On February 14, famed New York Times journalist Bret Stephens spoke with students, faculty, and guests in Rousmaniere Hall about his life and work. Mr. Stephens—one of the premiere conservative journalists of our time—has been an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times since 2017, after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he served as Deputy Editorial Page Editor and, for 11 years, a foreign affairs columnist. At The Wall Street Journal, he most notably wrote “Global View,” the foreign-affairs column, for which he was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. Prior to that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, a position he assumed in 2002 at age 28. He has reported from around the globe and interviewed scores of world leaders. Along with journalist Gail Collins, Mr. Stephens co-writes a popular New York Times column titled “The Conversation,” which contributes thoughtful, balanced commentary on American politics.

Mr. Stephens opened the Hall by mentioning Roxbury Latin alumnus and fellow journalist James Kirchick, Class of 2002. He called James one of the “greatest journalists working today” and passed along a message of thanks from James to teachers Stewart Thomsen and Mo Randall. Mr. Stephens then continued by offering “vignettes from [his] life, to hopefully inspire some [students] to take up journalism as a career.” 

He began with his childhood, talking about his youth as a Jewish-American being raised in Mexico City. He described himself as an “insider-outsider” as a child, and having that “hyphenated” identity has, he said, perhaps been the richest feature of his life. Mr. Stephens said he believes that “true thoughtfulness lies in the hyphen.” He brought this hyphenated identity into his teenage years, when at 13 he realized he would need to move to the United States for his high school education. He attended Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, where he and his peers embraced “constructive rebellion”—starting a second, more irreverent student newspaper and pulling pranks with classmates.

After Middlesex, Mr. Stephens studied at the University of Chicago, where he emerged a better thinker from so many “intellectually humbling” experiences. He then took the audience through the up-and-downs of his career: from his first job at a magazine right out of college—which, he describes, ended in humiliating fashion—to The Wall Street Journal and the prestigious role running The Jerusalem Post at the age of 28. When he returned to the WSJ and won a Pulitzer in 2013, he reflected back on how his earlier work experiences shaped who he had become. He shared that if you have enough time to reflect on earlier disappointments—even humiliations—you will likely become thankful for what they teach you down the road. 

Mr. Stephens concluded by sharing the reason behind his move to The New York Times in 2017. The move was sparked by his “Never Trump” attitude during the 2016 election cycle. As a traditional conservative, he viewed the rise and right-leaning media’s coverage of President Donald Trump as the “antithesis of a healthy conservative movement in America.” This brought him to the NYT, and he said he knew it would be “okay to be a contrarian.” In his role, he embraces being a dissenting voice, and he feels the only way to “disagree well is to understand well.”

After the Hall, Mr. Stephens spent first period speaking with members of Tripod, answering questions from them and other faculty and students who wanted to continue the conversation.

On January 31, award-winning landscape architect Kate Orff—the founding principal and partner of SCAPE—delivered RL’s annual Wyner Lecture. The lecture series, established by Jerry Wyner, Class of 1943, and his sister Elizabeth Wyner Mark, is a living memorial to their father Rudolph Wyner, Class of 1912. The school was honored to have Jerry ’43 and members of his family in attendance for Ms. Orff’s presentation.

Ms. Orff’s firm, SCAPE, addresses global challenges—like climate change and environmental justice—by combining regenerative living infrastructure and new forms of public spaces. A New Yorker article described Ms. Orff as being “at the forefront of an emerging approach to climate resilience that argues we should be building with nature, not just in nature. Its guiding principle is that ‘gray infrastructure’—the dikes, dams, and seawalls that modern societies use to contain and control water—is often insufficient, and sometimes destructive. Green infrastructure, by contrast, involves strategically deploying wetlands, dunes, mangrove forests, and reefs to reduce threats of catastrophic flooding and coastal erosion, while also revitalizing the land. This carefully designed ‘second nature,’ the thinking goes, could be our second chance.”

Throughout the morning’s Hall, Ms. Orff offered examples of how her firm interacts with nature as a matter of design. Her firm is “mending the landscape” through partnering with municipalities to revive urban ecology by building parks, plazas, and other ecosystems in what historically has been concrete zones. Projects included work in Louisville, Boston, and New York City. In all these examples, Ms. Orff underscored that any urban landscape is now a template of action and collaborative thinking.

