News Category: DEI

Navigating Microaggressions

Now an annual autumn event, the School’s Community Life Symposium is an early opportunity for students and faculty to consider, discuss, and address different ways in which Middlesex can be a more welcoming, inclusive place for all its members. This year, on September 23, veteran educator and consultant Rosetta Eun Ryong Lee talked about microaggressions, giving many examples of these…

A Voice for Equity and Justice

Having been a Middlesex student only a dozen years ago, Rebecca Hatcher ’12 understood her audience well as she reflected on her own school experience with candor, warmth, and humor during morning assembly on April 15. Speaking after the annual Day of Silence – during which many students and adults remained silent to protest the harmful effects of harassment and…

Toward a More Inclusive Black History

A year after a new lecture was established to honor Middlesex’s first Black faculty member, the Kenneth E. Whitlock, Jr. Black History Month Speaker Series brought its second guest, educator and author Ric Sheffield, to campus on February 28, 2023. A professor emeritus of sociology and legal studies at Kenyon College, Professor Sheffield reviewed the current traditions that have become…

Advocating for Equal Justice

Gathered on January 16 for the School’s annual commemoration of the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Middlesex community considered some of the inequities that persist today, decades after his death, particularly within the criminal justice system. Illustrating these disparities through telling his personal account of wrongful conviction was guest speaker Kevin Richardson, whose…

Confronting the Threat of Anti-Semitism

Sharing concern about the increasing incidents of anti-Semitism in the United States, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens ’91 addressed the Middlesex community on November 29, initially reviewing several of the blatant, often violent acts that have occurred in recent years. Among them were the murder of 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018…

A Poetic Storyteller

To hear a noted, contemporary writer read aloud and discuss his own work is a rare opportunity – one that the Middlesex community was treated to on October 4, when English Professor Tomás Morín addressed the School. As a featured speaker during the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, Professor Morín shared four of his poems and the inspiration behind them,…

Respecting Gender Identity

To continue the effort to discern and address the ways in which Middlesex could be a more welcoming, inclusive place for all students and adults, this year’s Community Life Symposium focused on the topic of gender identity, giving special consideration to how assumptions about gender are often built into everyday language, practices, and policies. Invited to guide the morning program…

A Journey of Identity

As she addressed the school community on April 2, 2022, Pua-Noa Higginson ’09 found it a bit strange to be back at Middlesex, giving a formal speech in front of teachers who “once taught me and helped me navigate what was ultimately a transformational high school experience.” Now a graduate student pursuing a career in biotechnology, she admitted that the…