Harvard’s Walton to be MLK speaker at Saint Michael’s

Jonathan L. Walton is named Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals. He is pictured inside the Memorial Church at Harvard University. Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Jonathan L. Walton, an acclaimed Harvard University author, social ethicist and religious scholar, will be keynote speaker on Monday, January 21, during Saint Michael’s College’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation Week.

Walton will spend the day at Saint Michael’s on Monday, speaking first during a faculty and staff convocation luncheon in the Dion Student Center at 11:45 p.m., and again at 4:30 p.m. as keynote speaker during the main MLK Convocation in the Chapel of Saint Michael the Archangel. His keynote address will be titled “No One is Free Until We Are All Free: The Centrality of Collective liberation for an Inclusive Vision of the World.”

Walton is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church of Harvard University, as well as a member of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Religion and Society at the Harvard Divinity School.

The week’s main organizer, Moise St. Louis, associate dean of students/director of the Center for Multicultural Affairs and Services, said highlights include: a Tuesday showing of the movie BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee in the McCarthy Arts Center at 7 p.m.; a luncheon talk on Wednesday, January 23 by alumnus Judge Nicholas Cioffi ’61 titled “Changes By and Within the Judicial Branch of Government and Some Thoughts About Further Change”; a Community Reflection Conversation on the essays written by faculty and staff for this year’s Convocation at 7 p.m. on Wednesday evening in the Dion Family Student Center Roy Room; the comedian Chaunté Wayans on Thursday evening in the McCarthy Arts Center, and a Friday Evening Poetry Slam with performer/songwriter Mic-Andre and Rajnii Eddins as headliners, at 6:30 p.m. on January 23 in the McCarthy Arts Center Recital Hall.