Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Current Semester Schedule

Athenaeum events are posted here as detailed information becomes available. See the FULL semester overview here.

Wed, October 2, 2024
Dinner Program
Laura Craft and Ryan Patel

Join us for an engaging discussion with Laura Craft, Senior Vice President, Heitman’s Global Head of Portfolio Sustainability Strategies, and an equity owner of the firm, and Ryan Patel as they tackle the big questions about the future of energy and infrastructure. As data centers surge and corporate giants scale, they will explore whether our energy systems can keep up. Discover the latest trends in real estate investment and how they’re shaping the future of data centers. They will also delve into the critical issue of workforce housing, especially for middle-income earners. How can we balance growth with sustainability, and what are the implications for both investors and the everyday worker? This dynamic conversation promises to shed light on how we can drive innovation while addressing pressing societal needs.

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Laura Craft is a Senior Vice President, Heitman’s Global Head of Portfolio Sustainability Strategies, and an equity owner of the firm. She leads the firm’s sustainability platform and interacts across business lines and regions to establish systematic approaches to incorporate sustainability into investment decision-making and management of investments with the goal of creating value, reducing risk, and enhancing investment returns. Currently, Craft is the co-chair of the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) Innovation Affinity Group and is a member of Urban Land Institute (ULI) Greenprint’s Performance Committee. Prior to joining Heitman, she spent 10 years at LaSalle Investment Management, where she began in LaSalle’s valuation and asset management groups and transitioned to develop the firm’s Global Sustainability Platform. Craft's early career experience includes market data coverage at Grubb & Ellis | Barkley Fraser, a real estate brokerage company, as well as Building Information Modeling (BIM) research and development at SmartBIM. Laura’s past industry involvement has included advising ULI Greenprint Center, the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI), and the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) on their reporting frameworks and environmental data platforms.

Craft received a double BA in Real Estate and Business Management from the University of Georgia, where she was one of 30 UGA students to earn a Leonard Leadership Scholar Certification. She is also a graduate of the Urban Land Institute’s Center for Leadership program and is a LEED Accredited Professional, having overseen over 100 LEED, IREM, Energy Star, and Green Globes designations.

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Ryan Patel is a globally recognized futurist and go-to authority on global business, political economy, and corporate governance. Currently the William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow at CMC, Patel is an expert in scaling businesses, he's served startups and publicly traded firms. Listed as one of the “Creators to Follow” by LinkedIn Editor in Chief Daniel Roth and recognized as a “Top Voice” on Linkedin, Patel is a sought-after TV news commentator and Board Director. Patel also hosts "The Moment with Ryan Patel," featuring conversations with top innovators and executives filmed at the iconic HP Garage, the birthplace of Silicon Valley. He complements his literary talents with domestic and international keynote appearances, leading campaigns with corporations and universities such as the World Economic Forum, Davos, Mastercard, HP, Adobe, The Economist, Reuters, and more.

This Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Financial Economics Institute at CMC.

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Thu, October 3, 2024
Lunch Program
John Owens

Join Judge John Owens, a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who began his career as a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the CMC Pre-Law Society for a discussion of his path to the bench and what he learned along the way.

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Judge John Owens has been a federal judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit since 2014. Prior to joining the court, Judge Owens was litigation partner in the Los Angeles office of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP and a federal prosecutor for more than a decade. He earned his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he graduated first in his class.  He served as a law clerk for the Honorable J. Clifford Wallace of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

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Fri, October 4, 2024
Lunch Program
Amit Ahuja

In this year of elections, what can we learn about India and from India given its recent national elections? For example, what do the world’s largest and longest elections tell us about democracy? The quality and survival of democracy in India have attracted much scrutiny. This presentation will draw on the 2024 Indian election campaign and its outcomes to offer some reflections on themes related to democratic politics.

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Professor Amit Ahuja is an Associate Professor of Political Science at University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the processes of inclusion and exclusion in multiethnic societies. He has studied this within the context of ethnic parties and movements, military organization, intercaste marriage, and skin color preferences in South Asia.

Professor Ahuja’s book, Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movements published by Oxford University Press was the winner of the 2020 New India Foundation Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize. He has coedited a volume with Devesh Kapur, Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State published by Oxford University Press. He is currently working on a book-length project titled, Building National Armies in Multiethnic States. In 2022-23, he is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington DC. Professor Ahuja was awarded The Margret T. Getman Service to Students Award in 2015.

Professor Ahuja’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Institute of Indian Studies, the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the Hellman Family Foundation, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Michigan.

