Parents’ Association Resident Scholar

In a program that spans more than 30 years, the Parents’ Association sponsors Resident Scholars from a wide range of academic and professional disciplines to engage with Upper School students in meaningful ways. Scholars present at assemblies, run workshops, facilitate discussions. and more.

2023–24 Resident Scholar: Ty Seidule

Ty Seidule is Professor Emeritus of History at West Point where he taught for two decades. He served in the U.S. Army for 36 years, retiring as a brigadier general in 2020. He is a visiting professor at Hamilton College as well as a New America Fellow. In 2021, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin appointed Ty to the National Commission on Base Renaming. He served as the Vice Chair.
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Ty has published numerous books, articles, and videos on military history including the award-winning West Point History of the Civil War. Ty graduated from Washington and Lee University and holds a Ph.D. from the Ohio State University.


Past Resident Scholars

2022-2023

Eric H. Holder Jr.

Eric H. Holder Jr. is a civil rights leader who is chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He served as the eighty-second attorney general of the United States, the first African American to hold that office.

Mr. Holder is a Partner at the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP. He advises clients on complex investigations and litigation matters, including those that are international in scope and involve significant regulatory enforcement issues and substantial reputational concerns. Mr. Holder, who was a partner at Covington from 2001 to 2009, rejoined the firm after serving for six years as Attorney General.


2019-2020

Jal Mehta ’95

Jal Mehta ’95 is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). His research explores the role of different forms of knowledge in tackling major social and political problems, particularly problems of human improvement. Mehta has also written extensively on what it would take to improve American education, with a particular focus on the professionalization of teaching. Mehta joined the HGSE faculty in 2008, and was named an emerging scholar by the American Educational Research Association in 2014. The author, co-author, or co-editor of four books, Mehta’s most recent, In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019), seeks to identify where and how powerful learning is happening in schools today. 


2018-2019

Dr. Leana Wen

Dr. Leana Wen is the Commissioner of Health for the City of Baltimore. An emergency physician and patient and community advocate, she leads the Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD). BCHD’s responsibilities include maternal and child health, youth wellness, school health, senior services, animal control, restaurant inspections, emergency preparedness, STI/HIV treatment, and acute and chronic disease prevention. Two weeks prior to her assembly at Park, Dr. Wen was named the next president of Planned Parenthood.


2016–2017

Dr. Cathy O’Neil

Dr. O’Neil is the author of the New York Times bestselling Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. She made the switch from academia (professor at Barnard College) to the private sector, working as a quantitative analyst for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and then for RiskMetrics. She left finance in 2011 and started working as a data scientist in the New York start-up scene, building models that predicted people’s purchases and clicks. Dr. O’Neil wrote Doing Data Science in 2013, and launched the Lede Program in Data Journalism at Columbia University in 2014. 


2014–2015

Matthew B. Crawford

Matthew B. Crawford is an American writer and research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. The author of Shop Class as Soulcraft, the New York Times Bestseller, Matthew is now a contributing editor at The New Atlantis – A Journal of Science and Technology. He is also a motorcycle mechanic. 


2013–2014

Cathy A. Small

Cathy A. Small, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University, spoke about the often unconscious ways that culture shapes us and the breakthroughs in insight and perception that can happen in recognizing cultural assumptions.


2012–2013 — Centennial Scholar

Dr. David Perkins

Dr. Perkins, Senior Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is a “teacher of teachers” and is widely known for his work as co-founder of Project Zero. Perkins devoted one day of his three-day residency to each of the divisions — Lower, Middle, and Upper School.


2011–2012

Manil Suri

Professor of mathematics at UMBC and author (The Death of Vishnu — a novel long-listed for the 2001 Booker Prize and short-listed for the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award — about social and religious tensions in India, The Age of Shiva, and “The Seven Circles.”


2010–2011

Malcolm Daniel ’74

Curator in Charge, Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.


2009–2010

Madison Smartt Bell

Award-winning novelist, biographer, essayist, songwriter, and professor of English at Goucher College. He has written extensively, both fact and fiction, about the history of Haiti.


2007–2008

Dr. Ruth Faden

The Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Executive Director of Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. Dr. Faden is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on biomedical ethics and health policy. Research interests include bioethics and public policy; ethics and cellular engineering; ethics and neuroscience; ethics and bioterrorism; ethics, genetics and public policy; and research ethics; and justice.


