Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Welcome to The Athenaeum

Unique in American higher education, the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum (the “Ath”) is a signature program of Claremont McKenna College. Four nights a week during the school year, the Ath brings scholars, public figures, thought leaders, artists, and innovators to engage with the CMC and Claremont College community. In addition, the Ath also hosts lunch speakers, roundtables, and smaller presentations in its two auxiliary dining rooms.

For decades, the Ath has hosted a spectrum of luminaries with expertise and insight on a wide range of topics, both historical and contemporary. In the Ath’s intimate yet stimulating setting, students, faculty, staff, and other community members gather to hear the speaker, pose questions, and to build community and exchange ideas over a shared meal.

At the core of the Ath is a longstanding commitment to student growth and learning. Central to the Ath are its student fellows, selected annually to host, introduce, and moderate discussion with the featured speaker. Priority is given to students in attendance during the question-and-answer session following every presentation. Moreover, speakers often take extra time to visit a class, meet with student interest groups, or give an interview to the student press and podcast team.

Tue, April 29, 2025
Dinner Program
Chris Temple '12, Zach Ingrasci '12, Lucy Goldberg ‘25, and Chelsea Luo ‘25

In partnership with the award-winning film studio Optimist, founded by CMC alumni Chris Temple '12 and Zach Ingrasci '12—who began their journey in film by making a documentary during the summer of their junior year—this inspiring inaugural showcase will celebrate storytelling and creative careers. Optimist’s first cohort of Creative Fellows, CMC students Lucy Goldberg '25 and Chelsea Luo '25, will share exclusive clips from the award-winning films they have supported and reflect on their experiences over the last year with Optimist, culminating in the announcement of next year’s fellows! The event will also feature a dynamic panel discussion with industry-leading alumni who will share their journeys, key lessons, and insider advice on launching a creative career. Panelists include Kevin McNeely '75, Meta Valentic PO '94, and Zoe Pinczower '17. Whether you inspire to be a filmmaker, actor, writer, journalist, or are simply curious about nurturing your creative skills, this event will have something for you! 

Read more about the speaker

Chris Temple ‘12 is a film director and the founder of Optimist, a non-profit film studio in Los Angeles. He is best known for directing the feature documentaries Living On One Dollar, Salam Neighbor, and Five Years North. His films have been released globally by Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and PBS, and have premiered at Tribeca, DOCNYC, Full Frame, AFI Docs, & MountainFilm. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Variety, and The Atlantic, and has helped raise over $91 million dollars for poverty alleviation and refugee support efforts. He’s been honored with the 2016 Muslim Public Affairs Council Annual Media Award; recognized alongside Bill Gates and Angelina Jolie as one of the top 100 visionary leaders of 2015 by YPO’s Real Leaders Magazine; and accepted by the U.S. State Department into the American Film Showcase.

Zach Ingrasci '12 is a film director and the co-founder of Optimist, a production company committed to making documentaries that nurture optimism and create impact. Best known for directing the feature documentaries Living On One Dollar, Salam Neighbor, This Is Not Financial Advice and Five Years North, Zach’s films have been released by Netflix, Amazon Prime, National Geographic, PBS and HBO. Every Optimist film is accompanied by an impact campaign to create measurable outcomes. His projects have raised over $119 million for the films’ causes and have changed over 606,869 lives.

Kevin W. McNeely '75 is the president and CEO of the KHR Family Fund and the longtime former Executive Director of the Sonoma International Film Festival, where he served for over 17 years. Under his leadership, the festival grew into a celebrated platform for independent film, cultural exchange, and community engagement. Now serving as Director Emeritus, Kevin continues to support the arts through philanthropy and creative advocacy. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Claremont McKenna College and brings decades of experience in film production, festival curation, and nonprofit leadership.

Meta Valentic PO '94 began her career as the youngest member of the DGA Assistant Director's Training Program. Her assistant director credits include “Nixon”, “Castle”, “Lost”, (nominated for 2 Directors Guild Awards) “Bones”, “The Dropout”, and the Emmy and Golden Globe winning musical comedy “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”. Most recently, she was the Unit Production Manager on the successful action drama “9-1-1” for ABC. Valentic has been Producer’s Guild Diversity Workshop Fellow, and a Sundance Film Financing Intensive Fellow. She is a judge and conference panelist at the annual Austin Film Festival. She spearheaded the Producers Guild of America’s Mentorship Program and helped create new Mentoring pathways for producers. Valentic grew up in Washington D.C. and attended The Sidwell Friends School, where she developed a lifelong love of politics and Quaker values (and believes they are not mutually exclusive). 

