinner Speaking.

The virtual nature of this year’s debate and public speaking tournaments has not lessened the boys’ hard work and commitment, faculty advisor Stewart Thomsen has noted. Faculty member Ken Hiatt ‘93 served as the judge for Roxbury Latin’s team of four at this winter’s virtual competition.

“For the past 20 years, I have studied the history of racial discrimination in the United States,” Dr. Brian Purnell began in virtual Hall on February 18. “I focused on this because I wanted to understand my country’s contradictions.” 

Dr. Purnell shared his personal journey with Civil Rights Movement history, which includes his work as a historian as well as his own personal experiences of growing up in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1980s and ‘90s. His talk offered a foundational explanation of where our country has been in regard to racism, how far we have come, and how far we still have to go.

“The most famous lines from our Declaration of Independence read, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ While Thomas Jefferson wrote those lines in Philadelphia in 1776, over 400,000 people lived as slaves in British North America. The overwhelming majority were in the South, where human labor cultivated tobacco and rice, but there were also tens of thousands of enslaved people who lived in the North—15,000 in Massachusetts and 19,000 in my home state of New York. Americans like to think that racial slavery occurred only in the South, but it was part of the North’s deep, dirty past, too.”

Dr. Purnell discussed how the economy and individuals of the Northern states benefited from and relied on the practice of slavery as much as the South: “Beginning with Massachusetts, northern states had abolished human slavery, but major northern industries—banking, finance, insurance and shipping, as well as manufacturing trades, like shipbuilding, barrel making, rope and sail fabrication—all profited from and relied upon the South’s racial slavery and the cotton it supplied the world. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia needed profits from slavery as much as Charleston, Atlanta, and Birmingham. Racial slavery was never a regional sickness, it was always a national cancer.”

Dr. Purnell walked students and faculty through the work of abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, and through his own transformative experience of reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass for the first time in ninth grade. He talked about how his third grade teacher, Mrs. Eppolito, who—in wanting to teach her young students about the dangers of racist violence, and the inexplicable nature of rage and prejudice—showed her class the very beginning of the documentary, Eyes on the Prize, which told the story of 14-year-old Emmett Till, including showing images of his dead body.

“‘This is what happens when bigots have their way,’ Mrs. Eppolito told us, and I will never forget that,” Dr. Purnell said.

“When Dr. King spoke about the Fierce Urgency of Now, he highlighted the need for people to act upon the injustices in their current world—not a future one—with compassion and commitment… I look forward to hearing how you find a way to do the same, because like Frederick Douglass said, if there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Brian Purnell is the Geoffrey Canada Professor of Africana Studies and History at Bowdoin College. His research, teaching, and writing has focused on race relations—as well as related laws and urban development—throughout the boroughs of New York City, though he has also taught and written extensively about the place of racism in both the North and the South throughout America’s history. Dr. Purnell’s first book, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings, tells the story of interracial activists fighting against racial discrimination in Brooklyn during the 1960s. At Bowdoin, he teaches courses on the civil rights movement; racism and criminal law; affirmative action; the history of racial and ethnic conflict in the U.S.; and the history of American cities from the colonial period to the present.

Watch the entirety of Dr. Purnell’s Hall talk, as well as a powerful Q&A session.

On February 3, members of Class VI braved the chill and slush to trek two miles in the name of advocacy. Joined by Class I counterparts and two dozen faculty and staff members, Sixies participated in Boston’s Winter Walk—an event that raises both dollars and awareness to combat homelessness throughout Greater Boston.

Students’ march around campus and through the surrounding neighborhoods of West Roxbury was just one part of a larger event that takes place each February—the coldest month of the year in Boston. This year marked the Winter Walk’s fifth annual event, which took place—in walks large and small—from January 29 through February 7. During the walk many RL boys wore signs indicating why they walk: “To raise awareness and spread kindness,” “To be an ally,” and “To not take the things we have for granted.”

