Marian Miner Cook
AthenaeumA distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC
Welcome to The Athenaeum
COVID-19 Update:
Dear Friends,
Integral to our CMC community, the Ath— with its social warmth, table conversation, delicious meals, and engaging dialogue—is hard to replicate, especially at this difficult moment in history.
The Athenaeum remains committed to thought-provoking speaker programming during this period of physical separation. Though it will be virtual and streamlined, we hope to keep our programming vibrant and interesting. Most weeks, we will feature two evening Ath events. Generally, events will begin at 5 pm PDT. The 2020-21 Ath Fellows will introduce the program; speakers will make opening comments and segue into a conversation with the Fellows, podcast team members, faculty, or other moderator(s). There will be about 15 minutes for question and answer before the program concludes at 6 pm. The Fall 2020 schedule will be posted shortly.
We hope you stay connected and follow us on our Instagram and at Facebook.
See you soon, stay safe and healthy.
Warm regards,
Priya Junnar
Director
All Fall 2020 events will be held via Zoom webinar. All guests must be registered for each event.
CMC students, faculty, and staff can register using the sign-up links below. This will generate a confirmation email that requires a Zoom registration. You are not registered for the event until you complete this additional step. Once you have completed this registration, you will receive a unique registration link via email from Zoom. Please keep this link handy, or add to your calendar, as you will need it to log into the event.
CMC alumni and families are welcome to all fall programming! Please refer to your weekly email from Alumni & Parent Engagement, which is sent each Sunday. The email will contain a direct link to sign up for available programming via Zoom. Alumni and families are not able to register via the Athenaeum website. Once you have registered, you will receive a unique registration link via email from Zoom. Please keep this link handy, or add to your calendar, as you will need it to log into the event.
John J. Pitney, Jr. is Roy P. Crocker Professor of American History and Politics at Claremont McKenna College where he teaches courses on Congress, interest groups, political parties, and mass media. A leading expert on the structure and practice of American politics, Pitney is a widely published author or co-author of six books on American politics, including "The Art of Political Warfare" (2001), "The Politics of Autism: Navigating The Contested Spectrum" (2015), and "After Reagan: Bush, Dukakis, and the 1988 Election" (2019). With Professor Andrew Busch, also of CMC, he is currently writing a book on the 2020 election. In addition to his books, Pitney has published numerous scholarly articles and short essays, and is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines. He is routinely featured on NPR and other television and radio programs.
Pitney has not only shaped the study of government at Claremont McKenna College for nearly 30 years, he has also helped shape government itself through his many roles, including as the acting director for the Research Department of the Republican National Committee (1990-1991) and as the Senior Domestic Policy Analyst for the US House Republican Research Committee, among other important appointments.
Pitney holds a B.A. in political science from Union College, where he was co-valedictorian, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. He received the CMC Presidential Award in 2013 and was named one of the 300 best professors in the United States by the Princeton Review in 2012.
Please join Virtual Athenaeum for a preview of Election Night 2020. CMC’s Zachary Courser, Jack Pitney, and Andrew Sinclair, all professors in the government department, will be joined by Sara Sadhwani, professor of politics at Pomona College. As the unprecedented 2020 election draws to a close, the panel will offer their insights and analysis on the presidential race as well as on other important election battles around the country.
Image credit: <a href="https://www.freepik.com/photos/flag">Flag photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com</a>
Charles W. Mills works in the general area of social and political philosophy, particularly in oppositional political theory as centered on class, gender, and race. In recent years he has focused on race. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as five books. His first book, "The Racial Contract" (1997), won a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for the study of bigotry and human rights in America. It has been adopted widely in hundreds of courses across the United States, not just in philosophy, but also in political science, sociology, anthropology, literature, African-American, American Studies, and other subjects. His sixth book, "Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism", is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Mills is also the co-editor of "Philosophy: The Big Questions" (2003) with Ruth Sample and James Sterba, a special issue of the Du Bois Review on “Race in a ‘Postracial’ Epoch” (Spring 2014) with Robert Gooding-Williams, and Simianization: Apes, Gender, Class and Race (2015) with Wulf D. Hund and Silvia Sebastiani.
Mills received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Before joining the Graduate Center at CUNY, he taught at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University.
Photo credit: CUNY Graduate Center
Professor Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ‘72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow, chair of the government department, and former director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. In addition, he is an adjunct senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C, where he has worked since 1999 and served as director of the China Program from 2004 to 2008. His research focuses on democratization in developing countries, economic reform and governance in China, and U.S.-China relations. The author of “From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union” (1994), “China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy” (2006), and most recently, “China’s Crony Capitalism” (2016), his work has also been published in magazines and journals such as Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Modern China, China Quarterly and The Journal of Democracy. He is is frequently heard on BBC News and National Public Radio.
Lingling Wei is an award-winning senior China correspondent, who was based in the Wall Street Journal’s Beijing bureau from 2011 until China expelled WSJ reporters in the spring of 2020. Hailing from a farm province in southeastern China, she came of age as a journalist in New York and then returned to China in early 2011 to report on changes in her homeland. She is now based in New York and focuses on the intersection of Chinese politics and the economy.
Ms. Wei's Athenaeum visit is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.