Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Marilou Ryder Ed. D., is an author, speaker, and leadership strategist dedicated to advancing women’s confidence, visibility, and influence in work and life. A former superintendent and longtime university professor, she currently serves as Program Chair for the UMass Global doctoral program in organizational leadership, where she designs innovative leadership development experiences and mentors emerging leaders.

Ryder is the author of multiple books for women, including the bestselling titles "Promotion Power: Five Disruptive Career Moves for Modern Women" and "Self-Sabotage: Ten Personal Power Tips to be Your Best Self on a Good Day", which challenge women to rethink how they advocate for themselves, navigate workplace dynamics, and step into bold professional visibility. Through her speaking, writing, and publishing work, she equips women with practical, no-nonsense strategies that translate directly into action and results.

Known for her engaging, direct style and real-world insight, Ryder inspires audiences to move from capable to confident and from potential to powerful impact.

Dr. Ryder is the keynote speaker for the 2026 Women and Leadership Workshop, co-sponsored by the Kravis Leadership Institute, Berger Institute for Individual and Social Development, Berger Institute, Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, and the Women and Leadership Alliance.

Daniel Scroop is a historian of the United States based at the University of Glasgow in Scotland where he is Director of Research for the School of Humanities and a member of the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies. He writes on the New Deal, American liberalism, and the shifting ideological contours of U.S. history, and is author of Mr Democrat: Jim Farley, the New Deal, and the Making of Modern American Politics, the first book-length study of Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign manager. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a winner of the Constance Rourke Prize of the American Studies Association, and a recipient of the Walter Hines Page Fellowship at the National Humanities Center. 

Scroop completed his undergraduate and postgraduate level studies at the University of Oxford, where her earned his B.A. in 1995 and his D.Phil in 2001. 

During spring 2026, he is a Fulbright Scholar at Emory and Henry University in south-west Virginia, where he is teaching and writing on the place of history in American public life since 1776.

Don Romesburg ’93 is the author of Contested Curriculum: LGBTQ History Goes to School (Rutgers UP, 2025) and editor of the Routledge History of Queer America (2018). As the lead scholar working with advocates to pass the FAIR Education Act, he helped usher LGBTQ content into California's 2016 K-12 History-Social Science Framework and subsequent textbooks. He now trains educators on implementation. For these efforts, he is the namesake of the LGBTQ+ History Association’s Don Romesburg Prize for K-12 Curriculum. Romesburg is also a co-founder of the GLBT Historical Society Museum in San Francisco and Managing Editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. 

Romesburg earned a Ph.D. in U.S. History with an interdisciplinary emphasis on Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA in history from University of Colorado, Boulder, and a history BA from Claremont McKenna College. 

He now serves as Dean of Social Sciences and Fine Arts at Clark College in Vancouver, WA.

Steve Grove '00 is CEO and publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune. Previously, he was Minnesota’s commissioner of employment and economic development. Before moving back to his home state, Grove built a career in Silicon Valley as an executive at Google and YouTube, most recently as the founding director of the Google News Lab and previously as YouTube’s first head of news and politics.

A graduate of Claremont McKenna College with a Master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, Grove has written for several national publications and has served as an advisor to the White House and State Department on counter-terrorism strategy. Steve and his wife Mary are the cofounders of Silicon North Stars, a nonprofit that helps underserved youth find career pathways in technology. They are the proud parents of eight-year-old twins, a yellow lab, and two farm cats.

Diane Wagner ‘87 is the executive producer of The Migrant Child Farmworkers – Now High-Profile Professionals^©. After a successful career in market research consulting for Fortune 500 clients, Wagner is now an independent storyteller who is passionate about telling stories that inspire audiences, especially children, to elevate their self-image, better recognize their potential, and gain access to more educational opportunities.

Wagner studied Economics at Claremont McKenna College and subsequently earned her MBA from U.C. Irvine.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Diane Wagner who will be joined by producer Jesse Gift and several individuals featured in the film (Tony Cárdenas, Enrique Diaz, Lisa Ramirez and Dr. Ramon Resa). Brandon Guzmán (a former undocumented migrant child farmworker and featured presenter Xolo Maridueña's manager) may also attend.

This program is co-sponsored by the President’s Office and Open Academy.

SPECIAL SCHEDULE: Film will be screened during dinner starting at 6:20 pm and will be followed by comments from Diane Wagner and audience Q & A.
 

Michael Vorenberg received his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and is professor of history at Brown University, where he has taught since 1999. He is the author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, a Finalist for the Lincoln Prize and a major source for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln. His most recent book is Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War, which was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2025. He is currently on the board of editors of the Journal of Constitutional History and was previously on the board of editors of Law and History Review. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. His forthcoming article comparing declared states of emergency in Civil War-era America and present-day America will be published in the summer of 2026.

Professor Vorenberg's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Salvatori Center’s Lofgren Program in American Constitutionalism.
 

David Brooks is a former columnist for The New York Times and a contributor to The Atlantic. He is a commentator on “The PBS Newshour" and founder and Chair of Weave: The Social Fabric Project. 

His forthcoming book “How To Know A Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen” will be published in October. His previous three books were “The Second Mountain,” “The Road to Character,” and “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement,” all #1 New York Times bestsellers.

Mr. Brooks has taught at Yale and Duke and now teaches at the University of Chicago. He has received over 30 honorary degrees from American universities and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 

Mr. Brooks's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Valach Speaker Series and the Open Academy at CMC.