The Walk is not only a fundraising endeavor, but also an act of solidarity: “This is our chance to link arms with those who experience homelessness and to listen humbly to their stories. It is our chance to show them that this city cares about their lives and to affirm our commitment to do all it takes to ease their struggles,” reads the Walk’s website. West Roxbury residents and RL parents, Jessie and Enrique Colbert P’26, served as co-chairs of this year’s Winter Walk, and Mrs. Colbert was the person who brought the idea to the attention of Class VI classmaster, Hunter White. During a year in which many of RL’s regular community service partnerships and events are unavailable to students, due to COVID restrictions, Mrs. White was eager to involve RL’s youngest boys in this meaningful and active service initiative. Head Cross Country coach Bryan Dunn marked a two-mile course, and—donning hats, coats, boots, and masks—RL students and adults took to the streets.

The Winter Walk is presented by Boston Medical Center and Boston Medical Center HealthNet Plan, and sponsored by many other local businesses, large and small. In support of the effort, and in honor of our Class VI walkers, Roxbury Latin made a donation to this year’s Winter Walk, which will be directed to the Pine Street Inn—one of the many shelters the organization serves, as well as a long-time service partner of Roxbury Latin. The Walk brings together a number of Greater Boston’s remarkable homeless service programs to show the powerful work being done in the city.

Community service is a central element of Roxbury Latin’s mission. In celebrating the school’s 375th anniversary last year, Roxbury Latin focused specifically on issues related to poverty and homelessness, sponsoring an all-school bed-build with A Bed for Every Child, through the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, and a series of speakers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted, Matthew Desmond; CEO of Boston Medical, Kate Walsh; founder of Codman Square Health, Bill Walczak; and Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo. The series continued a centuries-long Roxbury Latin tradition of preparing boys to both lead and serve.

View photos from RL’s Winter Walk. (Photos by Mike Pojman)

“What if what’s okay today may be wrong tomorrow?” Juan Enríquez began in virtual Hall on February 4. “What if what’s right flips 180 degrees, and the rules that you’re taught today turn out to be completely wrong tomorrow?” Mr. Enríquez is many impressive things—life science expert, technologist, investor, author—and his most recent book, Right/Wrong, addresses how technology transforms our ethics, and what the implications of that will be in the future. That was the topic he brought to light in Hall as Roxbury Latin’s 2021 Wyner Lecturer.

“Think about this in terms of a time machine,” he said. “You go back to the time of the Mayans. The Mayans practiced human sacrifice, as did the Aztecs, as did a series of other people. Not only was that considered right, it was considered essential to the survival of that civilization, because otherwise the sun wouldn’t rise, or the rains wouldn’t come. Of course, in retrospect, we look at this and we say what a barbaric set of customs.”

Mr. Enríquez went on to talk about how, not that long ago, in France people regularly attended public executions by guillotine as if they were social events—a practice we would view today as horrific. He drew connections to the evolution of ethics and morality in the United States over many centuries, and even over recent decades. He discussed Americans’ view on gay rights, which went from two thirds of Americans being opposed to gay rights in 1997, to two thirds being in favor of it today. He discussed how the abolition of slavery came to be, due in large part to the actions of brave individuals, but also, not coincidentally, along with the advent of machinery and the use of oil as energy, which became an alterative to manpower.

“People used to live, on average, 25 to 35 years,” said Mr. Enríquez. “All of a sudden, across continents, you could treat people better, and life span exploded. You suddenly had a situation where you could produce more and also do the right thing. That is a situation that we may see time and again. As solar energy becomes faster, better, cheaper, we can have more energy and not have to burn coal. We’re going to be judged pretty harshly, as global warming takes hold, by future generations who are going to say: Why didn’t you use solar? Why didn’t you use geothermal? Why were you burning coal? How dare you have done that—that was completely amoral.”

Finally, Mr. Enríquez asserted that the toxic polarization in America today—exacerbated by social media—means we have to reintroduce the words humility and forgiveness into our vocabularies.

