Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

On February 14, 2018, David Hogg’s life changed forever.

As a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, he lost friends, classmates and teachers. A total of 17 people were killed when a lone teen gunman sprayed bullets from a high-powered military assault rifle. Hogg’s eloquent responses to America’s largest school shooting immediately placed him in the national and international media spotlight.

Committed to becoming an agent for change, he resolved that no other young person should have to experience the tragic impact of gun violence. He joined with friends from high school to co-found March for Our Lives, now one of the world’s largest youth-led movements. Five weeks after the shooting, March for Our Lives mobilized one of the biggest demonstrations in the nation’s history. Speaking before an estimated 800,000 protestors in Washington, D.C., he declared, “The sun shines on a new day—and it is ours!” Since then, his activism has taken him around the country, meeting with impacted families and diverse communities to deepen his knowledge of gun safety and the politics of ending gun violence. With his younger sister, Lauren, also a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, he co-wrote #NeverAgain, a New York Times bestseller. The two siblings also contributed to the best-selling book, "Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement," a compilation of writing from the founders of March for Our Lives.

A 2023 graduate of Harvard University, Hogg recently co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a grassroots political organization dedicated to electing young progressives to Congress and State Legislatures across the country. A prolific voice on social media with more than a million followers, he uses his platform to promote civic engagement, activism and voting. As a speaker, he informs, challenges and energizes, empowering his generation to resist apathy and become catalysts for positive social change. “People call us snowflakes,” he once tweeted. “What happens when snowflakes vote? That’s called an avalanche.” 

Mr. Hogg’s presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Reyna Grande is an award-winning Mexican-American author known for her powerful portrayals of the immigrant experience. Her memoirs, The Distance Between Us and A Dream Called Home, chronicle her own journey crossing the US-Mexico border as a child. Grande's novels, including cross a Hundred Mountains, Dancing with Butterflies, and A Ballad of Love and Glory, explore themes of family, identity, and social justice. Her work has earned her critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the American Book Award. Grande is a passionate advocate for immigrants' rights and uses her platform to give voice to their stories.Her books have been adopted as the common read selection by schools, colleges, and cities across the country. 

Grande has received an American Book Award, the El Premio Aztlán Literary Award, and the International Latino Book Award. She was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Awards. She was honored with a Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature, a Latino Spirit Award, and a Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers. The young reader’s version of The Distance Between Us received an International Literacy Association Children’s Book Award.

Ms. Grande will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2025 Ricardo J. Quinones Lecture. 

Dan Koeppel is the author of three critically acclaimed books, his second, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, was published in 2008, is now in its seventh printing and has been translated into five languages. Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has three times cited Koeppel’s book in his columns as “essential reading” for understanding today’s global economic crisis. The Boston Globe wrote: “In the hands of a lesser writer, the book's multiple personalities - it is at once a political and economic treatise, a scientific explication, and a cultural history - might have proved unwieldy. Koeppel, though, weaves all of these elements together seamlessly.” 

His most recent book, Every Minute is a Day: A Doctor, an Emergency Room, and a City Under Siege, was published in 2021. It is the story of the first three months of Covid pandemic as experienced by the doctors, nurses, and medical staff of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. His first book, To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, A Son, and A Lifelong Obsession, also has received much acclaim.  

Banana was the subject of Dan’s full-length appearance on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, which was repeated in September 2011 as part of that program’s food week event. He has appeared in over 100 radio and television appearances and is a frequent guest speaker at colleges, universities, libraries, and museums. He was a recent signer of the “Stellenbosch Declaration,” the result of an international effort to develop a concerted strategy to save endangered banana species.  

An avid biker, Koeppel is also the author of The Extreme Sports Almanac, published in 1995, and co-author, with his friend and NBC television personality Bob Roll, of The Tour de France Companion.   

 

Christine Emba is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a former opinion columnist and editorial board member at The Washington Post. In 2022, Emba released her book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, which explores sexual ethics with an emphasis on sexual consent, casual sex, and sexual liberation. She argues that the increased access to casual sex in our modern society has left both women and men feeling unhappy and unsatisfied.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a senior editor at Reason and the author of Reason's biweekly Sex & Tech newsletter, which covers issues surrounding sex, technology, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture. She is also co-founder of the libertarian feminist group Feminists for Liberty, and a professional affiliate of the journalism program at the University of Cincinnati.

Dhriti Jagadish '27, a 2024 Open Academy Student Fellow, studies government and history. Elsewhere on campus, she is a research assistant at the Rose Institute for State and Local Government and a member of the 7C Demonstration Policy Revision Committee. 

Jasper Langley-Hawthorne '27, a 2024 Open Academy Student Fellow, is a PPE major. He is passionate about engaging with a constructive flow of ideas and the intersection of philosophy, technology, and society. He has previously worked with the Gould and Keck Centers at CMC. 

