Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Serhii Plokhii (Plokhy) is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. A leading authority on Eastern Europe and Russia, he has published extensively on the international history of the Cold War. His award-winning books include The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy.

Professor Plokhii will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2022-23 Lerner Lecture on Hinge Moments in History.

View Video: You?Tube with Serhii Plokhii

Peter Mansoor, Ph.D., is the General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair of Military History at The Ohio State University is a frequent media commentator on national security affairs. A distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he earned his doctorate from The Ohio State University. He assumed his current position in 2008 after a 26-year career in the U.S. Army that included two combat tours, and which culminated in his service as executive officer to General David Petraeus in Iraq. He is the author of Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq and Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War. His most recent work is the co-edited volume The Culture of Military Organizations.

Evan Wollen (LTC, retired) served as a field artillery officer in the US Army, retiring in October 2016 after 22 years in service. A World War I historian, Wollen has served as a professor of history at the United States Military Academy, head coach for the women’s Army rugby team, and deputy director of the US Army’s Combat Studies Institute. Currently a freelance writer, Wollen is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His last job on active duty was as 35th professor of military science at CMC. Wollen is a graduate of Amherst College.

Colonel Mansoor’s Athenaeum visit is supported by the CMC Chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society, a national organization headquartered in Washington, DC, with a mission to launch students into the fields of foreign policy and national security. This event commemorates 2022 Veterans' Day in recognition of all retired and active service men and women. 

Jay Cordes is a data scientist who co-authored the book The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science with Pomona economist Gary Smith to help guide future data scientists away from the common pitfalls he saw in the corporate world. The book won the 2020 PROSE award in the category Popular Science and Popular Mathematics. He also co-authored The Phantom Pattern Problem, also with Gary Smith. Through his work, Cordes hopes to improve the public's ability to distinguish truth from nonsense.

Cordes earned a degree in mathematics from Pomona College and more recently received a Master of Information and Data Science (MIDS) degree from U.C. Berkeley.

(This event was originally scheduled for April 2, 2020.)

Food for Thought: Podcast with Jay Cordes

John Mauceri is a Grammy, Tony, Olivier, Emmy award-winning conductor and educator. He was appointed to the faculty of Yale University when he was 22 years old and made his professional orchestral debut at 27. He is the former music director of four opera companies, three symphony orchestras, and has music directed three productions on Broadway.

Mauceri worked with Leonard Bernstein for 18 years, editing and conducting the composer’s major premieres at Mr. Bernstein’s request. In 1991, the Los Angeles Philharmonic created the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for him where, for sixteen seasons, he conducted an unprecedented 325 concerts at the 18,000-seat venue to a combined audience of four million people.

Regarded as the world’s leading performer of the music of Hollywood’s émigré composers as well as composers outlawed by the Third Reich, he has taken the lead in the restoration and performance of many kinds of music with over 70 albums to his name.

His third and latest book, The War on Music, published by Yale University Press, was cited as a “Best Summer Read” by the Financial Times and was a Los Angeles Times “Top Ten Best Seller.” John McWhorter of The New York Times wrote, “It’s a gorgeous thing—every sentence. I am in awe.” His previously published books are Maestros and Their Music—the Art and Alchemy of Conducting and For the Love of Music—A Conductor’s Guide to the Art of Listening (both published by Knopf).

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

Since 1985 Larry Mantle P’23 has hosted AirTalk, the longest continuously running daily talk program in the history of Los Angeles radio, airing weekdays 10 a.m. to noon.  AirTalk guests are leaders in politics, entertainment, science, health, social debate, history, and the arts and are coupled with the telephone participation of a sophisticated public radio audience. Mantle also hosts the weekly movie review and interview program Film Week Fridays at 11 a.m. and Saturdays at noon.

His awards include the Radio/TV News Association of Southern California Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, the Radio Journalist of the Year from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2012, the Mark Twain Award from The Associated Press in 2013, and the Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2010.

This program is co-sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable whose mission it is to inspire public service.

Food for Thought: Podcast with Larry Mantle P'23

Lori Freedman conducts sociological and bioethical research with Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a program of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at UCSF. In addition to being a Greenwall Faculty Scholar alumna, she is an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine at the National Academy of Medicine.

Freedman investigates the ways in which reproductive health care is shaped by our social structure and medical culture. Her book, Willing and Unable: Doctors’ Constraints in Abortion Care, is a qualitative study of the challenges to integrating abortion into physician practice. Unexpected findings from those physician interviews led her to research and write about the intersection of religion and health care, especially in the case of Catholic hospitals, with an interest in how conscientious objection in medical practice operates at the institutional level. Through qualitative interviews with Catholic hospital physicians and patients as well as national surveys of American women, her research lends insight into how institutional policies for reproductive care can be hidden from view, malleable, and/or obstructive to patient autonomy and wellbeing.

(Source: Lori Freedman and https://greenwall.org/faculty-scholars-program/our-faculty-scholars/lori-freedman-phd)

Chloe Martinez is the program coordinator of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse and a lecturer in the department of religious studies. She is a scholar of South Asian religions and a poet.

Bhaven Mistry is the assistant director of the Murty-Sunak Quantitative and Computing Lab and visiting assistant professor of mathematics. His specialty is in the field of biomathematics.

Jessamyn Schaller is associate professor of economics in the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance. Her research focuses on health, labor, public, and demographic economics. 

Diana Selig is the Kingsley Croul Associate Professor of History and George R. Roberts Fellow. She is a scholar of twentieth-century U.S. history and currently serves as the faculty advisor for Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Aseema Sinha is the Wagener Family Professor of Comparative Politics and George R. Roberts Fellow. Her research interests relate to political economy of India, India-China comparisons, International Organizations, and the rise of India as an emerging power.  

For over nine months, the Russian military has prosecuted an unprovoked war against Ukraine, bombing cities, destroying critical infrastructure, and brutally occupying multiple regions of Ukraine. While the Ukrainian counteroffensive has succeeded in winning back large swaths of Russian-occupied territory in recent months, the war continues with no end in sight. As the Russian military fails to achieve it aims, despite the recent large-scale mobilization of Russian conscripts and massive missile strikes, the Kremlin threatens further escalation. To address these security and other aspects of the war, panelists Dr. Polina Sinovets, director of the Odesa Center for Nonproliferation at Mechnikov National University and Dr. Volodymyr Dubovyk, director of the Center for International Studies at Mechnikov National University, will appear via zoom to join in-person Anna Romandash, award-winning journalist from the Lviv region investigating Russian war crimes in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.

This lunch panel is part of CMC’s Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies' Conference on Russia’s War on Ukraine.

Jeppe Hein is a Danish artist based in Berlin. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts in Copenhagen and the Städel Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt, Germany.

Hein is widely known for his production of experiential and interactive artworks that can be positioned at the junction where art, architecture, and technical inventions intersect. Unique in their formal simplicity and notable for their frequent use of humor, his works engage in a lively dialogue with the traditions of Minimalist sculpture and Conceptual art of the 1970s. Hein’s works often feature surprising and captivating elements which place spectators at the center of events and focus on their experience and perception of the surrounding space.

Hein has exhibited internationally with multiple solo exhibitions, numerous public art installations, and his work is found in the permanent collections of many museums.

This talk coincides with a dedication event for the artist’s permanent installation of Modified Social Benches sited at Adams Hall at CMC.

Photo credit: Jan Strempel Photography, 2022 

The Claremont Treble Singers, an ensemble of the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps College, is a high-voiced ensemble of about 30 students. It is led by conductor Charles W. Kamm, associate professor of music at Scripps College and director of choirs for the Joint Music Program.