Zoe Pinczower '17 is an accomplished post-production professional with nearly seven years of experience at Netflix, where she currently coordinates post-production for animated series. Her background includes roles at Disney ABC Television and CBS Television Studios, as well as research and media production during her time at Claremont McKenna and Scripps College. 

Read less

This event is closed.

Wed, April 30, 2025
Dinner Program
Jeffrey Ding

Jeffrey Ding, professor of political science at George Washington University, is an expert on great power competition and cooperation in emerging technologies, the political economy of innovation, and China's scientific and technological capabilities. Ding will discuss how past technological revolutions influenced the rise and fall of great powers, with implications for U.S.-China competition in emerging technologies like AI.

Read more about the speaker

Jeffrey Ding teaches in the Political Science Department at George Washington University. He was previously a fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, part of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. He has also conducted research at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and Oxford's Centre for the Governance of AI. 

Ding received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He is an expert on great power competition and cooperation in emerging technologies, the political economy of innovation, and China's scientific and technological capabilities.

Professor Ding will deliver the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies' 2025 Arthur Adams Family Distinguished Lecture on International Affairs. 

Read less
Thu, May 1, 2025
Lunch Program
Corey Brettschneider

American presidents have often pushed the boundaries established for them by the Constitution; this is the inspirational history of the people who pushed back. In this propulsive and eminently readable history, constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider of Brown University, provides a thoroughly researched account of assaults on democracy by not one such president but five whose actions illuminated the trip wires that can damage or even destroy our democracy.

Read more about the speaker

In his book "The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It," Corey Brettschneider, constitutional law and political science professor at Brown University, articulates how John Adams waged war on the national press of the early republic, overseeing numerous prosecutions of his critics. In the lead-up to the Civil War, James Buchanan colluded with the Supreme Court to deny constitutional personhood to African Americans. A decade later, Andrew Johnson urged violence against his political opponents as he sought to guarantee a white supremacist republic after the Civil War. In the 1910s, Woodrow Wilson modernized, popularized, and nationalized Jim Crow laws. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon committed criminal acts that flowed from his corrupt ideas about presidential power. 

But Brettschneider also shows that these presidents didn’t have the last word—citizen movements brought the United States back from the precipice by appealing to a democratic understanding of the Constitution and pressuring subsequent reform-minded presidents to realize the promise of “We the People.”  His book ultimately is about citizens—Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Daniel Ellsberg, and more—who fought back against presidential abuses of power. 

Their examples give us hope about the possibilities of restoring a fragile democracy.

Adapted from https://vivo.brown.edu/display/cbrettsc

Professor Brettschneider will deliver the 2024-2025 Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World's Lofgren Lecture Program on American Constitutionalism.

Read less
Thu, May 1, 2025
Dinner Program
Edward F. O’Keefe

Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his senior thesis for Harvard in 1880 that women ought to be paid equal to men and have the option of keeping their maiden names upon marriage. In conversation with James Burgess ’84 P’20, former member of the Gould Center Board of Advisors, Edward O’Keefe will talk about how it is not surprising that Roosevelt would be a feminist, given the women he grew up with. From his witty and decisive mother Mittie to his college sweetheart and first wife Alice; from his older sister Bamie who would eventually become his key political strategist and advisor to his younger sister Conie, his eventual press secretary before the role existed; to ultimately Edith—his childhood playmate and second wife, Ed O’Keefe’s The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President celebrates these five extraordinary yet unsung women who opened the door to the American Century and pushed Theodore Roosevelt through it.

Read more about the speaker

Edward F. O’Keefe is the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. He previously spent two decades in broadcast and digital media at ABC News, CNN, and NowThis, during which time he received a Primetime Emmy Award for his work with Anthony Bourdain, two Webby Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and a George Foster Peabody Award for ABC’s coverage of 9/11. 

A former fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, he graduated with honors from Georgetown University. 

Mr. O'Keefe's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Adapted from https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Loves-of-Theodore-Roosevelt/Edward-F-OKeefe/9781982145682

Read less

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

Contact

Phone: (909) 621-8244 
Fax: (909) 621-8579 
Email: