Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Donald Davis has been teaching at U.T. Austin since 2013, having worked previously at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Michigan, and Bucknell University. His primary research concerns the interaction of law and religion in medieval India. From one side, he looks at the historical evidence for law and legal practice in inscriptions, temple archives, and other dated documents as a way to contextualize the law in earlier periods of Indian history. From the other side, he studies the Dharmaśāstra tradition as a system of religious law and jurisprudence, apart from historical questions.

His book, “The Spirit of Hindu Law” (2010), provides a conceptual overview of the Hindu perspective on law and how it can relate to modern questions of policy, ethics, and religion. He has a continuing interest in Malayalam language and literature, and published “The Train that Had Wings” (2005), a collection of translated short stories by the Malayalam writer M. Mukundan. 

Most recently, Davis published “The Dharma of Business: Commercial Law in Medieval India”  (Penguin, 2017), a study of commerce-related titles of law in medieval Hindu law texts and is a co-editor (with Patrick Olivelle) of a volume for the Oxford History of Hinduism entitled “Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmaśāstra” (OUP, 2018). 

His current research broadens his interest in the practice of Hindu law in historical perspective, using materials beyond the Dharmaśāstra texts and from many parts of medieval India. At the same time, he is beginning work on a translation of the Mitākṣarā of Vijñāneśvara, a twelfth-century commentary and compendium on dharma.

(Parents Dining Room)

Kristie Dotson is currently the Cowling Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Carleton College and associate professor of philosophy at Michigan State University. She researches in epistemology, metaphilosophy, and feminist philosophy (particularly Black feminisms). Specifically, Dotson works on how knowledge-related concerns play a role in maintaining and obscuring oppression. She has published numerous journals articles and is working currently on a monograph tentatively entitled, Varieties of Epistemic Oppression, which is under contract with Oxford University Press.

Jonathan Petropoulos is the John V. Croul Professor of European History and the chair of the department of history at Claremont McKenna College. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1990), where he also had an appointment as a lecturer in history and history & literature. He began working on the subject of Nazi art looting and restitution in 1983, when he commenced graduate work in history and art history. 

He is the author of “Art as Politics in the Third Reich” (University of North Carolina Press, 1996); “The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany” (Oxford University Press, 2000); “Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany” (Oxford University Press, 2006); “Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany” (Yale University Press, 2014). He has edited a number of other works and has helped organize art exhibitions, including Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991.

From 1998 to 2000, he served as research director for Art and Cultural Property on the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, where he helped draft the report, Restitution and Plunder: The U.S. and Holocaust Victims’ Assets (2001). In this capacity, he supervised a staff of researchers who combed archives in the United States and Europe in order to understand better how representatives of the U.S. government (including the Armed Forces) handled the assets of Holocaust victims both during and after the war. He also provided expert testimony to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport in the U.K. House of Commons and to the Banking and Finance Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He has also participated in a number of international conferences on the subject of Nazi art looting and Allied restitution, including the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets in 1998, and the Vilnius International Forum on Holocaust-Era Looted Cultural Assets in 2000.                                         

Petropoulos has served as an expert witness in a number of cases where Holocaust victims have tried to recover lost and stolen artworks. This includes Altmann v. Austria, which involved six paintings by Gustav Klimt claimed by Maria Altmann and other family members (five were returned).

Robert Kagan is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the foreign policy program at Brookings. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. A prolific writer, his newest book is “The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World” (Knopf, 2018).  His previous book was The New York Times bestseller, “The World America Made” (Knopf, 2012).

For his writings, Politico Magazine named Kagan one of the “Politico 50” in 2016, the “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.” His most recent pieces include “The Twilight of the Liberal World Order” in “Brookings Big Ideas for America” and “Backing into World War III” in Foreign Policy.

He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and holds a doctorate in American history from American University.

Mr. Kagan’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Salvatori Center and the Keck Center for International & Strategic Studies, both at CMC.


Food for Thought: Podcast with Robert Kagan

Zev Yaroslavsky was first elected to office in 1975, stunning the political establishment by winning the Los Angeles City Council’s coveted 5th District seat at the age of 26. He was chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee and earned a reputation for being unafraid to tackle controversial issues, including the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of excessive force and its improper spying on law-abiding residents. Yaroslavsky is also credited with playing a leading role in the sweeping reforms of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Yaroslavsky was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. He served five terms as the Board’s Third District representative. He retired from office on December 1, 2014. Yaroslavsky was the driving force behind several major transit projects, including the Orange Line busway across the San Fernando Valley, the Exposition Light Rail line from downtown to Santa Monica which was completed at the end of 2015, and the subway— Purple Line—extension from Western Ave. to West Los Angeles which broke ground in 2014. After the closure of Martin Luther King, Jr. hospital in south Los Angeles, Yaroslavsky proposed a partnership between the University of California and Los Angeles County upon which the recently re-opened hospital was modeled.

During his public service career, Yaroslavsky was the county’s leader in the cultural arts.  The Los Angeles Times said of him before he retired, “It would be hard to find another major politician anywhere in the entire country with Yaroslavsky’s record for outright arts support and achievement.” He championed efforts to rebuild and modernize the world-famous Hollywood Bowl amphitheater and was instrumental in the development of architect Frank Gehry’s iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra.

Apart from his responsibilities as an elected official, Yaroslavsky has long been associated with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a non-governmental organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., that promotes the development of democratic institutions in burgeoning democracies.

Yaroslavsky is currently the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the department of history, focusing on the inter-section of policy, politics and history of the Los Angeles region. Yaroslavsky was born and raised in Los Angeles and earned an M.A. in British Imperial History and a B.A.  in Economics and History, both from UCLA. He is a graduate of Fairfax High School in Los Angeles.

Mr. Yaroslavsky’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Rose Rose Institute of State and Local Government at CMC.

At this working lunch, Nyree Gray, Assistant Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Civil Rights Officer at CMC and Dianna Graves, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at CMC will speak about campus initiatives, past and present. At tables hosted by D&I Committee members, attendees will be asked to share their own views about what's been accomplished, what’s yet to be done, and best next steps and priorities. RAs, students affiliated with the CARE Center, FYGs, affinity group leaders, ASCMC members, and club leaders are encouraged to attend so that in the future they can share perspectives with the broader community.

The lunch is open to everyone at CMC. Please come be a part of this important discussion!

Eric Poehler is an associate professor of classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is the director of the joint Blended Learning and Digital Humanities program for the Five Colleges consortium. His previous digital project, the Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Project won the 2018 Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology from the Archaeological Institute of America and his current project, the Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project (co-directed with Sebastian Heath), was just awarded $245,000 over the next three years.

Poehler is also active in the field and has more than 20 years of experience on excavations and urban surveys throughout the Mediterranean.

He is also the author of more than two dozen articles and books in leading venues including Oxford University Press, the American Journal of Archaeology, and the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

Professor Poehler's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Digital Humanities Initiative at the Claremont Colleges.
 

View Video: YouTube with Eric Poehler


Food for Thought: Podcast with Eric Poehler

Cauleen Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Operating in multiple materials and arenas, Smith roots her work firmly within the discourse of mid-twentieth-century experimental film. Drawing from structuralism, third world cinema, and science fiction, she makes things that deploy the tactics of activism in service of ecstatic social space and contemplation.

On the faculty at California Institute of the Arts in the Art Program, Smith received a B.A. in creative arts from San Francisco State University and an M.F.A from the School of Theater Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Smith is the recipient of the following awards: Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Creative Capital Film /Video, Independent Spirit Someone to Watch Award, Chicago 3Arts Grant, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chicago Expo Artadia Award, and Rauschenberg Residency, Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts in Film and Video 2016, United States Artists Award 2017. She was the 2016 inaugural recipient of the Ellsworth Kelly Award.

Professor Smith’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

Throughout his years of service as a career diplomat and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has been a champion for the protection of our fundamental and basic human rights. His work has involved the security of equality, justice, and respect—and has directly influenced international justice, U.N. peacekeeping, and women’s development. al-Hussein draws from his career in diplomacy and as the Human Rights Chief to address the geopolitical climate, relations in the Middle East, and current challenges to human rights. At the U.N., he called upon powerful and small states alike to secure human rights in their own countries and internationally, drawing notable attention to atrocities committed in Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, by ISIS, to the treatment of migrants and refugees in Libya, and the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.

