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Guest Speaker Series

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Milton Academy’s guest speaker series brings leading thinkers, creators, and innovators to campus, offering students opportunities to engage directly with world-renowned authors, researchers, artists, and public leaders.

From presidents to Pulitzer Prize winners; bestselling authors to pioneering researchers; diplomats, artists, authors, and Nobel Peace Prize honorees, Milton Academy plays host to many world-renowned speakers and guests throughout the academic year.

These once-in-a-lifetime visits are opportunities for Milton students to hear from—and interact with—luminaries from every field.

Milton’s speaker and guest programs include the biennial Keyes Seminar Day, the Bingham Visiting Writers program, the Straus Dessert Series, the Melissa Dilworth Gold Visiting Artist program, and the longstanding War Memorial Lecture.

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A man in a suit and tie gestures with his hands while speaking at a podium, with blurred heads of an audience in the foreground and a blue backdrop behind him.
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Recent Guests and Speakers

  • Researcher Dr. Robert Lange
  • Author Rebecca Makkai
  • Performance group Freestyle+
  • Author Ben Mezrich 
  • Author and researcher Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
  • Boston College professor Robert Ross
  • Rhode Island School of DesignProfessor and author Jonathan Schroeder ’99
  • Author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  • Poet Dorianne Laux
  • Television and film producer Betsy Beers ’75
  • Corporate executive Claire Hughes Johnson ’90
  • Harvard Business School professor, author, and conflict-negotiation strategist Deepak Malhotra P’27, ’28
  • Chef and internet personality Nick DiGiovanni ’15
  • Author Emily Franklin ’90, P’17, ’22, ’25
  • Former Congressman Joseph Kennedy III

Past War Memorial Lecturers

The War Memorial Lecture was established in 1922 to honor those Milton graduates who gave their lives in World War I, and the foundation brings to campus notable guests who have dedicated their careers to the responsibilities and opportunities connected to leadership in a democracy. There have been 49 War Memorial Lecturers, including:

  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • T.S. Eliot, Class of 1905
  • George C. Marshall
  • Charles Malik
  • Barbara Ward Jackson
  • J. Robert Oppenheimer
  • Ralph Nader
  • William F. Buckley
  • Maya Angelou
  • Óscar Arias
  • David McCullough
  • Doris Kearns Goodwin
  • Vivek H. Murthy