Each year, the Adlai Stevenson, Class of 1918, Lecture, named after the two-time presidential candidate and former United States ambassador to the United Nations, brings to campus a guest speaker who shares Stevenson’s values and has made a major contribution to public life.
“Learning about public service matters deeply because it will shape the world in which all of us live in. There is no good way to address them other than by hearing from those people who have been engaged in public service thus far,” said Mr. Jonas Akins, a member of the HPRSS Department and one of the organizers of the Stevenson Lecture.
The first Stevenson speech was given during October 1976, with Charles Percy, a former United States senator, being featured as the speaker. This year, the guest lecturer was James Surowiecki ’84, who was awarded the prestigious Morehead-Cain scholarship, the first merit scholarship program in the United States, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After Mr. Surowiecki completed the Morehead-Cain program, he was accepted as a Ph.D. candidate in history at Yale University.
Mr. Surowiecki is now a renowned journalist and writer who was a staff reporter at The New Yorker with a regular column on business and finance called “The Financial Page”. Furthermore, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate. Currently, he is a senior story producer for Vice News Tonight.
Mr. Surowiecki is the author of The Wisdom of Crowds, a best-selling non-fiction book, published in 2004, which argues that a large, diverse group of people is smarter than an elite few.
“James Surowiecki is so well read and so well informed on any issue that I’d be interested in listening to him speak about any topic,” said Mr. Farrell, a member of Choate’s English Department who taught Mr. Surowiecki. In the early 90’s, Mr. Farrell taught a class with Mr. Surowiecki at Choate on race and ethnicity.
Something unique about the Stevenson Lecture is that a student is chosen as the Adlai Stevenson Junior Fellow, who gives a reflection on Stevenson’s life and introduces the speaker. This year, Ian Bamford ’19 was the Junior Fellow for the speech. Mr. Surowiecki himself was once a Junior Fellow at Choate about thirty-five years ago when he interviewed a congressman from Massachusetts named Barney Frank, one of the first openly gay members of Congress, in 1984.
The Stevenson Lecture sheds light on many new perspectives outside the confines of a high school to observe the socioeconomic and cultural issues in the United States. This lecture connects with Mr. Stevenson’s life and virtues.
“Lecturers can talk about, for example, honorable public service, the decline of political life, or how far we have strained from the value of acceptance of other viewpoints. Stevenson embodies such a gentleman in politics,” Mr. Farrell said.
Students in many classes, including U.S. History and Economics, are required to attend this lecture as a way to elevate their knowledge on the above subjects above. “To miss out on the opportunity [to learn more about those subjects] when he’s going to be on campus would be a real loss,” Mr. Akins noted.
In his lecture, Mr. Surowiecki discussed the core research findings of his book, The Wisdom of Crowds. Mr. Surowiecki gave an example of using a situation where a group of people were informed how much an ox weighs. As a collective, the average group estimation of the weight of the ox is almost precisely correct, while only one or two individuals in the group of butchers and farmers were even close to the exact number.
Surowiecki transitioned to inform about the perils and the promise of the Internet and how it has affected the “wisdom of crowds.” The Internet, even though it connects people all around the world and increases the “crowd”, causes segregated communities who share similar beliefs. Thus, losing the diversity and wisdom in the community.
“It was very inspirational to hear and see first-hand an influential man who has been part of public service,” said Tyler McLemore ’22. “James Surowiecki said many interesting concepts that I have never thought of, and I am excited to attend future lectures at Choate.”