2006–2007

Dr. Mario Livio

Adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Johns Hopkins University and an astronomer at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. His research interests include theoretical astrophysics, accretion into black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs, supernova explosions, binary star evolution, and planetary nebula.


2005–2006

Josiah Bunting III

Author of The Lionheads, Ulysses S. Grant, an Education for Our Time, and All Loves Excelling, Vietnam veteran, scholar and Oxford graduate, who was president of Briarcliff and Hampden-Sydney colleges, superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, and is now president of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.


2004–2005

Leon Fleisher

Pianist, conductor, and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in Piano at the Peabody Institute.


2003–2004

Taylor Branch

Pulitzer prize winning author of Parting the Waters (America’s Civil Rights Movement: Lasting Accomplishments and Unfinished Business).


2002–2003

Lucille Clifton

Former Poet Laureate of Maryland, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Distinguished Professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.


2001–2002

Susan Hadary

Documentary Filmmaker and Academy Award Winner in the Category of Documentary Short Subjects for King Gimp. Presentation: “The Voice of Documentary.”


2000–2001

Dr. Eva T. H. Brann

Tutor-St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD. Presentation: Ursala Le Guin’s story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”


1999–2000

The Honorable Antonin Scalia

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States. Presentation: “On Interpreting the Constitution.”


1998–1999

Clyde Butcher

Distinguished nature photographer and teacher.


1997–1998

Dr. Robert Gallo

Professor and Director, Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland.


1996–1997

Dr. Bill Puka

Professor of Philosophy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.


1995–1996

Dr. Leon Botstein

President of Bard College. Presentation: “The Future of the American High School.”


1994–1995

Dr. Bert Vogelstein

Professor of Oncology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Presentation: “Nature, Knowledge, and Neoplasia.”


1993–1994

Dr. Richard Rubenstein

Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. Presentation: “Conflict and Change in the Middle East: A Conflict Resolution Perspective.”


1992–1993

Resident Scholars Symposium

“Reconstructing the Curriculum” Dr. Sara Coulter, Professor of English, Coordinator of Curriculum Integration, Towson State University Dr. Paul Lauter, Professor of Literature, Trinity College, General Editor. Dr. Rhonda Williams, Assistant Professor, Economics, Afro-American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park.


1991–1992

Dr. Michael M. Shara

Deputy Chief, Science Computing and Research Support, Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. Presentation: “Frontier Problems in Astronomy.”


1990–1991

Dr. Arnold S. Relman

Physician, educator, and editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. Presentation: “Medical Professional Ethics in a Commercialized Society.”


1989–1990

Daniel Zwerdling

National Public Radio correspondent. Presentation: “The Secrets, Sins, and Successes of the American Media: An Insider’s Perspective.”


1988–1989

Maestro David Zinman

Music Director, The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Presentation: “The Art of Listening.”


1987–1988

Dr. Elizabeth Minnich

Professor of Philosophy, Union of Experimenting Colleges and Universities. Presentation: “Being Good and Acting Well: A Philosopher Looks at the Conflicts Between Private Morality and Public Effectiveness.”


1986–1987

Dr. Alan Walker

Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Discipline: Anthropology. Presentation: “New Discoveries Related to Human Evolution.”


1985–1986

Dr. Nancy Weiss, ’61

Professor of History, Princeton University Presentation: “Turning Lincoln’s Picture to the Wall: The Shift of Blacks to the Democratic Party 1928-1940.”


1984–1985

Donald Ross

Consultant dedicated to causes of environmental matters, civil liberties, and consumer protection. Presentation: “Do You Count?: The Effect of Grassroots Participation on the Socio-Political Outcome.”


1983–1984

Dr. Penelope Eckert

Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Presentation: “Adolescent Social Categories: The Development of Workers and Managers in a Suburban High School.”


1982–1983

Michael Tilson Thomas

Conductor, lecturer, recording artist.


1981–1982

Professor Ian McHarg

Chairman, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania. Author of Design with Nature. Presentation: “Human Ecological Planning.”


1979–1980

Dr. Lawrence Wylie

C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France, Harvard University. Presentation: “What is Body Language? A Discussion of Cultural Problems in Non-Verbal Communication.”


1978–1979

Zelda Fichandler

Producing Director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Presentation: “The Stage-A Special Place.”