On November 4, the Milton community welcomed this year’s Heyburn Speaker, University of Georgia professor Scott Reynolds Nelson. The event continued the 34-year long tradition that brings established thinkers to campus every year. In the Athletic Convocation Center, speaking to a crowd that included all U.S. History students, Nelson engaged students with his research on author Richard Scarry and folk hero John Henry. He also visited students in Straus Library before and after his speech.
Since 1991, the annual Heyburn lecture has aimed to connect Milton students with speakers in the humanities and encourage students to think deeply about the complexities of history. According to History Department Chair Joshua Emmott, selecting the Heyburn Speaker starts nearly a year in advance. “We start in January, identifying as a department what kind of speaker we want,” he explained. When deciding on a speaker, the department focuses on the speaker’s ability to connect with a young audience. Emmott explained, “we want someone who’s engaging, who's interesting.” The department also considers whether to choose a topic tied closely to the U.S. History curriculum or to introduce new material.
This year’s plan, however, came with an unexpected twist. “We actually had selected a woman professor from Tufts,” Emmott said. “She had accepted, and then in August, she called, and there was a family crisis, and she couldn't give the speech this year.” He continued, “fortunately, [Malinda] Polk in the English department had attended a talk by Scott Nelson and said, ‘Hey, this guy is really good’…it normally doesn’t happen that way, but this year, that’s what happened.”
Nelson opened his lecture unconventionally, showing Richard Scarry’s children’s book illustrations before connecting them to the railroad legend of John Henry and, after that, to the Reconstruction Era. Stella Tjan ’27 expressed that she “was interested by the structure of his speech,” as it was “not something [she] had seen before.”
Emmott noted the stark contrast of this lecture style with that of last year’s Heyburn Speaker, Jonathan Schroeder ’99. “He started in a kind of unorthodox way with the Richard Scarry books and kind of having lots of visuals, and it wasn't clear, I don't think, from the student perspective…how Richard Scarry was going to connect to John Henry and Reconstruction,” said Emmott. Isaac Wu ’28 also commented that he found the content quite unusual. “His anecdote about hacking the government at 16 was quite…I don’t want to say ‘inspiring,’ but it really showed his curiosity.” By opposition, Emmott described last year’s speaker as “a very traditional dive into the documents, very detailed in depth, very in depth discussion about specific elements of research.”
History teacher Joshua Furst felt that this year’s lecture highlighted “the complexities that arise when doing research.” Furst also emphasized how events like the Heyburn Lecture enrich the Milton community. “It allows for a different approach and different ideas that perhaps our students haven't been exposed to before.” Furst believes that what makes the tradition meaningful is “the same thing that makes history meaningful: it’s the connection that it builds from one generation to the next—a shared experience.”
Students had varying reactions to Professor Nelson’s lecture. Margot Murphy-Hara ’28 praised his dedication to his research, saying, “what stood out to me the most was how he was able to find everything there was to know about John Henry. He uncovered really specific primary sources, like hospital records, that I would never have thought to look for.” Murphy-Hara notes that although the lecture didn’t tie directly to the U.S. History curriculum, it connected thematically, especially in Nelson’s process of looking for sources to craft a non-traditional narrative.
However, Toby Heikka ’28 found the presentation style challenging to follow, saying that “he sort of just jumped from point to point, telling personal stories and connecting them to John Henry.” Heikka added that he “was interested in the stories” but “was lost on what [Nelson’s] overall point was.” Tjan, on the other hand, said that she “really enjoyed the speaker and was able to get a clear message from him.” Wu’s experience was a bit of both: while he noted that Nelson had “scattered across different topics,” Wu said that he could understand “each individual node of a topic.”
While students may express mixed reactions, ultimately, the History Department hopes the event will spark curiosity in students long after the lecture concludes. “In the ideal world, it would inspire people to explore an interest they didn't know they had,” Emmott said.