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A wide range of student-led groups support and celebrate our remarkably diverse student body. Taft’s affinity groups—currently based on race, gender, and sexual orientation—offer spaces for students to gather and converse about their shared experiences at Taft and beyond. Clubs offer students opportunities to share their unique cultures and experiences with our broader community, as do school events and programming, including our annual Multicultural Arts Celebration, held in conjunction with our Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Unity Breakfast and workshops; community service programs; and WorldFest, an evening expo during which students share the customs, culture, food, and traditions of their homeland.

On a broader scale, global diversity comes into clearer focus through our Global Leadership Institute and Global Studies and Service program, as well as our all-school summer reading program, which has included Born a Crime by Trevor Noah; All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brandon Kiely; Mudbound by Hillary Jordan; The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett; and most recently, Once I Was You, by Maria Hinojosa.

Deep and powerful learning and understanding is writ large through our Morning Meeting program. Twice each week, Tafties gather in Bingham Auditorium for Morning Meeting, where speakers from across the aisle and across the globe grant exposure to new or unique perspectives, and offer deeper, broader insights into the world. Recent speakers have included Maria Hinojosa, Helen Zia, and Dr. Cornel West

Helen Zia

Author and activist Helen Zia’s talk, Asian Americans in the Time of COVID: Challenge and Resistance, was the culminating event of Taft’s celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month.

“This is what we’re building toward: Communities with unity,” said Zia. “This has been the 21st century challenge, to imagine new visions of lived unity— new visions of openness and dialogue to explore and understand differences, and seek common values, not shut down because of differences.”

DR. CORNEL WEST

Renowned professor, philosopher, orator, author, and presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West brought a message of love and its power, kindness, and community to Taft. “I am who I am because somebody loved me—cared for me,” Dr. Cornel West told the Taft community. “You are who you are because somebody loved you, tended to you, sacrificed for you. What kind of human are you going to choose to be in the short move from your momma’s womb to tomb? I come from a great people; a Black people. A people who, in the face of hatred, keep dishing out love warriors every generation… How? Because I choose to be a certain kind of person…That’s as human as it gets. That’s precisely what community, justice, belonging is all about.”