Behind the Lectern

For decades the Academy has hosted a who’s who of speakers on the Assembly Hall stage. Tastemakers from the world of politics, writing and business have recited tales of accomplishments or provided messages of inspiration for the impressionable audience.

“What is consistent with the assemblies I love wasn’t the topic, but the speakers’ energy,” Morgan Momen ’27 says. “Being exposed to great speakers in high school gives us a head start and allows us to take note of what works in other people’s speeches and apply it to our own.”

In the lead-up to his successful presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter spoke to Exonians in February 1976. Eight days later, his successor, Ronald Reagan, did the same. Presidential runners-up Michael Dukakis and Bob Dole each made appearances in the late ’80s. Others from the political sphere like civil rights leaders John Lewis and Julian Bond, Carol Moseley Braun and Ron Paul have all spoken at assembly.

Authors who have spoken at Exeter include James Baldwin, Arthur Miller, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jorge Luis Borges, Gwendolyn Brooks and poet and four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost, who was a regular assembly speaker throughout the first half of the 20th century. Alumni authors Gore Vidal ’43, George Plimpton ’44, John Knowles ’45, John Irving ’61, Dan Brown ’82 and Roxane Gay ’92 have graced the Assembly Hall stage, with Brown delivering an annual address to preps in recent years. Academics Noam Chomsky, Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West and scientists J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jane Goodall and Sylvia Earle are all part of the storied list of assembly speakers.
“If you were to think about the people who have spoken onstage, and the impact they have had on student lives, it’s really powerful,” Principal Bill Rawson ’71 says.