Ms. Orff’s most high-profile project is the Billion Oyster Project, a nonprofit initiative that aims to reintroduce oysters, in vast quantities, to the waterways of New York City as a critical part of her coastal-infrastructure plans. She shared how introducing oysters into the harbor begins to allow New York to hit the “reset button” for its decimated ecosystem and provides practical support in the fight against climate change and erosion.

Ms. Orff is known for leading complex, creative, and collaborative work processes that advance broad environmental and social prerogatives. In 2017, she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” Fellowship, the first given in the field of landscape architecture. In 2019, she was elevated to the American Society of Landscape Architects Council of Fellows—one of the highest honors bestowed on landscape architects practicing in the United States.

After taking the audience through her career path and these examples, Ms. Orff ended her presentation by explaining how her work at SCAPE touches on many topics and industries including science, design, art, engineering, law, government, and business. She then took several questions from eager students, including inquiries about her design process and clientele.

We were honored to have with us on January 17—in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy—Dr. Brandon Terry and Dr. Joshua Bennett, who illuminated for us the breadth, depth, and power of MLK’s philosophy of love and non-violence as a means of bringing about meaningful action and change.

The annual MLK Commemoration Hall began with readings of Micah 6 by Luke Wilkinson (I) and excerpts from MLK’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” by Tyler Duarte (I), along with the singing of Wake Now My Senses and Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.

“Today, we gather to commemorate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” began Headmaster Brennan. “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, even as laws and social policy have been advanced that protect and affirm the rights of all Americans. In these recent years, many headlines have focused on high profile cases involving race, violence, discrimination, activism and, thankfully in many cases, hope.”

“While Dr. King as a preacher believed in the power of the spoken word as a way to change people’s minds and hearts, 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 justice envisioned so many years ago by Dr. King. This work is the responsibility of every one of us, as Dr. King urged: ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’”

“This past weekend, Boston focused again on Dr. King thanks to the dedication on Boston Common of a remarkable new sculpture called “The Embrace.” Evocative of Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, who met here in Boston while she was a student at the New England Conservatory, and he a grad student at BU, it captures not just their affection for each other but the broader aspiration for all people to warmly engage with each other and the broader goals of fairness, justice, and love. We, all of us, are the beneficiaries of Dr. King’s hopes and dreams, and now we must be their champions.”

In Hall, Dr. Terry delivered a clear and powerful master class on Dr. King as a philosopher, rather than as simply a political activist, speaker, or writer—the contexts in which we more typically understand Dr. King and his work. Dr. Terry went into great detail about the driving forces behind Dr. King’s philosophy of love and non-violence—a philosophy that has been criticized at times, both in King’s own time and sometimes still today. Dr. Terry talked at length about the Greek word “agape”—the type of love that is gracious and unmerited, which ascends beyond “eros” (romantic or erotic love) and even beyond “philia,” or brotherly love. He explained that Dr. King felt strongly that true change—true justice—in our society would not come about only through the enforceable (laws and policies), but rather through the unenforceable (kindness, generosity, and love).

Dr. Terry is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and co-director of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. He is one of the country’s leading scholars on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy. He is co-editor of the book To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and editor of Fifty Years Since MLK. His published work has been included in dozens of esteemed publications, from The New York Review of Books to Best American Essays. Dr. Terry also played a key role in the development and installation of the sculpture “The Embrace” unveiled recently on Boston Common, honoring the love and work of both Dr. King and Coretta Scott King.

After Dr. Terry’s remarks, he was joined on stage by his friend and our year’s Smith Scholar in Residence, Dr. Joshua Bennett. They together spent time in conversation about Dr. King’s philosophy of love; about Dr. Terry’s childhood in Baltimore and how he came to be a scholar of Dr. King; and about what justice can and should look like, and ideas on how to achieve it.

Dr. Bennett is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is the author of four books of poetry and literary criticism: The Sobbing School—which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award; Being Property Once Myself; Owed; and his most recent book, published in September, The Study of Human Life. Dr. Bennett has recited his original works at venues such as the Sundance Film Festival, the NAACP Image Awards, and President Obama’s Evening of Poetry and Music at the White House. After Hall, Dr. Bennett spent time in English classes working with students on reading, writing, and appreciating poetry.