Dare to be true.
News & Events
Rebecca Makkai on the Power of Fiction, Theater, and Time in Storytelling
Acclaimed novelist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai encouraged Milton Academy students to embrace reading as a powerful way to study history and engage with the past.
“So that you can deeply understand,” she explained, “here’s what people were thinking. Here’s what they were going through. Here is what they got wrong. Here’s why they got it wrong.”
Makkai, author of The Great Believers and I Have Some Questions for You, spent two days on campus as this semester’s Bingham Visiting Writer. She visited creative writing classes, workshopped student writing, and shared insights into her creative process during an Upper School assembly.
Mathematician Po-Shen Loh Urges Critical Thinking and Humanity in the Age of AI
Young people should commit to deep learning and understanding—even as artificial-intelligence tools deliver efficiency and make information more accessible, renowned mathematician and social entrepreneur Po-Shen Loh told the Milton community. Loh visited Milton to share ideas about how we can continue to “Dare to be true” in the era of ever-evolving AI. AI tools must be combined with critical thinking, curiosity, and ethics in order to have effective and positive impacts in the world, he said.
“Even today, I keep learning. I keep coming up with new experiences,” Loh told audiences in the Hobbs Commons of the new Farokhzad Mathematics Center. “You can’t figure out what interests you unless you’re always learning new things.”
Loh is a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University and served as the national coach of the USA International Mathematical Olympiad team from 2013 to 2023. He was once a member of this team, along with Milton grad Paul Valiant ’01. In 1999, Loh received a silver medal in the Olympiad while Valiant won gold.
Loh spent a day at Milton speaking with students in the morning and an audience of students, faculty, alumni, and families in the evening. He visited classes in the Mathematics and Computer Science departments and spent time with Middle School faculty and students, as well as the school’s College Counseling Office and AI working group.
On the Calendar
NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY AS TO STUDENTS: As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the opportunity to admit academically qualified students of any gender, race, color, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, or national or ethnic origins to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally available to its students. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other School-administered activities.
