The Harvard-Westlake Parents’ Association will inform parents about the recent political events and upcoming elections Oct. 13 for the Meeting/Speaker Series. The other three meetings planned this year are scheduled Nov. 10, Feb. 8 and March 8.
The October event will be held in Chalmers at the Upper School at 7 p.m., featuring a political discussion regulated by the former host of the radio program “Left, Right & Center” Matt Miller.
The panelists participating in the discussion will include Yahoo News political consultant Brian Goldsmith ’00, Loyola Law School professor Laurie L. Levenson (Daniela ’17, Havi ’08. Solly ’06), senior writer of Politico and contributing editor for Vanity Fair Todd Purdum (Stephen ’22), public affairs and political consultant Matt Klink (Spencer ’20, William ’16) and history teacher Larry Klein.
“For parents, knowledge of politics is really important because voting is the single greatest act that we as participants in a representative democracy can do,” Klink said. “It’s always better if you know what you’re voting on, especially right now with the stake being so high in this election, with an economy that’s not doing particularly well and the state of the world as it is, it’s really important that people have a knowledge of politics, and more importantly, participate and vote.”
The series is being continued from past years and invites speakers to talk to parents about relevant topics concerning students or current events. Previous topics of discussion have been about students’ emotional wellbeing and drug and alcohol abuse.
“The overall purpose of the speaker series is to offer parents a roster of events that will enhance their ability to parent their teens, promote diversity and community within the school and engage with noteworthy individuals who are of interest to the parent community,” HWPA Program Vice President Carla McLoughlin said in an email.
The November event will be held in Bing 123 on the middle campus, but other details for will be announced closer to the date. Though the HWPA meeting does not have finalized topics for the remainder of the year’s meetings, they aim to inform parents on subjects that are most applicable to the daily lives of them and their families.