(Photo credit: Howard Schatz©SCHATZ-ORNSTEIN)

Sir Malcolm Evans, KCMG (Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George) and OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), is the Principal of Regents Park College at Oxford University. 

Prior to his role at Oxford University, Sir Malcolm was Professor of International Law at the University of Bristol, where previously he had been Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law. His research interests center on the international protection of human rights, with particular focus on the prevention of torture and the freedom of religion in recognition of which he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2015. He also works extensively on issues concerning the international law of the sea, including in particular questions concerning maritime boundaries and the protection of human rights at sea. Among his many roles, Sir Malcolm has served as a member and, from 2011-2020, Chair of the United Nations Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture. In 2015 he was appointed a Member of the Panel of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales, then the largest and most wide-ranging public inquiry yet undertaken, which concluded its work in late 2022. He has also served as a member of the Advisory Panel on Freedom of Religion and Belief of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Sir Malcolm read Law at Regent’s Park College (1979-82), returning for doctoral research (1983-87) for which he was awarded the degree of DPhil. Sir Malcolm holds an Honorary Doctorate from Bangor University and is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. 
 

Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards for his fiction, he has also won top genre honors in Japan, Spain, and France.

Liu’s most characteristic work is the four-volume epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers, not wizards, are the heroes of a silkpunk world on the verge of modernity. His debut collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. A second collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, followed. He also penned the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. His latest book, All That We See or Seem, is a techno-thriller about the fight against loneliness in the age of AI.

He’s often involved in media adaptations of his work. Recent projects include The Regular, under development as a TV series; Good Hunting, adapted as an episode in season one of Netflix’s breakout adult animated series Love, Death + Robots; and AMC’s Pantheon, adapted from an interconnected series of Liu’s short stories.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.

Mr. Liu is the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2025-26 Ricardo J. Quinones Lecturer.

Photo credit: Lisa Tang Liu

(Special Note: This event had originally been scheduled for Monday, September 22, 2025. We are honoring the head table sign-ups from that original date. Students who had secured a head table spot (or were waitlisted for the head table) will have the right of first refusal for the head table. If you had a confirmed spot at the head table, we are aware of who you are and we will contact you directly in early March.)

Neha Dixit is an independent journalist and author based in New Delhi. For over two decades, she has reported on politics, gender, labour, and social justice in South Asia, producing investigative, narrative, and long-form journalism for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Caravan, The Wire, and others. 

Her work has exposed extrajudicial killings, hate crimes, human trafficking, unethical clinical trials, and sectarian majoritarian violence. She has won over a dozen national and international awards, including the International Press Freedom Award (2019) from Committee to Protect Journalists, the Chameli Devi Jain Award (2017), and the Lorenzo Natali Prize for Journalism (2011).

Her book, "The Many Lives of Syeda X" (Juggernaut), traces 30 years in the life of a migrant Muslim woman navigating Delhi’s informal labour economy, holding over 50 jobs without minimum wage. The book, a vivid portrait of urban India’s invisible workforce, was named Book of the Year 2024 by The Hindu and the Deccan Herald among others. It won the Ramnath Goenka Sahitya Samman and Kalinga Best Debut Award and a Special Jury Mention by the CG Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.

Ms. Dixit's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by President's Leadership Fund. 

Rob is a researcher on AI consciousness and welfare, working at the intersection of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and the ethics of AI. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from NYU and currently serves as Executive Director of Eleos AI, a research organization dedicated to understanding and addressing the potential wellbeing and moral patienthood of AI systems. Previously, he was a researcher at the Center for AI Safety and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.

Professor Long will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2025-26 Golo Mann Lecture.

Jeff Kukucka is a professor of psychology at Towson University and a decision scientist whose work aims to optimize the human element of forensic and medicolegal decision-making. He previously held a leadership position on NIST's OSAC for Forensic Science—a federal organization that develops and promotes best practice standards for all areas of forensic science—and he recently oversaw the nation's first-ever independent audit of restraint-related deaths in police custody, the findings of which raised concerns over bias and error in autopsy decisions. He also frequently trains forensic examiners and attorneys on these issues, and he has testified as an expert witness in nine U.S. states.

Louis Tay is the William C. Byham Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Purdue University and Co-Founder of ExpiWell. A leading expert in psychological measurement, well-being, and artificial intelligence applications in psychology, Tay has pioneered frameworks for understanding how AI systems can be rigorously evaluated for bias using principles from psychometric theory.

Tay's scholarship has shaped multiple fields through his editorial leadership of major reference works. He has co-edited five handbooks: Big Data in Psychological Research (APA Books), Handbook of Well-Being (DEF Publishers), Handbook of Positive Psychology Assessment (Hogrefe), Oxford Handbook of the Positive Humanities (Oxford), and Technology and Measurement around the Globe (Cambridge). His research has appeared in journals including American Psychologist, Nature Human Behavior, Psychological Bulletin, and Journal of Applied Psychology.

Tay has contributed to United Nations research reports on well-being and consults for top tech companies and Fortune 500 organizations on topics including AI and measurement bias. He currently leads research funded by the John Templeton Foundation examining whether and how AI conversational agents can cultivate character virtues. As co-founder of the tech company ExpiWell, he developed a platform used by researchers worldwide for ecological momentary assessments.

Dr. Tay's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the President’s Office and Open Academy.