December 5, 2025

Baret's Journey Into the Amazon

“The thing about being on the river is we wouldn’t necessarily know what was going to happen on each day until it happened. The amount of life there is incredible. You can’t understand the volume of biodiversity. The life speaks for itself. We went to bed early because there was no electricity, and we were all up to watch the sunrise. As soon as nighttime comes, the whole river is swarmed with bats.” -Baret Scholar James Etherington on living on the river.

December 3, 2025

Life Design at Baret

"At Baret, for the first time in a long time, I am learning to listen — not to all the noise around me, but to the voice within." Bhagyashree Prabhutendolkar, on the change that Baret's Life Design program has brought to her life and mindset.

November 19, 2025

Meet Our Faculty: Tom Snow, PhD

Our Scholars are lucky enough to get to travel the world with a renowned Art Historian. With a PhD in History of Art from UCL, Tom Snow has lectured at UCL and Sotheby's Institute of Art for seven years, and his writings have appeared in Art Monthly, Frieze Magazine, Third Text, Grey Room, and Afterall. He has even published his own book at MIT Press, Activism: Documents of Contemporary Art. As a Baret Fellow, Tom is there to mentor our students and illuminate the historical forces and milieus that shape the art of each region they visit. They've made stops at, just to name a few, the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Biennale de São Paulo, a host of NYC galleries, and most recently, the Louvre.

November 10, 2025

A Scholar's Viewing

Baret's own Scholar Kaia Nozoe, with her thoughts on a special Morning Program segment: an exclusive preview of a heartwrenching documentary from Academy Award-nominated film director Joshua Seftel.

October 30, 2025

Bonding Beyond Borders: Baret in Rio

Our Scholar Bhagyashree writes about a side quest to Rio, the power of empathy, and what it means to be a Baret Scholar.

October 23, 2025

Singer, Songwriter, Scholar

"Baret is known for bringing some of the world’s most remarkable individuals to share their journeys with us—and this speaker was one such gift. Simone’s music has taken her across the world — from Hawaii to Los Angeles, London to New York. With seven beautiful albums, including I’m the Man and Silver Silver, her voice has that rare quality of making you stop and feel something you didn’t know you needed to." - Baret's own Scholar, Bhagyashree Prabhutendolkar, on what it was like to hear Simone White sing at the Morning Program.

October 23, 2025

Lessons from an Oscar Winner

At our first Morning Program of the year in New York City, a gleaming, golden Oscar award was passed around the room. That Oscar represented one gap year’s work: not one of our Scholars (not yet anyway!), but one year of the life of Michael Arndt. After listening to Arndt speak on the risks he’d taken in his career, our Scholars left wondering…what if their gap year became an Oscar?

October 15, 2025

Baret in North America

Wondering what a month with Baret looks like? We've compiled here a list of all of the activities, speakers, excursions and Fellowships that our Scholars experienced in their first month with Baret.

September 20, 2025

A New Beginning in New Hampshire

Nearly 260 years ago, Baret Scholars’ namesake, Jeanne Baret, boarded the ship Étoile on her way to becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. This month, Baret’s second cohort, led by an accomplished Traveling Team, has begun their own journey around the globe in her intrepid spirit.

June 13, 2025

Chris Whittle's Graduation Speech at The Great Wall

At your young age, you’ve done something that only a tiny, tiny per cent of people in the world have done or ever will do...

May 8, 2025

From the Summit of Kilimanjaro

At the beginning of March, a group of our scholars, who had journeyed already halfway around the globe, learning and discoursing with changemakers and thought leaders, found themselves huddling for warmth at the base camp of the tallest mountain in Africa, Kilimanjaro.

April 3, 2025

The Making of a City

In our second-to-last region, India, our scholars were lucky enough to hear from oral historian, social activist, and documentarian Sohail Hashmi. Speaking to our students at Baret’s Morning Program, Hashmi encouraged them to try to imagine any one of the cities they’d journeyed through without migrants. What would we be left with?, he asked. Some homes, some villagers, some upper-class folks. A village, Hashmi said.

March 3, 2025

A Weekend in Kenya: A Student Documentary

Student documentary about a weekend on Lake Naivasha and Hell's Gate National Park in Kenya.

February 9, 2025

From Istanbul: Asking Good Questions

“You’ve stepped back and thought about the world and asked, “Am I satisfied with what I’m doing? Am I doing the right thing? Am I missing the opportunity to learn? Am I pushing myself enough to do better?”

January 10, 2025

Our Fellowship in Palermo: Lessons in law, migration, and humanity

Led by Fellows Claudia Kahindi and Olivia Williamson, we learned about the “migrant crisis,” as it is called, and the challenges that need to be overcome to address it.

January 2, 2025

Reflections on the First Semester

In three short months, we’re changing and growing in ways that we could not have predicted. We are discovering what we want to do with our lives and how best to spend our time.

December 19, 2024

Nicolas Dubreuill spoke to Baret Scholars in Paris

One of our scholars asked Nicolas what his favorite expedition was, and he answered “the next one,” because his work is his passion. Then he told us the riveting story of the expedition where he fell through the Greenland ice and into the freezing water not once but twice, and nearly lost his life. He only survived because he was rescued by a Greenlander.

December 5, 2024

Meet Our Fellows: Wendy Lin

It’s very interesting as a scientist because each culture approaches medicine, science and healing in its own unique and valuable way. I’ve been encouraging students to interact with local people and learn how they approach these avenues of human life.

November 15, 2024

Student Documentary in The Amazon

While on a Fellowship in the Amazon, one of our students, Olivia, shot a beautiful and informative documentary about their experience and what they learned.

November 14, 2024

Candido Bracher speaks to Baret Scholars in São Paulo

What we learned was supported by the hands-on experience we had. We not only heard from Candido Bracher, the former CEO of Itaú Unibanco, the largest financial institution in all of South America, we also spent a morning at their headquarters.

October 30, 2024

Meet Our Scholars: Ali

Well, I’ve been asking myself some very important questions. Why do I want to do what I say I want to do?

October 18, 2024

The Value of Higher Education from the President of Wesleyan

How can we become students of the world? We’ve been thinking about this question ever since Michael Roth, President of Wesley University, shared his own journey to enlightenment at the NYC Morning program.

October 11, 2024

Meet Our Fellows: Ronan Macrory

We’d like to introduce you to one of Baret’s Fellows, Ronan MacRory. Ronan is a filmmaker and musician with an incredibly diverse career.

October 10, 2024

Find Your Calling: A Conversation with Robbie Myers

How can we know when we’ve found our calling? Though in many ways our journeys as Baret Scholars and human beings are still beginning, we feel a need to find that special thing we are meant for.

September 27, 2024

Meet Our Scholars: Juliana

We’d like to introduce you to a Baret Scholar, Juliana—seen at the top right of the picture, in conversation with her peers and Robbie Myers at the Morning Program.

September 20, 2024

Baret Scholars in Conversation with Walter Isaacson

How should we lead our lives? Talk to any of us Baret Scholars, and you’ll hear a palpable desire to leave our mark on the world. And as we come to the end of our time in New York City,