Each school year, the Taft community engages with a guiding question through an all-school read, community conversations, Morning Meeting*, and discussions with outside speakers. This year, Tafties have spent the summer reading David Brooks’ How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. The guiding question that arises from that reading: How do we know another person?

But that’s just the start.

To fully and effectively approach that question, we must work through other very big, very broad, and very important questions. What does it mean to be a person? How do we know ourselves? How do we know one another? How do we coalesce as a community while respecting diverse opinions and beliefs, including ideas with which we disagree and may find offensive? How does knowing another person connect to our ideals of serving one another? How do we learn from each other, especially if and when we disagree?

At this time, we have invited five Morning Meeting speakers to visit Taft during the 2024-25 academic year. Their goal: help us explore our guiding and attendant questions from a range of perspectives. Those speakers are:

Jonathan Haidt
September 26
Author, most recently, of The Anxious Generation, Haidt is well-known these days for his contention that we are overprotecting children in the real world and underprotecting them in the digital world. Haidt’s work helps us ask about the role of digital technology in shaping and building us as persons and in shaping our community. Haidt’s most recent work builds on his prior work as a social psychologist. Taft’s faculty will also have the opportunity to meet with Haidt to consider his book, The Coddling of the American Mind.

David Brooks
October 14
Author, most recently, of How to Know a Person, Brooks is a political journalist and social commentator who can help us explore how we can care for and serve one another well in the midst of intense political and social divisions.

Chloé Valdary
October 29
Founder of The Theory of Enchantment, Valdary’s work begins with the instruction to “treat people like human beings, not political abstractions.” Valdary will help us understand the problems that arise when we treat each other as abstractions and how we can live differently within our community.

Lisa Miller
January 28
Author of The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain, Miller has spent her academic career studying the link between spirituality and mental health. She will help us consider the role of spirituality in our understanding our humanity and forming our community.

Eddie Glaude
February 20
Dr. Glaude served as the Director of the African American Studies Program at Princeton University for many years, and he is the author of several books, including, most recently, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. Glaude will help us consider the significance of Black history and United States history as we seek to become a diverse and connected community in service to one another.

*Morning Meetings: A Taft Tradition

The Morning Meeting program, a longstanding Taft tradition, brings the full school community together in Bingham Auditorium, where speakers from across the aisle and across the globe grant exposure to new or unique perspectives, and offer deeper, broader insights into the world. Speakers typically engage with students, faculty, and staff through a range of discussion opportunities throughout the day of their Taft visit. We expect all of our Morning Meeting speakers to:

• Catalyze transformative conversations around our guiding question
• Offer ideas and information that help us—as we state in our Portrait of a Graduate—become a community of “lifelong learners, thoughtful citizens, and caring people”
• Offer diverse and varied perspectives on politics, society, and ideas
• Engage with students and faculty attentively and respectfully
• Shape the imaginations of our students so that they begin to envision possibilities for growth and change personally, locally, and even globally

Morning Meetings are just the start of important conversations in our community. Faculty and student leaders play a crucial role in engaging with the ideas presented by our speakers throughout the school year. With each major speaker, we will offer opportunities for students and faculty to meet in smaller groups for conversation. We will also provide follow-up questions for discussion among faculty and students at sit-down meals, and, at times, for discussion among advising groups, afternoon activity groups, or other groups of students.