“This past Tuesday several hundred attendees — including religious leaders, scholars, ambassadors, members of Congress and the UN’s Secretary General — braved a chilly night to come to the National Cathedral to see King Abdullah receive the 2018 Templeton Prize for his work in calling Muslims — and all people — to identify and pursue common purposes.
Designed to be larger than the Nobel Prize, the Templeton Prize was established in 1972 to honor those who affirm life’s spiritual dimension through insight, discovery, or practical works.”

The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year,

The basement of The New York Times, lovingly known as “the morgue,” has an impressive archive of some six to eight million photographs dating back to the late 1800s. And with the help of Google Cloud, these historic images and the data, much of it hand written, will soon be digitized.

“Calculating ratios for different types of pronouns in civil rights speeches. Counting the frequency and proximity of vowel sounds, consonant sounds and rhymes in rap music.
Those are just two examples of the projects students have taken on in Peter Nilsson, Anna Gonzales, and Ben Bakker’s “Distant Reading” course at Deerfield Academy.” Read More.

Feranmi Okanlami M.D., M.S., Class of 2003, is leading a groundbreaking effort in collegiate adaptive sports at the University of Michigan. Feranmi is assistant professor of family medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation, and knows the benefits of adaptive sports firsthand: a former academic All-American athlete himself, he graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 2011 before suffering a spinal cord injury in 2013. He is drawing on his own experience to develop a top-flight adaptive sports program that prioritizes diversity and inclusion.

If you’re in Michigan, consider joining Feranmi for a drop in game of wheelchair basketball on 7/16, 10/7, 11/18, or 12/2.

Stay tuned for a spotlight on Feranmi in the fall issue of Deerfield Magazine, and we are also looking forward to welcoming Feranmi back to campus as a guest speaker for Martin Luther King Day activities in the winter term!

Congratulations to Mina Liang ’19, who was named the Distinguished Young Woman of Massachusetts after competing in the state final last week. Mina will travel

The New York Times published a review of the exhibit “Charting the Divine Plan: The Art of Orra White Hitchcock” at the American Folk Art

The John Templeton Foundation has awarded its annual prize to His Majesty King Abdullah bin Hussein ’80. The Templeton Prize honors a living person who has “made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.” The foundation praised Abdullah for doing “more to seek religious harmony within Islam and between Islam and other religions than any other living political leader.”

The prize will be presented to the King at a Nov. 13 ceremony in Washington, DC. Previous recipients include the 14th Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa, and the Rev. Billy Graham.

Congratulations to Nailah Barnes ’18 and Fatima Rashid ’19 who received Peacemaker Awards for their inspiring community service efforts.
Nailah founded “The Brains with Beauty Project” to empower young black women and girls through two parts – “The Salon Initiative,” which places empowering books in hair salons, and “The One-Stop Initiative,” an online platform that pairs literacy and beauty tips.
Fatima has been working and volunteering in the substance abuse prevention field for almost seven years. During her sophomore year at Deerfield Academy, Fatima founded the Deerfield Substance Abuse Awareness Group (DSAAG) on campus.

Tune in tonight to see Alex Killorn ’08 and Ben Lovejoy ’03 face off in game 3 of the NHL playoffs. Either way…Deerfield wins!

Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino, died in Kenya on Monday. He is survived by the last remaining female white rhinos—Najin and Fatu—at Ol Pejeta Conservancy. 

“Thomas Hildebrandt, head of reproduction management at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, has been working for years to perfect in-vitro fertilization on the related and plentiful southern white in the hopes of harvesting eggs from one of the two remaining females. Neither of them is physically able to carry a calf, but should Hildebrandt successfully harvest their eggs, he can fertilize them with northern white sperm—taken from Sudan and three other deceased males—and implant the embryos in southern white surrogates. Calves could even arrive after the final two members of the species have died, which would mean an extinct species had been completely reborn with a scientific assist.”