“Ben would have loved this,” Judy Areen, Ben Cooper’s mother, said about this year’s Benjamin Cooper Memorial Lecture. Delivered by Eric Liu—a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and CEO of Citizen University, an advocacy group—the lecture urged the GDS community to embrace civil discourse.
Speaking at a high school assembly on Nov. 25 and at the headline event in the lower/middle school performance space later that evening, Liu addressed privilege, civic responsibility and the importance of action at local levels. At the assembly, he outlined strategies for wielding power thoughtfully and fostering dialogue, while his evening talk expanded on the constitutional ideals of “liberty,” “union” and “ordain.”
The lecture was established in memory of Cooper, a GDS high school student who was killed in a car accident on Aug. 12, 1997. “He may have only been seventeen, but he thought long and hard about putting things in the community,” Areen said.
The series has hosted a wide range of speakers in the past, from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Maya Angelou, Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel laureates and United States Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“What we’ve heard from alumni is when this speaker series started it wasn’t necessarily always about having the most famous person but someone who stimulated conversation,” director of alumni engagement Correy Hudson said.
“It was wonderful. His points were excellent,” Todd Leverette, a lower school parent who attended the annual lecture for the first time, said. Leverette appreciated the distinction Liu gave in being an American and engaged citizen.
The main event drew a crowd nearly a fifth smaller than the assembly in the morning. The evening lecture lasted nearly an hour longer than the 40-minute assembly period in the gym.
In his speech to the high school, Liu directly challenged both students and himself to reflect on their privilege. He said that power is embodied, driven and perpetuated by GDS families.
In an interview with the Bit, Liu said his speech was meant to equip students to use their privilege and power to drive change in society.
Liu encouraged students not to be preoccupied by the results of the recent presidential election. “Stop thinking about the nation for a minute,” Liu told the high school. He said that fixing national issues would come after a recommitment to local issues.
“I like how he encouraged all of us to work at the local and personal level in terms of being good citizens instead of focusing exclusively on national politics,” junior Leo Johnson-Goldfrank said.
“We know as a community that we need to take in other communities and talk to each other, but it’s difficult to do that in the GDS bubble,” senior Micheal Dobbs said.
“Liu was an amazing speaker who really spoke to the young people and cross-generationally to the audience about the need for greater listening and greater dialogue across differences so that we get involved,” Abigail Alpern Fisch ’16 said about the evening talk.
“GDS talks a lot about talking this is like our fifth talk about civil discourse,” Dobbs said. He added that while some of what Liu said felt impactful, it felt vague.
Students let out laughter when Liu, at the assembly, told them to “have less stupid arguments” and “think impure thoughts.”
Liu refered to the school community and its diversity as “the republic of GDS.” “It’s a miracle,” Liu told the high school.
When the high school gym was opened up to questions, senior Nora Schrag asked about the concept of the “republic of GDS.” Schrag said “GDS is not a republic. It is a school,” and “there are some issues that deeply divide us.”
Liu responded to Schrag by explaining that everyone is adapting to the realities of the current state of the country. He added that students need to be open-minded and confident in participating in discourse.
“We’re all submitting to what this country is like, and we’re all saying, that’s your job. To be this confident. To be open-minded. To be relatively open-minded.” Liu said in response to Schrag.
“I thought he made some good points but could have been more concise,” sophomore Dillon Leblanc said about Liu’s speech to the high school.
Liu highlighted Ben Cooper in the night-time talk by talking about a discussion he had with longtime history teacher Sue Ikenberry. “I met Sue, who is an institution in this institution, who is here in part because she was Ben’s advisor and because Ben was such a spark Sue would never forget,” Liu said.
“Ben really embodied what Eric [Liu] described a good student was: a very thoughtful person who did not think he had all the answers,” Ikenberry said. “He would have liked this a lot.”