Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Stephen Michael Newby currently serves as The Lev H. Prichard III Endowed Chair in the Study of Black Worship, Professor of Music and as Ambassador for The Black Gospel Music Preservation Program at Baylor University. He formerly served as Minister of Worship at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, GA, and as Director for the Center for African American Worship Studies at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, TN. He held a tenured Professor of Music post at Seattle Pacific University, where he also served as Director of University Ministries, Director for the Center for Worship, and Senior Advisor to the University President for Missional Excellence.

He has more than three decades of university-level teaching and administration to his credit. He is a native of Detroit, Michigan, and received his Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Music Education from Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan. He received a Master of Music in Jazz Composition and Arranging from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He returned to Michigan to complete his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and served as an Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Computer Arts. He received his Master of Arts in Theology from Seattle Pacific Seminary.

For more than 35 years, he has served in various church music ministries in Michigan, Massachusetts, Washington, California, Georgia and Texas. His voice and works have earned awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (Continental Harmony Grant), the King County Arts Commission of Washington, The Rackham School Fellowship for Ethnomusicological Research in Dakar, Senegal, and the John Wesley Work III National Composers’ Award. For more than nine years, he served as national anthem conductor for the Seattle Sounders FC. He created concert music for The Cascade Youth Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, Canton Symphony Orchestra, New Haven Symphony, Savannah Symphony, and the New World Theater Orchestra, among others. His concert music works are recorded by Albany Records and Parma Recordings. His gospel music works are recorded and published by Maranatha Music and Newby’s Witness Music. His scholarly works are published by Redemption Press, Oxford University Press and Rowman & Littlefield, his worship and praise choral compositions are published by GIA, Gentry, Fred Bock, and OCP. He writes Op. Eds for Christianity Today. He is editor for PRO MUNDO—the African American Sacred Music Series with Oregon Catholic Press.

Diane White-Clayton (“Dr. Dee") is a classically-trained soprano, pianist, conductor and composer. Originally from Washington, DC, she holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Music Composition from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a B.A. in Music from Washington University in St. Louis. She studied in Paris, France as a Rotary Scholar, representing the United States as an Ambassador of Goodwill. A faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles, White-Clayton is also the former Artistic Director of the famed Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers and the Founding Director of the BYTHAX Ensemble, a professional, musically-diverse vocal group. The body of her music embraces nuances of soulful gospel, colorful jazz harmonies and classical precisions with a passion to touch the depths of our humanity. A Baptist preacher’s daughter, she has held various university and church positions and travels extensively as artist, conductor, and educator. She is an author, speaker, producer and recording artist, as well as a teaching artist for the Walt Disney Corporation. She owns a publishing and artists support company with her husband and best friend, famed R&B percussionist, Joe Clayton.

The BYTHAX Ensemble is a collective of performers with outstanding artistry who desire to serve God and humanity with their musical gifts. Under the direction of Dr. Diane White-Clayton, the ensemble features her original works as well as a vast array of music ranging from gospel to classical. Dr. Dee & BYTHAX impart transformative experiences that heal the heart and inspire the soul. Comprised of choir directors, teachers, ministers, recording artists and business professionals, they are united by their commitment to integrity, faith, and their love of music.

The BYTHAX Ensemble's Athenaeum performance is the 2026 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Event.
 
The BYTHAX Ensemble's Athenaeum performance is also 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. 
 

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the author of the New York Times bestseller All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and the acclaimed memoir Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion. 

MacDonald grew up in the Old Colony Housing Project in South Boston, a neighborhood that once held the highest concentration of white poverty in the United States. After losing four of his eleven siblings and witnessing his generation decimated by poverty, crime, addiction, and incarceration, he moved beyond the entrenched borders of his community toward solidarity and coalition-building with Boston’s Black and brown survivors and organizers. In those communities, he learned the power of grassroots organizing and storytelling to transform personal and collective trauma into voice and agency, and brought that work back home to “Southie,” building multiracial working-class led movements. 

He currently teaches restorative and transformative justice at Harvard and Northeastern University and is working on a third book which will use storytelling to explore how people heal from atrocity through narrative reclamation and community building.

Mr. MacDonald's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy at CMC.

Paul Hurley is the Sexton Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. The central focus of his scholarship over the past two decades is the moral theory known as consequentialism, of which utilitarianism is one variant, together with the distinctive conception of reasons that accompanies it.  Although this moral theory and the accompanying conception of reasons has been adopted as the default in philosophy, law, policy, and the social sciences, Hurley has argued, in dozens of articles and books (most recently his Against the Tyranny of Outcomes, 2024), that this approach is nonetheless deeply misguided, alienating us from good reasons that reflect what is truly important, and licensing dangerous manipulation, both of ourselves and of others.

In recognition of his work with students, Hurley has received the Apple for the Teacher Award (University of Pittsburgh), the Wig Distinguished Teaching Award (Pomona College, 3 times), and the Huntoon and Senior Huntoon Teaching Awards (Claremont McKenna College). 

Hilary Appel is the Podlich Family Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at CMC. Appel has published numerous books and articles on the politics of economic reform and the foreign policy of Russia and Eastern Europe. Her co-authored book with Mitchell A. Orenstein, entitled From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Post-Communist Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2018), won the Silver Medal Laura Shannon Prize for Best Book in European Studies 2018-2019. Appel has received numerous national fellowships. In addition to her classes and research, Appel currently serves as the Director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies.

Jean-Pierre Murray is an assistant professor of Government at CMC. His research and teaching interests include critical security studies, migration, human trafficking, Latin America and the Caribbean, global and regional governance, international organizations, and international law. His current research (and book project) focuses on the securitization of South-South migration in the Latin America and Caribbean region in which he explores the roles of elite political actors, civil society organizations, and intergovernmental organizations in constructing or contesting narratives and frames about migration and migrants as national security threats, and the corresponding security-based policy responses.

Hicham Bou Nassif is the Weinberg Associate Professor of International Relations and the Middle East at Claremont McKenna College. His expertise spans various fields, including authoritarianism, civil-military relations, and Middle East politics. His scholarship includes "Endgames: Military Response to Protest in Arab Autocracies" (Cambridge University Press) and numerous peer-reviewed articles. He is currently writing a second book on America's policy in the Middle East under Reagan. Proficient in Arabic, English, and French, he brings a multicultural perspective to his work. Beyond academia, he has undertaken extensive fieldwork in various countries in the Middle East, showcasing a hands-on approach to research, specifically focused on military politics in authoritarian contexts.

Jennifer Morrison Taw is Associate Professor of Government and International Relations at Claremont McKenna College, where she teaches an annual freshman honors Introduction to International Relations course, as well as Security Studies, War, War Film, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Race, Gender, & Identity in International Relations. Prior to coming to CMC, Taw taught as an adjunct professor at Occidental College, UCLA, and USC. Earlier in her career, she worked for decade at RAND, where she conducted research for DOD and the US Army on counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, peace operations, and special operations forces.

This Athenaeum program is the featured 2025-26 Jerome H. Garris Dialogue Series at CMC, modeling constructive dialogue across different perspectives.