This Athenaeum program is co-sponsored by the Open Academy at CMC.

Kelly Greenhill, Ph.D., is a professor of Political Science and International Relations at Tufts University, with a secondary appointment at the Tisch College for Civic Life, and a Visiting Professor and Resident Senior Fellow at MIT. She is a leading expert on mass migration and forced displacement, best known for her award-winning book Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy, which explores how states use forced migration as a tool of foreign policy. Her research has shaped academic and policy debates, with her work cited in U.S. Supreme Court cases, international policy briefs, and major media outlets like The New York Times and Foreign Affairs. In addition to her roles at Tufts University and MIT, she has advised organizations including the United Nations, NATO, and the World Bank, and continues to advance scholarship on the geopolitics of migration through projects like the Diplomacy of Forced Migration Dataset.

Dr. Greenhill's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

This discussion will feature Todd Sax, Assistant Division Chief of the Mobile Source Laboratory Division at the California Air Resources Board; Sara Guiltinan, Pacific Regional Tribal Liaison at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement; and Patrick Atwater, Innovation Program Manager at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Together, they will provide insights into the role of government agencies in shaping environmental policy, advancing sustainable technologies, and fostering collaboration between public institutions and communities.

Speakers will address key challenges and opportunities in areas such as clean energy, emissions reduction, water conservation, and environmental stewardship, offering students a valuable perspective on careers in the public sector. By engaging with experts who are driving change in government and regulatory agencies, students will gain a deeper understanding of how policy and innovation intersect to create a more sustainable future and explore potential career paths in environmental leadership.

Panelists include:

Steve Eggert '82 P'15: Leader of Anton DevCo, he transitioned from real estate law to become a successful multifamily community developer. Eggert also serves on CMC's Board of Trustees.

Riley Lewis'11: Investment Performance Manager at Lewis Group of Companies, he oversees financial analysis and investment strategies.

Sue O'Bannon'84: Chief Financial Officer at Trammell Crow Residential since 2004, she oversees debt and equity financing for new developments in the Western U.S.

Ken Valach'82: Chief Executive Officer of Crow Holdings Development, he leads multifamily, industrial, and office projects across the United States. He also serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees at CMC.

This special event is hosted and organized by CMC's Financial Economics Institute (FEI) and the Real Estate Finance Association (REFA), a CMC club. 

Please note a SPECIAL SCHEDULE for this program:
4:30-5:10 PM | Student/Alumni Networking Reception
5:10-5:30 PM | Introduction
5:30-6:15 PM | Panel Discussion (Sue O’Bannon ’84, Riley Lewis ’11, and Steve Eggert ’82 P’15), moderated by Braden Crockett ’15
6:15-6:30 PM | Panel Q&A
6:30-7:00 PM | Dinner
7:00-7:30 PM | Fireside Chat with Ken Valach ’82, moderated by Harry Brenner ’20
7:30-8:00 PM | Q&A 

Yasmin Z. Vafa is co-founder and Executive Director of Rights4Girls, a national human rights organization dedicated to ending gender-based violence against young women and girls in the U.S. An award-winning human rights lawyer and advocate, Vafa's work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, violence, and the law. She has successfully advocated for several laws at the federal and state levels, testified before the U.S. Senate, state legislatures, and international human rights bodies, and co-authored multiple reports detailing the over-criminalization of girls and young women of color, particularly, survivors of sexual violence.  Vafa and her work have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, ABC News, and more. She currently serves on the U.S. Advisory Committee on the Sex Trafficking of Children and Youth, serves as adjunct faculty for the National Judicial Institute on Child Sex Trafficking— an intensive judicial training she co-designed and leads with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and previously served on both the Department of Justice National Girls' Initiative Advisory Committee as well as the DOJ National Task Force on the Use of Restraints on Pregnant Women and Girls Under Correctional Custody. She has received numerous awards for her work including the Lois Haight Award for Excellence and Innovation for her legislative advocacy from Congress. 

Melanie Thompson is an expert speaker, activist, and leader in the global fight to end prostitution and commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficked and sold into prostitution at the age of 12, Thompson was later arrested, served time in detention, and then placed into the foster care system. She became an activist at age 14. She  is both a national and international subject matter expert consultant and speaks to the intersectionality of race, child welfare, juvenile justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and other systems of oppression. Thompson has testified before numerous legislatures and entities, including the United Nations and various parliaments, about the need to pass strong anti-trafficking laws and end the arrests of sex trafficked and prostituted people. She has an extensive media presence, including Netflix, PBS, the NYTimes, CNN and more.  She  sits on several Survivor Advisory Boards working to implement inclusivity and create more effective strategies for survivor leaders everywhere. By day, she serves as the Chief Advocacy & Outreach Officer at CATW. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Isidro González joins the CMC history department post-doctoral fellow and visiting professor of history. Born in Tijuana, González moved at a young age to the San Diego area. He attended University of San Diego and then continued with his master’s and PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He completed his dissertation in 2024 while teaching a course on the History of Latinx Migrations. The question of his dissertation was “how were/are disabled people made?” In support of his dissertation, he received the Andrew Vincent White and Florence Wales White Scholarship in the Medical Humanities from the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) for a project that showed how intimate dialogue between observer and observed demonstrated ways in which bedside manner, cultural insensitivity, and an ideology that some minds are worth more than others led to long lives of confinement, surveillance, and sexual sterilization for patients/inmates or, for eugenic professionals, to successful, generative, and long careers in the sciences. González’s work has appeared in Southern California Quarterly and Sage Research Methods: Diversifying and Decolonizing Research.