“It’s incredibly important to have humility and forgiveness, because we may be wrong. And even if we’re right, the concept of being right and wrong may shift. When we judge the past or each other, when we talk to each other, when we accuse each other, let’s be a little more careful to isolate the 1% of people who are truly evil from the vast majority of people who may have different thoughts or opinions than we do, who were brought up in a different way than we were. We may not agree with them, but they’re trying to, in general, do the right thing. They’re trying to teach their kids what they think is right and wrong. They’re trying to put food on the table. They’re trying to be a good person. The bottom line is this: When you judge the past, do it with a little more kindness and hope your descendants will do the same.”

Mr. Enríquez is the managing director of Excel Venture Management—a life sciences venture capital firm—and the founder of Biotechonomy. He’s also an affiliate of MIT’s Synthetic Neurobiology group; he teaches about the economic and political impacts of life sciences, about future brain technologies, and about the rise and fall of countries. He was a founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, and he also ran Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation.

Mr. Enríquez has been prolific on TED and TEDx Talk stages around the world, drawing tens of millions of viewers. He is also the author of several bestselling books focused on biological and technological evolution; on political polarization; and on the ethical choices we face, related to these topics, now and in the years ahead.

The Wyner Lecture—established in 1985 by Jerry Wyner, Class of 1943, and his sister, Elizabeth Wyner Mark—is a living memorial to their father, Rudolph Wyner, Class of 1912. We are grateful to continue shedding light on important social issues through the Wyner Lecture.

Watch the entirety of Mr. Enríquez’s presentation, as well as an engaging Q&A session with students and faculty.

“Today, we gather to commemorate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” began Headmaster Brennan in Hall on January 19. “We pause to recognize the contributions of this remarkable man and to consider anew the principles of justice, equality, and brotherhood—principles he pursued ardently and about which he spoke eloquently. While the United States today is blessedly different from the United States of Dr. King’s lifetime, racism and bigotry persist, and there continue to be opportunities for all of us to stand up for the values that Dr. King espoused. The prejudices and hatred that Dr. King worked so hard to eradicate remain in too many heads and hearts… As we affirm that Black Lives Matter, we also acknowledge that our work goes ever on—improving our individual relationships and attitudes but working on evaluating systemic racism, as well.”

After Mr. Brennan’s introduction, Aydan Gedeon-Hope (I) read Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Following the reading, Edozie Umunna (I) shared his own reflections on Dr. King’s letter, citing not only the context in which King wrote it—as a response to a letter from eight Alabama clergymen—but also the dynamics at play during King’s lifetime that persist today.

“If there’s anything I took from Dr. King’s letter, it’s this,” said Edozie. “An effective protest will always be labeled divisive by the oppressor. No matter how you protest, no matter when you protest, no matter where you protest, it will always be viewed as invalid by those whose position of power it threatens to dismantle. When your objection comes under criticism, you’re doing something right… Whatever belief you stand for, whatever cause you fight for, do not let criticism be the reason that your voice is silenced.”

Eric Auguste (I) then read a very personal perspective on Bayard Rustin—the civil rights and gay rights leader and activist—which Eric wrote as his Senior Speech, as part of his English class.

“A gay, black man born in the year 1912, Rustin lived his life suffering many hardships, constantly being battered because of his sexuality and the color of his skin,” read Eric. “However, that didn’t prevent Rustin from fulfilling the role of an esteemed Civil Rights Activist from a young age. By the end of this speech, I want every single one of you to understand why Bayard Rustin, in the face of great adversity, was a man of great courage and question why he isn’t as well known as he should be… Consider what it was like for Bayard Rustin 100 years ago. People like Rustin didn’t and still don’t get the luxury of living easy lives because of a trait they can’t change, and yet, he made it his mission to change the way people viewed race and sexuality. The world has taken big steps in the right direction but it’s time to stop letting heroes go unnoticed.”