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

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Mon, October 7, 2024
Dinner Program
Juliet Johnson

Why does Russian president Vladimir Putin so often draw on World War II analogies to justify Russia’s war on Ukraine? How does the Putin regime use memory politics to explain Russia’s war aims and Ukraine’s resistance to them, and why do these claims have resonance with the Russian public? In this talk, Professor Juliet Johnson (McGill University) will focus on the Russia-Ukraine war to explore how and why the Putin regime has strategically used the past to legitimize its authoritarian, aggressive, and anti-Western turn.
 

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Juliet Johnson is Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, former President of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2023), and former Director of the international research network Between the EU and Russia: Domains of Diversity and Contestation (2015-2023). Her research focuses on the politics of money and on memory politics, particularly in post-communist Europe. Her publications include Developments in Russian Politics (Duke 2024), Priests of Prosperity: How Central Bankers Transformed the Postcommunist World (Cornell 2016), A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System (Cornell 2000), and numerous scholarly and policy-oriented articles.

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

 

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Tue, October 8, 2024
Lunch Program
Vernon C. Grigg III and John J. Pitney, Jr.

Join the Kravis Lab for Civic Leadership for the seventh installment of Civitas Sessions, an Athenaeum lunch series designed to build real-world civic skills and the knowledge needed to live thoughtful, productive lives as responsible community members and leaders. Each session will deliver practical knowledge and discuss the application of the subject matter to important current issues. With a welcoming ‘come-as-you-are’ atmosphere, the Civitas Sessions focus on the stuff you need to know before it becomes the stuff I wish I had known… 

In this session Vernon C Grigg III, J.D., Executive Director of the Kravis Lab, and John J. Pitney Jr., the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Politics at CMC, will discuss Why We Won't Know the Election Outcome Until It Happens.

Scholars, operatives, and journalists have developed many ways to predict presidential elections. But don't count on forecasts in 2024.  This election has far too many unique features for historical data to be much of a guide. What's more, public opinion surveys have severe challenges, especially when Trump is on the ballot.

(Lunch served in the main Eggert Dining Room at 12:00 noon, program begins at 12:15 PM, but feel free to come a little late if you're getting out of class)

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Civitas Sessions is organized by the Kravis Lab and moderated by Executive Director Vernon C. Grigg III, JD. A lawyer by training, Grigg holds degrees from Yale Law School (J.D.), the London School of Economics (G.SC.), and the University of Michigan (BA).  Vernon comes to the Kravis Lab from his role as CEO & President of Up with People, a fifty-five-year-old international nonprofit education and arts organization. He managed a global team of 50 employees across three continents as he led the nonprofit to sustainability and health despite the challenges of the worldwide pandemic.

John J. Pitney, Jr. is Roy P. Crocker Professor of American History and Politics at Claremont McKenna College where he teaches courses on Congress, interest groups, political parties, and mass media. A leading expert on the structure and practice of American politics, Pitney is a widely published author or co-author of six books on American politics, including The Art of Political Warfare (2000), The Politics of Autism (2015) and Un-American: The Fake Patriotism of Donald J. Trump (2020). In addition to his books, Pitney has published numerous scholarly articles and short essays, and is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines. He is routinely featured on NPR and other television and radio programs. 

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Tue, October 8, 2024
Dinner Program
Sohrab Ahmari and Jason Riley, debaters
Aditya Pai '13, moderator

Immigration has been hotly debated within the US for decades, but with a recent Pew survey showing that 61% of US voters saying that immigration is "very important" to their vote in the upcoming US Presidential Election (up 9 percentage points from the 2020 Presidential Election, and up 13 points from the 2022 Midterm Election), the topic has never been more central to American politics. While partisans on either side often have strong views, immigration also can produce unusual ideological allies across the right and left. What is the appropriate level of immigration, and should the US admit more or fewer immigrants? Debating this issue are Sohrab Ahmari, founding editor of the heterodox journal Compact, which "seeks a new political center devoted to the common good," and Jason Riley, longtime opinion columnist for the Wall Street Journal and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The debate will be moderated by Aditya Pai '13, attorney and former Democratic candidate for California’s 45th Congressional District.

Event attendees will vote either in favor or against the resolution: "The United States Should Maintain Current Levels of Legal Immigration."

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Sohrab Ahmari is a founder and editor of Compact and writes the “American Affairs” column for The New Statesman. Previously, he spent nearly a decade at News Corp., as op-ed editor of the New York Post and as a columnist and editor with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in New York and London. Ahmari’s books include Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It (2023) and The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos (2021), both published by Penguin Random House.

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Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he has published opinion pieces for more than 20 years. Topics include politics, economics, education, immigration, social inequality and race. He’s also a frequent public speaker and provides commentary for television and radio news outlets.