The thread that has connected González’s experiences throughout his academic career has been his deep personal understanding of individual stories of migration, disability, and Mexican Identity. “I am a borderlander, if you will” González shares, “I've always just kind of been interested in that aspect… like where we have two cultures sort of meshing, for better or for worse, good and bad,”.  What this concept borderlander means for González changed during his studies of Mexican history and nation building in combination with the history of eugenics in California. His concept of history combines science, medicine, politics, culture, and society on the understanding of disability. “I ended up writing a history of what the eugenic movement really meant in the US West and how concepts of race, ethnicity, religion, and political affiliations played into the pathologization of marginalized people.”

Professor Gonzalez’s lecture is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights and the History Department at CMC.

Angela Vossmeyer is the Rothacker Family Associate Professor of Economics and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. Vossmeyer has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve and other central banks. She is the articles' editor for the Journal of Financial Crises and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her research, with the help of numerous student researchers at the Financial Economics Institute and Lowe Institute of Political Economy, has been published in highly regarded journals in economics, finance, and statistics, and widely cited by academic, news, and policy outlets.

She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Irvine. 

Register here for this special event.

According to the Washington Post (February 14, 2025), John Kani is “Perhaps most famous now for playing T’Chaka in the movies “Captain America: Civil War” and “Black Panther,” [but] Kani has been a theatrical force for over half a century. Born in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, he gravitated to acting, joining forces in the 1960s with playwright Athol Fugard.” His celebrated acting career stretches five-plus decades, from his native South Africa to across the world. 

Onstage, he gave Tony and Obie Award-winning performances in the plays Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island — which he also co-wrote. Both shows enjoyed American and South African revivals. Kani also received an Olivier Award nomination for My Children! My Africa!

Among Kani’s dozens of films are Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Murder Mystery, and Disney’s 2019 remake of The Lion King (voicing Rafiki).

As a playwright, Kani’s art has also traveled the world. Nothing But the Truth — a play that is now studied in South African schools — won three Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards, an Excellence in International Theatre Award, five Naledi Theatre Awards, and the Olive Schreiner Prize, with productions mounted around the world.

Countless awards and honors have been bestowed on Kani throughout his career, among them honorary doctorates from the University of Durban Westville, Rhodes University, The University of Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University; the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation Award; and the Fleur du Cap Theatre Award for lifetime achievement. In 2005, he received the Order of Ikamanga from the President of the Republic of South Africa, recognizing his contribution to the struggle for the liberation of his country through his work in the arts.

Kani is a patron of the Market Theatre Foundation; in 2015, the Foundation named the main theatre in his honor. In 2017, Whites Road in Port Elizabeth, South Africa’s city center was renamed John Kani Road. The following year, he took home a gold medal from the Kennedy International Committee on the Arts. Kani is also the recipient of the prestigious Sortugui Afrique Cinema Honor in Burkina Faso. Most recently, he was awarded the Voices in Freedom Award by Shared Interest, in New York. Previous recipients include Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Adapted from: https://mlasa.com/actors/john-kani/

David Farber is the Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Kansas. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago after which he spent a year working on Capitol Hill. Since then, he has been a professor of history and has published numerous books on American political culture, social change movements, democratic practice, and the history of capitalism. He has been a visiting scholar or lecturer in Japan, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Lebanon, Australia, China, Russia, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Professor Farber will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2024-25 Lerner Lecture on Hinge Moments in History.

Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest, is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Founded in 1988, Homeboy Industries employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of individuals who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.  

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Fr. Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights from 1986 to 1992. At that time, Dolores Mission was the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.  

Fr. Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he along with parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings. This commitment led to the founding of Homeboy Industries in 1988. 

Fr. Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. He also wrote Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (2017) and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness (2021). His most recent work is Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times (2024).

The recipient of many awards, Fr. Boyle has received the California Peace Prize and has been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, President Obama named Fr. Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. Homeboy Industries was the recipient of the 2020 Hilton Humanitarian Prize validating 32 years of Fr. Greg Boyle’s vision and work. Most recently he was one of the recipients of the 2024 The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor.