Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Off-year elections, those that are held in-between federal elections in odd-numbered years, often give us a good picture of the mood of the electorate before a presidential election. 

In 2015 three governorships and four state legislatures will be voted upon, and the results will in part reflect the current political mood of the nation. 

During a moderated panel discussion, with participation from the audience and real-time returns, these and other results will be examined to discern what importance they hold for 2016 and the Republican and Democratic contenders for president.

Moderator Zach Courser will be joined by Professor Ken Miller and Christina Bellantoni, the assistant managing politics editor at the LA Times and former editor-in-chief of Roll Call. In addition to her outstanding national resume, she’s covered Virginia politics in the past, which gives her an edge on discussing VA election returns.

In this second of the two-part series sponsored by CMC’s Gould Center for Humanistic Studies and the Public Art Committee, the panel will challenge the idea of the "public" in public art. It will examine the transformative and educational potential that lies in any encounter with art outside the white cube. 

Internationally recognized artists, curators, and scholars will join curator Philipp Kaiser and Professor Robert Faggen to continue the conversation about Claremont McKenna’s exciting public art initiative. 

Panelists include Thomas Hirschhorn, Paris-based artist; Jeremy Strick, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas; and Emi Fontana, Italian-born founder of West of Rome – Public Art, Los Angeles.

NOTE: This program will start at 5 pm with a reception. Dinner will be served at 5:30 pm. The formal program will begin at 6 pm.

The presentation by panelists will be followed by a moderated discussion and a Q & A.

Shyam Selvadurai is a Sri Lankan-Canadian writer, editor, and winner of many literary awards. Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father, two conflicting ethnic groups whose troubles are a major theme in his work, he immigrated to Canada at the age nineteen. 

Selvadurai’s works reflect his cross-cultural, hyphenated life. Selvadurai will read from his new novel The Hungry Ghosts, his anthology Story-Wallah, and various other works, and he will speak about the advantages of writing from the hyphen between Sri Lankan and Canadian.

Yii Kah Hoe is a Malaysian composer and Chinese dizi player. Bold and avant-garde, his music and composition use sounds and rhythms of many traditional instruments from various ethnic cultures. He is also active in music education and the organization of a contemporary music collective, concerts, and a festival in Kuala Lumpur.

Besides working artistically as a musician and composer, Yii has a strong commitment to environmental activism in Malaysia. In this Athenaeum appearance, Yii will address the question of whether music, and his music in particular, can be engaged with environmental protests while at the same time detached from them and stand alone as a “pure art.” He will show videos of activist performances that involve traditional Chinese music as well as contemporary takes on Chinese music and explore the impact of these performances on the movements.

A leader in his field, he served as the festival director of Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival 2009, the festival director of SoundBridge festival 2013, and the vice-president of Society of Malaysian Contemporary Composers. Yii has been a senior lecturer at SEGi College Subang Jaya, Malaysia, since 2000.

Yii is also the recipient of many international music and arts awards. His works have been performed widely in the U.S., London, Trinidad, Germany, Mexico, Paris, Italy, Russia, Australia, Bangkok, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.

Mr. Yii’s Athenaeum appearance is co-sponsored by EnviroLab Asia and the Mellon Global Liberal Arts funds.

Yaki Lopez is the Consul for Political Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles. He joined the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010 and began his work at the Division of Strategic Affairs, where he managed issues of regional security; he was also posted in Nairobi, Kenya. Prior to his diplomatic career, he served in an elite intelligence unit in the Israeli Defense Forces and also worked in the private business sector in Israel.

Read more about Yaki Lopez...

View Video: YouTube with Yaki Lopez

Karen Rosenfelt ’80 is a producer based at 20th Century Fox, where she is executive producing Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. While at Fox, she has also produced Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters.

A 1980 graduate of CMC, Rosenfelt began her career at ICM Partners as an assistant to talent agent Sue Mengers. She went on to become a creative executive at Jerry Weintraub Productions and a senior vice president at MGM.

Her career as executive producer and producer spans many successful movies, including the megahit Twilight series. Rosenfelt has also produced The Big Year, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and Marley & Me for Fox, and her executive producer credits include the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, and The Devil Wears Prada. Rosenfelt also produced Yogi Bear for Warner Bros., and Max and the upcoming Me Before You at MGM. 