An expert in the field of international justice, al-Hussein was a central figure in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), chairing the complex negotiations to establish the exact terms of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He was subsequently elected the first president of the governing body of the ICC in 2002, and grew it into the internationally recognized court that it is today. He has been active on many legal issues, including international law, post-conflict peace-building, international development, counter-nuclear terrorism, and women’s development. Following allegations of widespread abuse being committed by U.N. peacekeepers, al-Hussein was appointed by Kofi Annan as Advisor to the Secretary-General on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. His report on this subject was the first comprehensive strategy for the elimination of sexual exploitation and abuse in U.N. peacekeeping operations.

al-Hussein holds a B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University, a PhD. in history from Cambridge University, and was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by the Southern California Institute of Law for his work on international justice. He is currently the Distinguished Global Leader-in-Residence at Perry World House (PWH) and a visiting scholar at University of Pennsylvania.  

Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein's Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund and the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.


Food for Thought: Podcast with Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein

Sarah Moody is associate professor of Spanish in the department of modern languages and classics at the University of Alabama, where she is also the director of the Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies program. Moody’s research examines Modernismo and women’s writing in Latin American literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially focusing on the relationship between aesthetic systems and identity formulations like gender or nationalism. Her current book project, "Las Raras: Gendered Aesthetics, Women’s Writing and Intellectual Networks in Spanish-American Modernismo", examines ideas of femininity that were both fundamental to Modernismo’s formation and exclusionary towards women’s active participation in the movement as writers and authors.

(Parents Dining Room)

Roselyn Hsueh is an associate professor of political science at Temple University and a Global Order Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of "China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization" (Cornell University Press, 2011). Hsueh’s current research include her next book, under contract with Cambridge University Press, which investigates the mediating role of market governance in the relationship between global economic integration and development outcomes. The political economy of identity in the age of globalization is another major theme in her research agenda.

Hsueh regularly provides expert analysis and commentary. The Economist, Foreign Affairs, National Public Radio (NPR), Inside Higher Ed, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post and other outlets have featured her research. She has testified in Congress in front of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and consulted for The Center for Strategic and International Studies. She serves on the Fulbright’s National Selection Committee. 

Hsueh is a member of the Georgetown Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues and has served as a residential research faculty fellow and visiting scholar at U.C. Berkeley. She has also lectured as a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Finance and Asia Pacific Center, Tecnológico de Monterrey. Prior to arriving at Temple, Hsueh held the Hayward R. Alker Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Southern California and conducted in-depth fieldwork as a Fulbright Scholar and a David L. Boren Fellow of the National Security Education Program. She earned her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley.

Professor Hsueh’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies.

Photo Credit: Margo Reed Photography

Sheena Hui '19 is a CMC senior studying music (piano performance) and physics. At the Claremont Colleges, she has studied piano under Professors Gayle Blankenburg, Hao Huang, and Tatiana Thibodeaux. During her time at CMC, she has been actively involved in music through her solo piano performances, engagement in chamber music activities, composition studies, and more. Sheena hopes to pursue piano performance and music academia in the future. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, ping pong and studying philosophy.

Symone D. Sanders is a strategist, communications consultant, CNN political commentator, and served as a spring 2018 Resident Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School. Sanders rose to prominence during her tenure as the national press secretary for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Only 25 at the time, Sanders demonstrated a command of the issues earning her a place in history as the youngest presidential press secretary on record and a spot on Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of 16 young Americans shaping the 2016 election.

However, Sanders was not new to presidential politics. When she was 16, she introduced former President Bill Clinton at a luncheon in Omaha, Nebraska. Following her remarks, President Clinton said, “Symone spoke so well I really hate to follow her.” President Clinton went on to write about Sanders in his book, “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.”

Sanders has been featured on NPR, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, BET, TV One and CNN. She has been profiled in the Washington Post, the New Yorker, ESSENCE Magazine, and ELLE.

Sanders is currently principal of the 360 Group, LLC. where she provides strategic communications guidance to organizations, businesses, individuals, campaigns and candidates and helps clients find sound solutions to difficult political and social problems. Sanders has also been selected to serve as one of USC Dornsife's 2019 Fellows.

Food for Thought: Podcast with Symone Sanders