The Hall included time for students, faculty, and staff to learn more about the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing”—long considered the Black National Anthem—through CNN’s interactive account of the song’s conception and context. Concluding the Hall was a virtual performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” recorded by RL’s Glee Club in spring 2020, which has been viewed more than 30,000 times on Facebook and YouTube.

“While Dr. King as a preacher believed in the power of the spoken word as a way to change people’s minds and hearts,” concluded Mr. Brennan, “he also knew that significant change could only come about through action, civil disobedience, changing institutions, and reaching out to many different kinds of people. He knew the importance of acting on principle when words could only begin to tell the tale. Given the divisiveness and prejudice that openly persist in our country, our vigilance, activism, and principles are consequential; we still have work to do if we want to achieve the social equality envisioned so many years ago by Dr. King. This work is the responsibility of every one of us.”

View the entirety of this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Hall here.

In 2018, Lisa Piccirillo—a graduate student, and Boston College alumnus—learned about the Conway knot—a conceptual, mathematical tangle that had gained mythical status. (For more than 50 years, no mathematician had been able to determine whether Conway’s knot was “slice.”) One week later, Ms. Piccirillo produced a proof that stunned the math world.

On January 14, Roxbury Latin welcomed, in virtual Hall, Dr. Lisa Piccirillo, an assistant professor at MIT who specializes in the study of three- and four-dimensional spaces. She is broadly interested in low-dimensional topology and knot theory, and employs constructive techniques in four-manifolds. As a young graduate student, Dr. Piccirillo gained international fame for proving that the Conway knot is not, in fact, “slice.”

In Hall, Dr. Piccirillo began by walking students through an example of determining whether a given knot can be turned into an unknot by executing crossing changes. (This required the introduction of some topological vocabulary—knot diagrams, unknots, crossings, crossing changes, algorithms, sliceness.)

“A knot is just a circle,” she began, “but we’re going to think about the circle as sitting in three dimensional space. I don’t have any firm requirements on this circle being geometrically rigid. In fact, anything you can build by taking an extension cord, and making a huge mess out of it, and then plugging the ends together, is a knot.”

After bringing students and faculty through this illustrative process, Dr. Piccirillo spoke more broadly about mathematics education, math as a language, and about the creativity versus practicality of the work that she does every day.

“I think math is a two part adventure,” she said. “First we define objects, and then we prove facts about those objects using really precise, careful, logical arguments. This definition of math might seem foreign to you; in your education right now you’re doing a lot of learning objects. One of the objects we talked about this morning, crossing changes, that’s more of an operation, an action, and you do a lot of learning operations in school. The objects you meet are things like fractions or polynomials, and then you spend heaps of time adding the fractions, or factoring the polynomials, doing operations to these objects… Ultimately mathematicians want to know: here’s the thing that exists, and here’s everything that’s true about it.

“I like to think about learning math as being very similar to learning a language… Approaching math like that helps us dispel a common myth that there are ‘math people’ or ‘math geniuses.’ Another thing about doing math is that you have to be prepared to fail all day, every day—except on a very small number of good days when you write something down.

“Every time I approach a hard problem, I think, ‘Okay, this is not going to work, but I want to understand why it’s not going to work. So here’s an approach. Let’s see what goes wrong.’ Trying something, and understanding why it failed, progresses you toward understanding the problem.”

During a lively and extended Q&A session, students and faculty asked Dr. Piccirillo about “Eureka!” moments, practical uses of knot theory, the role of mathematics in the modern world, how she gets through “stuck” moments, her thoughts on Euclidean geometry, her favorite theorems, and the mindset she enlists in attempting to solve the “unsolvable.”

After earning her bachelor’s in mathematics at Boston College, Dr. Piccirillo earned her PhD  from University of Texas at Austin. In addition to receiving an inaugural Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize—recognizing outstanding, early-career women in mathematics—she was also recently named one of WIRED Magazine’s “People Who Are Making Things Better.” Dr. Piccirillo spent her COVID fall as a visiting researcher at the Max Plank Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany.