For 16 years, Rosenfelt was a production executive at Paramount, where she oversaw live-action features such as The First Wives Club, Indecent Proposal, Runaway Bride, Save the Last Dance, Coach Carter, and Mean Girls. She was instrumental in setting up Paramount's partnership with Nickelodeon Movies, overseeing film adaptations of the Nickelodeon television properties Rugrats and SpongeBob SquarePants as well as Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, based on the bestselling children’s books.

Emilie M. Hafner-Burton is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of International Justice and Human Rights, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, and a joint professor for the department of political science at UC San Diego. She is the author of Making Human Rights a Reality, which takes a look at why it's been so hard for international law to have much impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk.

Most recently, Hafner-Burton served as professor of politics and public policy at Princeton University, where she held joint appointments in the department of politics and the Woodrow Wilson School for International and Public Affairs. She also served as a research scholar at Stanford Law School and fellow of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) with additional appointments at Oxford and Stanford.

Hafner-Burton's research examines ways to improve protections for human rights, the design of international and regional trade policy, and a wide array of other topics related to the use of economic sanctions, social network analysis and international law.

In her Athenaeum talk, Hafner-Burton will explore what social science is teaching us about how to protect human rights around the globe.

Professor Hafner-Burton’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies and the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.

View Video: YouTube with Emilie Hafner-Burton

Theresa Williamson is the founder of Catalytic Communities (CatComm) based in Rio de Janeiro. An outspoken and respected advocate on behalf of Rio’s favelas, Williamson is also editor-in-chief of RioOnWatch, a watchdog news site and favela news service which tracks the impact of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games on Rio's favelas.

Williamson will give an overview of Rio’s recent mega-event driven boom and bust, and the hope of and actual implementation of policies directed towards favelas. She will examine how favela communities have responded, developed, and grown resistance strategies in response to recent boom development policies in Rio.

What does pre-Olympic Rio teach us about poor urban planning and development policies, as well as effective community organizing and resistance? What can we learn from Rio's favelas about how to organize, and how not to organize our own communities and what would truly inclusionary policies look like? Case studies include the communities of Vila Autódromo, Favela do Metrô, Indiana, Horto, and Providência.

Dr. Williamson’s Athenaeum talk is sponsored by funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

View Video: YouTube with Theresa Williamson

Scott A. Schoettes, who is openly HIV-positive, is the HIV Project Director at Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization dedicated to making the case for equality on behalf of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, and people living with HIV, through impact litigation, education and policy work.

Schoettes litigates impact cases involving discriminatory denial of employment and services based on a person’s HIV status, as well as in the areas of HIV criminalization and access to care. He does a significant amount of amicus work on issues of importance to people living with HIV, notably twice co-authoring amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of the Affordable Care Act.

On the policy side, Schoettes was the point-person for Lambda Legal's work on the repeal of the HIV travel ban, works on the legislative reform of laws criminalizing conduct based on HIV status, and was recently appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, where he co-chairs the Disparities Committee. He has presented on various topics related to HIV discrimination at forums across the country, including the White House.

Schoettes graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and clerked for the Honorable J. Frederick Motz of the U.S. District Court of Maryland.

Read more about Scott A. Schoettes...

View Video: You Tube with Scott Schoettes

David Sedaris is a humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. A regular on NPR and in the New Yorker, he is the best-selling author of, among many other books, Me Talk Pretty One Day and When You Are Engulfed in Flames. With sardonic wit and incisive social critique, Sedaris is one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today and has become one of America’s pre-eminent humorists and a master of satire.

Sedaris is currently on a U.S. tour that is getting rave reviews around the country.

(Photo credit: Hugh Hamrick)

SPECIAL NOTES:

The Athenaeum will not serve dinner on the night of Mr. Sedaris’ appearance.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.

Mr. Sedaris will begin signing books in the Athenaeum lobby at 6:45 pm. The show will begin at 7:30 pm. He will speak for about an hour, followed by 20 to 30 minutes of Q & A. He will continue to sign books (for as long as it takes) after the show.

Seats for this event will be extremely limited and restricted to CMC students, faculty, and staff. Faculty and staff are limited to bringing one additional immediate family member.

Seating is on a first come-first serve basis only.

Seats cannot be held for others.