Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum
A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC
Open Events
Here is a list of open events at the Ath. If no sign up button appears under the event, it is because the event is no longer accepting reservations.
Unless otherwise noted, lunch begins at 11:45 a.m.; speaker presentations begin at 12:15 p.m. Evening programs typically begin with a reception at 5:30 pm; dinner is served at 6 p.m; and the talk begins at 6:45 p.m. Reservations are required for the meals.
Unless otherwise noted, the talk itself is free and open to all, and no reservations are required to attend the talk only. Seating for only the talk itself is on a first-come basis.
Please click "Sign Up" under individual events to sign up for open events. If there is no button showing, registration is currently closed, but please check back later. When meal reservations are opened to members of the other Claremont Colleges, a note will be added to the event listing. An explanation of the reservation process and a list of frequently asked questions is available. Questions may also be directed to the Ath at athenaeum@cmc.edu.
Join us as we commemorate the life and legacy of Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winning author, professor, and renowned humanitarian. Elie Wiesel worked on behalf of oppressed people for much of his adult life. His personal experience of the Holocaust led him to use his talents as an author, teacher, and storyteller to defend human rights and peace throughout the world.
A native of Sighet, Transylvania (Romania), Wiesel and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz when he was fifteen years old. His mother and younger sister perished there; his two older sisters survived. Wiesel and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died. After the war, Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist in that city; yet, he remained silent about what he had endured as an inmate in the death camps. During an interview with French writer Francois Mauriac, Wiesel was persuaded to end that silence and he subsequently wrote Night. Since its publication in 1958, it has been translated into twenty-five languages and millions of copies have been sold. In his lifetime, Wiesel received numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, the National Humanities Medal, the Medal of Liberty, and the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor and went on to author more than 60 books.
Co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.
Pat Crowley '02 is founder and CEO of Chapul Inc., a company revolutionizing the food industry with their award winning cricket bars. Fueled with a passion for a more sustainable future, Crowley has broken down cultural barriers and introduced edible insects into western cuisine. From hand-making energy bars in a small kitchen, to a crowd-funded start-up, then on to winning an investment from Mark Cuban on the hit TV show, Shark Tank, Pat has created an international presence and ignited a revolution that is challenging the boundaries of food. Pat has been interviewed by CNN, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, and has spoken from TEDx, University, and International stages.
After graduating CMC in 2002, Crowley hitchhiked and surfed his way through Central America, witnessing first-hand the global water crisis. He returned to the U.S. to receive his M.S. in hydrology and dedicated his career to ensuring a more sustainable water future. Diving into the the largest consumer of global water supply, agriculture, it became evident that our food system is in need of a massive revolution.
Eating insects is his attempt at such a revolution.
A long-time resident of Santa Barbara, Congresswoman Lois Capps represents California’s 24th District, which includes San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, and a portion of Ventura county. She has served in Congress since 1998.
A nurse and educator by training, Capps’ extensive healthcare background informs her work in Congress where she is a respected and effective leader, especially on issues related to public health. She has successfully spearheaded and passed legislation specifically to address the national nursing shortage, detect and prevent domestic violence against women, curb underage drinking, improve mental health services, provide emergency defibrillators to local communities, improve research on pediatric rare diseases, support greater diversity in clinical trials for more effective treatments, bring CPR instruction to schools, identify and link newborns with hearing loss to services, strengthen Medicare coverage for patients suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, expand TRICARE health coverage for military mothers, and improve rental car safety to protect consumers.
Capps has also been at the forefront of efforts to protect the environment and promote clean energy and green technology. She has led efforts to prevent new oil and gas drilling off our coast and on the public’s lands, strengthen oil pipeline safety and spill response, protect consumers from shouldering the financial burden of cleaning up water pollution in their water supplies, and conserve wildlife and rare species native to the Central Coast. She has also authored laws to establish a national system for ocean monitoring, expand conservation efforts for our public lands and strengthen labeling standards for organic foods.
Among other commitments, she serves on the powerful Committee on Energy and Commerce where she sits on the Health, Energy & Power, and Environment & the Economy subcommittees and also serves on the Natural Resources Committee where she sits on the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Subcommittee on Federal Lands. Her work on this committee is focused on energy production, fisheries and wildlife, public lands, oceans, and Native Americans.
Capps graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington with a B.S. in Nursing with honors and worked as a nursing instructor in Portland, Oregon. She earned an M.A. in Religion from Yale University while working as Head Nurse at Yale New Haven Hospital and an M.A. in Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has received honorary doctorates from Pacific Lutheran University and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary.
Representative Capps’ Athenaeum presentation is sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government.
John Prendergast is the founding director of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. He is also the co-founder of the Sentry, a new investigative initiative focused on dismantling the networks financing conflict and atrocities. Prendergast has worked for the Clinton administration, the State Department, two members of Congress, the National Intelligence Council, UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. During his time in the US state department, Prendergast was an instrumental part of a team which mediated, and ended, the 1998-2000 war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the deadliest war in the world at the time. Since then, Prendergast has made it his mission to combat mass atrocities in Africa.
He is the author or co-author of ten books. His latest book, Unlikely Brothers: Our Story of Adventure, Loss, and Redemption (2012), is a dual memoir co-authored with his first little brother in the Big Brother program—a program in which he has been involved for over 25 years. His previous two books were co-authored with Don Cheadle, Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond (2007), a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year, and The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa's Worst Human Rights Crimes (2010). He is also beginning a book project on the Congo with Ryan Gosling and New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh.
The recipient of multiple honorary degrees and awards, Prendergast has taught at many American and foreign colleges and universities and is a board member and strategic advisor to Not On Our Watch, the organization founded by George Clooney, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, and Brad Pitt that advocates in support of global human rights. He appears in the Warner Brothers' motion picture "The Good Lie" (2014), starring Reese Witherspoon and is a primary subject of the book by Jane Bussman, A Journey to the Dark Heart of Nameless Unspeakable Evil (2014).
John Prendergast’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.
As the Mao era fades in popular memory, its history has fallen out of focus and has been infused with myth. Drawing on his recent book, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Harvard 2015), Andrew Walder will take up two related questions. First, what were Mao's intentions and what were the actual outcomes of his radical initiatives? Second, why did these outcomes occur? Mao emerges from the historical record as a radical revolutionary whose initiatives frequently had consequences that he had not intended and that frustrated his designs.
Andrew Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. A political sociologist, Walder specializes on the sources of conflict, stability, and change in contemporary China. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1981. Before coming to Stanford, he taught at Columbia, Harvard, and also headed the Division of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
His recent publications include China Under Mao (Harvard University Press, 2015); and Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (Harvard University Press, 2009). He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Walder’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by CMC’s Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies.
Follow the Athenaeum
Unless otherwise noted, lunch begins at 11:45 a.m.; speaker presentations begin at 12:15 p.m.
Evening receptions begin at 5:30 p.m.; dinner is served at 6 p.m.; speaker presentations begin at 6:45 p.m.