View the entirety of Dr. Piccirillo’s Hall presentation, and the robust Q&A session, here.

Roxbury Latin is honored each year to host an impressive range of guest speakers—expert and accomplished leaders, thinkers, researchers, artists, and public servants—who present to the boys and faculty on a broad range of topics. Three recent Hall speakers and friends of Roxbury Latin—Gina McCarthy, Lisa Monaco, and Marty Walsh—have been tapped for close advisor roles and cabinet positions in President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Honorable Gina McCarthy—former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama—spoke to students and faculty in Hall on November 13, 2017, delivering the keynote address in the year’s Smith Scholar series focused on global climate change. On campus, she discussed her work in the Obama administration, offering her assessment of their accomplishments, the importance of the Paris Climate Accords, and the changes that could come with the Trump Presidency. She was generous with her time, spending another hour speaking to and inspiring seniors who were taking the Environmental Science course that year.

“Climate change isn’t just a threat to public health—it’s not about polar bears. It’s about you, your health, the health of your children,” said Ms. McCarthy, identifying the economic threat as well: The stronger and more frequent storms in the Caribbean and the fires in the west call for billions of off-budget dollars that aren’t allocated. “The reason people are accepting the science of climate change is because they are feeling it,” she asserted. Ms. McCarthy currently leads the National Resources Defense Council. In her new role she will serve as a senior adviser to Biden, coordinating climate change policy throughout the government. She will be the stateside counterpart to John Kerry, who will serve as the administration’s international climate envoy.

Lisa Monaco—who was serving as Homeland Security Advisor to President Obama at the time—delivered Roxbury Latin’s Jarvis International Lecture on October 17, 2016. Ms. Monaco is an alumna of our neighboring Winsor School, and she has recently been nominated as Deputy Attorney General to the Biden administration.

In Hall, Ms. Monaco described not only her role as President Obama’s advisor—working with the President and the rest of the National Security Team to help keep the country safe—but also her own public service journey, which began soon after college when she worked in the Senate on the Judiciary Committee under then-chairman, Joe Biden. “I got bitten by the public service bug,” she explained. In closing, she implored RL students to pursue a career in public service. “Public service needs you,” she said. “Yes, RL was founded under the reign of King Charles and is the oldest school in the United States, and it is steeped in wonderful traditions, but it’s also preparing you for 21st-century challenges. In the coming years, our government, our nation, and our world will need people who can understand and operate in a fast-paced and wired world while remaining grounded in our enduring values… What John Eliot called ‘godly citizenship’ three and one-half centuries ago, is needed now, more than ever. And when I look around this room, when I think about the skills and smarts in this hall, I am confident that whatever challenges come in the decades ahead, your generation will rise to meet them.”

Finally, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh delivered RL’s Founder’s Day keynote address in 2014, when he spoke to students about persisting through struggles, and focusing on opportunities, by way of his own, personal story. “As a young person, I took a lot of lefts and rights where I should have gone straight,” he said. By his late 20s he acknowledged his trouble with alcohol and went into rehab. “Everyone in this room knows someone who is struggling. Sometimes life is not a straight line. I had loving friends and family to help me take the right path.” Mr. Walsh reminded students that they will encounter challenges and be faced with choices. He admonished the boys to follow their dreams, and listen to that inner voice, and especially to recognize the tremendous opportunities before them. On January 20, 2017, Mayor Walsh also led the ceremonial puck drop, commemorating the grand opening of RL’s Indoor Athletic Facility and inaugural home game hosted in Hennessy Rink. He spoke from center ice prior to the game, to the hundreds of RL fans in attendance, congratulating Headmaster Brennan and the school’s leadership for building a beautiful facility that would be used by Roxbury Latin athletes and neighborhood youth groups alike. Mayor Walsh has been nominated to become the President’s Labor Secretary.