Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Susan McWilliams Barndt is the 2025-2026 William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow in Government at Claremont McKenna College.

McWilliams Barndt is the author of The American Road Trip and American Political Thought (2018) and Traveling Back: Toward a Global Political Theory (2014), the editor of A Political Companion to James Baldwin (2017), and a co-editor of several books, including The Best Kind of College (2015). 

Her writing and commentary have appeared in media such as The Atlantic, Business Insider, KPCC's AirTalk, LiveNOW From FOX, The Los Angeles Times, Ms. Magazine, The Nation, The New York Times, Newsweek, Politico, the Tavis Smiley Show, and Today in LA on KNBC.

For her work, McWilliams Barndt has received the Graves Award in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and the Jack Miller Center's Teaching Excellence Award. Since 2006, McWilliams Barndt has taught at Pomona College, where she has won the Wig Award for Excellence in Teaching four times.

McWilliams holds a B.A. in political science and Russian from Amherst, an M.A. and Ph.D. in politics from Princeton, and a Certificate in Advanced Educational Leadership from Harvard.

William Carl Menard '09 graduated from CMC in 2009 with a degree in government and received in J.D. from St. John’s Law School in 2012. Since then, he has worked as an immigration attorney representing clients in deportation defense and both employment and family-based immigration matters in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and California. Menard has represented clients before multiple Federal Courts of Appeals, as well as before immigration courts across the country in both detained and non-detained cases. He has been interviewed and quoted in the Washington Post, NPR, and other news stations on immigration issues. He has also served on multiple advisory boards, including the Latino Advisory Council at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Jersey.



 

Jon A. Shields is a professor of American politics in the government department at Claremont McKenna College, where he received the G. David Huntoon Senior Teaching Award as well as the Distinguished Service Award. 

Shields is the author or co-author of four books on the American right: "The Republican Civil War: What Liz Cheney's Wyoming Tells Us About a Divided American Right" (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), "Trump’s Democrats" (Brookings, 2020), "Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University" (Oxford University Press, 2016), and "The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right" (Princeton University Press, 2009). 

His work has also been published in a number of academic journals, including The Journal of Policy History, Political Science Quarterly, Critical Review, Contemporary Sociology, and the Journal of Church and State.  In addition, his opinion has appeared in the pages of the Atlantic, Bulwark, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times.

Vernon C. Grigg III is a seasoned trial lawyer and educator with a deep commitment to education, and public service. Holding degrees from Yale Law School (J.D.), the London School of Economics (G.S.C.), and the University of Michigan (BA), Vernon has served as CEO & President of Up with People, an international educational program where he built leadership programs and led a global team through the challenges of a worldwide pandemic. His legal career includes representing diverse clients, from government officials to Fortune 100 companies, and significant pro bono work in civil rights. Vernon has taught at Golden Gate University School of Law and has international experience, including groundbreaking roles in South Africa and Israel. As theExecutive Director of the Kravis Lab, Vernon aims to advance CMC’s mission in civic engagement and civic leadership by bringing students knowledge, skills and inspiration.

Seth Lerer taught for over 45 years at Princeton, Stanford, and the University of California at San Diego. He has published widely on children's literature, the history of the English language, and medieval and Renaissance literature. His books include Children's Literature: A Reader's History form Aesop to Harry Potter, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Truman Capote Prize in Literary Criticism. He is also the author of Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language, and most recently Introducing the History of the English Language. He is currently visiting professor of literature a CMC.

Aislinn Bohren is an associate professor in economics at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies various topics in microeconomics with a focus on information and discrimination. Her work on discrimination has both theoretical and empirical components, and builds on her research on model misspecification and biased beliefs.

Bohren received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California San Diego and her B.S. from the University of Richmond. She is a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group, a co-editor at Games and Economic Behavior, and an associate editor at the American Economic Review and Journal of Economic Literature.

Professor Bohren’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Faculty at CMC.

Scott Ellsworth P’24 has been described by Booklist as “a historian with the soul of a poet.” A New York Times bestselling author, he has written about a wide range of subjects, including civil rights, race relations, mountaineering, and basketball. 

Ellsworth published his first book, Death in a Promised Land, about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, while he was a graduate student at Duke. He returned to that subject in 2021 with The Ground Breaking, which was long-listed for both the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. His newest book, Midnight on the Potomac, is a revealing new interpretation of the last months of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Ellsworth has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and has appeared on the TODAY Show, PBS’s The American Experience, NPR, MSNB, Fox, CNN, the BBC, and other news outlets. He teaches in the department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Professor Ellsworth will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2025-26 Lerner Lecture on Hinge Moments in History.

Photo credit: Jared Lazaraus

General Vincent K. Brooks served in the U.S. Army for over 42 years from his entry into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point until his retirement from active duty in 2019 as a four-star general. Brooks spent his final 17 years of service in the general officer ranks and for nearly all those years in command of large, complex military organizations in challenging situations. His final active-duty assignment was commanding all US, South Korean, and international UN forces in the Republic of Korea. 

In his ongoing post-military career, he is a fellow at the University of Texas, a fellow at Harvard University, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a board director, and a consultant.

General Brooks will deliver the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies’ 2025-26 Lecture in Honor of General Crouch.

Victor Nani Agbeli is a world-renowned musician, dancer, and cultural historian, celebrated for his mastery of traditional Ghanaian and West African arts. Born into a family of distinguished artists from Ghana’s Volta region, he continues the legacy of his late father, Godwin K. Agbeli, a legendary drummer, dancer, and historian who chaired Ghana’s Folklore Music Council. 

Acclaimed for performances that electrify audiences with precision, energy, and athleticism, Agbeli is also a dedicated cultural ambassador and educator, committed to preserving and sharing Ghanaian heritage globally. He has led the award-winning Sankofa Roots II troupe, served as principal instructor at the Dagbe Cultural Center, and taught at Tufts University, Harvard University, CalArts, and the Edna Marley School of Dance, Theater, and Textile, among others. 

A multi-disciplinary artist, Agbeli bridges traditional Ghanaian music and dance with contemporary creative practices in percussion, choreography, history, and healing, inspiring audiences worldwide and shaping the next generation of cultural practitioners. 

Agbeli teaches Intro/Tech to traditional Ghanaian West African music, dance, song, arts, and history at Pomona College.

Mr. Agbeli's Athenaeum performance is part of a 4-part musical series for this academic year: Devotional and Spiritual World Music featuring Ghanian, South Asian, American Gospel, and Brazilian traditions.