Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum
A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC
Open Events
A MESSAGE FROM THE ATHENAEUM:
Along with other programming at Claremont McKenna College and the Claremont Colleges, the Athenaeum events are virtual for the Spring semester. We are sorry to interrupt such an important and integral part of the CMC experience, but the fight against COVID-19 will be won in large part by limiting social interactions—a cornerstone of the Ath experience.
We thank you for your patience and wish you the very best.
Priya Junnar
Director
All Spring 2021 events will be held via Zoom webinar. All guests must be registered for each event.
On a rolling weekly basis, CMC students, faculty, and staff will receive event-specific Zoom registration links via email. Once you have registered, you will receive a unique registration link via email directly 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 directly from Zoom. Please keep this link handy, or add to your calendar, as you will need it to log into the event.
Raj Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Using extensive administrative databases drawn from tax and social security records in the United States, Chetty’s research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on topics ranging from tax policy and unemployment insurance to education and affordable housing has been widely cited in academia, media outlets, and Congressional testimony.
In 2012, Chetty received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant for his rigorous theoretical and empirical studies in public economics illuminating the then-emerging field of behavioral public finance. His initial work focused on resolving inconsistencies in earlier theories of specific questions in public finance, such as how dividend tax cuts affect corporate behavior and how unemployment insurance affects job-seeking behavior. He has also designed empirical tests to gauge the impact of sales taxes on consumer demand in retail settings. Chetty has also explored a range of other questions, such as the effect of tax policy on how much people work, the extent to which tax deductions for retirement savings stimulate individual savings, and key aspects of early childhood education. By asking simple, penetrating questions, analyzing extensive data sets, and developing rigorous empirical tests, Chetty’s findings in applied economics illuminate key policy issues of our time.
Chetty received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003 and is one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, he was a professor at U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University. Chetty has received numerous awards for his research, including the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant and the John Bates Clark Medal, given to the economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field.
Peniel E. Joseph holds a joint professorship appointment at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department in the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also the founding director of the LBJ School's Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. His career focus has been on "Black Power Studies," which encompasses interdisciplinary fields such as Africana studies, law and society, women's and ethnic studies, and political science.
Prior to joining the UT faculty, Joseph was a professor at Tufts University, where he founded the school's Center for the Study of Race and Democracy to promote engaged research and scholarship focused on the ways issues of race and democracy affect people's lives.
In addition to being a frequent commentator on issues of race, democracy, and civil rights, Joseph is the author of numerous books. His most recent book "The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr." was named a Time 100 Must-Read books of 2020, the Financial Times's Best Political Books of 2020, the Guardian's Best Books of 2020, a Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2020, PEN America Biography Long List, and a New York Times Book review Editor's Pick. He is also the author of the award-winning books "Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America" and "Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama." His book "Stokely: A Life" has been called the definitive biography of Stokely Carmichael, the man who popularized the phrase "black power." Included among Joseph's other book credits is the editing of "The Black Power Movement: Rethinking" the "Civil Rights-Black Power Era" and "Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level."
Professor Joseph will deliver the 2021 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Commemorative Lecture.
Gary A. Hoover is professor of economics and executive director of the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. Before joining Tulane in 2021, he served as professor and department chair of economics at the University of Oklahoma where he was also honored for his professional and scholarly work and for his teaching and mentoring skills.
Before Oklahoma, Hoover spent 16 years at the University of Alabama where he was the William White McDonald Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow and the James I. Harrison Family Endowed Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow from 2002-2004. He also served as the assistant dean for faculty and graduate student development in the Culverhouse College of Business Administration from 2005-2014 at Alabama.
Hoover is a member, and co-chair, of the American Economics Association’s Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession. This group was established in 1968 to increase the representation of minorities in the economics profession, primarily by broadening opportunities for the training of underrepresented minorities.
Hoover is the current and founding editor of the Journal of Economics, Race and Policy, which examines the intersection of local and global issues concerning economic conditions, race, ethnicity and gender, and policy prescriptions that address economic disparities. He served as the vice president of the Southern Economic Association from 2018-2020. He has been a fellow at CESifo Group Munich since 2010 and is a member of the Western Economic Association and American Economic Association.
Hoover’s papers have been published in the American Economic Review P&P, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Public Choice, Journal of Economic Literature, International Tax and Public Finance, Journal of Conflict Resolution and the European Journal of Political Economy.
Hoover received his Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1993. He earned both his master’s (1995) and PhD (1998) in economics from Washington University in St. Louis.
(Adapted from the Tulane University website.)
Aurora Elmore is a geologist and climate change expert who received her Ph.D. in geology with a focus on oceanic chemistry and deep-sea circulation. She then worked as a researcher at several American and British universities before coming to National Geographic, where she is now Senior Program Manager of Science and Innovation. She recently oversaw the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Everest Expedition, the most comprehensive scientific expedition to Mt. Everest.
Professor Richard L. Hasen is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Hasen is a nationally recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, writing as well in the areas of legislation and statutory interpretation, remedies, and torts. He is co-author of leading casebooks in election law and remedies. He served in 2020 as a CNN Election Law Analyst.
From 2001-2010, he served (with Dan Lowenstein) as founding co-editor of the quarterly peer-reviewed publication, Election Law Journal. He is the author of over 100 articles on election law issues, published in numerous journals including the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review and Supreme Court Review. He was elected to The American Law Institute in 2009 and serves as Reporter (with Professor Douglas Laycock) on the ALI’s law reform project: Restatement (Third) of Torts: Remedies. He also is an adviser on the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Concluding Provisions.
Hasen holds a B.A. degree (with highest honors) from UC Berkeley, and a J.D., M.A., and Ph.D. (Political Science) from UCLA. After law school, Hasen clerked for the Honorable David R. Thompson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then worked as a civil appellate lawyer in private practice.
Professor Hasen's Athenaeum presentation is sponsored by the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World at CMC.
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