President of the College

Mead Memorial Chapel
President Patton will address the senior class.

All are welcome to attend. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis. A live broadcast will be provided in Wilson Hall, in the McCullough Student Center, and in Dana Auditorium, in Sunderland Language Center. Mead Chapel is not air conditioned. For guests who prefer a more comfortable setting, Wilson Hall and Dana Auditorium offer cushioned seating and air conditioning.

Google Ventures founder and CEO, and Middlebury alum Bill Maris (‘97) has had quite an unpredictable career.  Currently he invests in startups at the epicenter of science, technology, and medicine.  He oversees $2.4B in capital, and has funded more than 300 companies in the GV portfolio, including Uber, Slack and Nest. In this talk, he’ll share his perspective on how he went from Vermont to Silicon Valley, and how entrepreneurs and innovation will shape our future. 

Guest Speakers: Ben Rudin ‘09 and Jessica Teets, Associate Professor of Political Science

This event will feature a moderated dialogue on some of the biggest challenges faced today by colleges and universities across the U.S. around questions of speech, diversity, and inclusion.  One of the principal questions at stake in this discussion turns on how First Amendment law should guide speech policies at private colleges and universities. Panelists include

Katha Pollitt is a leading feminist voice in the U.S.  She writes the award-winning column “Subject to Debate” for The Nation magazine. Her latest book is Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights; she is also the author of two books of poetry and several collections of essays.  Her book Learning to Drive (2007) is now a motion picture.

In light of Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to nonviolence, Holistic Life Foundation founders Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andy Gonzalez discuss how their work teaching contemplative practice in underserved schools in the Baltimore area is reducing disciplinary problems among students. “The Holistic Life Foundation is doing some of the most positively transformative work happening in our country’s inner cities.

Sponsored by the President’s Office and Alliance for an Inclusive Middlebury.

Paul Sommers, Paige-Wright Professor of Economics will give this lecture.

“Forty-Two Years of Collaborative Research with Middlebury College Students … and Counting”

In this lecture, Paul will discuss several of his student co-authored papers. The topics will include who voted for Trump, how accurate is Punxsutawney Phil, why George W. Bush owes a huge debt of gratitude to Pat Buchanan in the 2000 presidential election, and who really wrote the Beatles’ hits that were ostensibly collaborative Lennon/McCartney songs?

Kathryn Morse, John C. Elder Chair in Environmental Studies and Professor of History will give this lecture.

Conserving Whiteness: The 1930s Tenancy Crisis and New Deal Rural Rehabilitation

A Chaotic Pendulum Experiment