After joining the Journal in 1994, he was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000 and a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. He joined the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank focused on urban issues, in 2015. In 2008 he published Let Them In, which argues for a more free-market oriented U.S. immigration system. His second book, Please Stop Helping Us, which is about government efforts to help the black underclass, was published in 2014. In 2017, he published False Black Power?, an assessment of why black political success has not translated into more economic advancement. In 2021, he published  Maverick, a biography of the iconic economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell, and narrated the documentary film Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World. Riley’s most recent book is The Black Boom, an analysis of black economic progress prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Riley earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has also worked for USA Today and the Buffalo News. He lives in suburban New York City.

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Aditya Pai '13 is a public servant and practicing attorney for entrepreneurs, workers, and low-income tenants in need of pro bono help.

Pai was a Democratic candidate for United States Representative for CA-45 (Artesia, Cerritos, north Orange County), with the platform of Service Over Politics: anti-corruption, pro-choice, with a focus on helping working families afford the American Dream.

He earned a B.A. from Claremont McKenna, J.D. from Harvard, M.Phil. from Cambridge. At 22, he managed a California policy think tank. From 24-27, his supervisor was Nobel Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen. Pai joined the California Bar at 26.

Pai was born in Bombay, India and raised in Orange County, CA where he grew up speaking Hindi and Marathi at home and Spanish and English at school. He loves language, ideas, and most of all, people.

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

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Wed, October 9, 2024
Dinner Program
Ken Miller and students of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government

Californians will vote on ten statewide ballot propositions this fall. The outcome of these measures will shape state policy regarding the minimum wage, criminal penalties, involuntary servitude, the right to marry, rent control, low-income housing, bond funding for schools and environmental projects, and more.  Many of these proposals are hard to understand and cause voters to throw up their hands in frustration. For more than a decade, the Rose Institute has helped voters overcome their confusion by providing non-partisan, objective, accessible guides to the state ballot. These guides include both longer form “backgrounders” and short informational “video voter guides."  Join Rose Institute Director Ken Miller and Rose Institute students who will share this year’s guides, answer your questions, and help you make informed choices.

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Kenneth P. Miller is the Don H. and Edessa Rose Professor of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, where he serves as Director of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government. Miller’s scholarship focuses on state and local politics, constitutional law, and political polarization. His publications include Texas vs. California: A History of Their Struggle for the Future of America (Oxford 2020), Direct Democracy and the Courts (Cambridge 2009), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on topics including the initiative process, political geography, state constitutionalism, state supreme courts, and voting rights.

The Rose Institute of State and Local Government, located at CMC, was founded in 1973. An unmatched resource for information on California state and local government, the Institute maintains extensive demographic, economic, and political databases on the Southern California region. Under the direction of nationally recognized faculty and staff, the best and brightest students from Claremont McKenna College play a significant role in researching, interpreting, and presenting data. 

This Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at CMC.

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Thu, October 10, 2024
Lunch Program
Miriam Farah '23, Valentina Gonzalez '23, and Michelle Ramirez '23

Learn about careers in human rights and the Elbaz Family Post-Graduate Fellowship program, sponsored by CMC's Mgrublian Center for Human Rights. Join the three recipients of the 2023 Elbaz Family Post-Graduate Fellowship for a discussion of their work at Relman Colfax (a private public interest firm focused on fair housing and fair lending); the Human Rights Watch and the Vera Institute of Justice (longstanding organizations dedicated to human rights and improving the justice system); and Children's Rights (an advocacy and legal action firm focused on the rights of children). Moderated by Yi Shun Lai '96 of CMC's Office of Fellowships and National Awards, the panel will focus on their real work experiences as well as how they got to where they are now.

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Miriam Farah '23 graduated cum laude from Claremont McKenna College with a dual major in public policy and history with departmental honors and a minor in gender and sexuality studies. During her senior year, Farah wrote a year-long history thesis titled "The Criminalization of Girls' Mental Illness: Race, Gender, and Class in Juvenile Collaborative Courts," which won the best thesis in history and gender studies. On campus, she was heavily involved with the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights and worked for Claremont Canopy, a nonprofit organization aimed to help resettle immigrants in Southern California. In high school, Farah explored her interest in the legal field by interning for McGregor Law Corp., a criminal defense law firm for three summers, and Teen Court. Her college coursework and previous experience in criminal law inspired her passion for civil rights law, leading her to work for Haysbert & Moultrie LLP, the Fair Housing and Community Development Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Constitutional Accountability Center. Since graduation, she has been working as a civil rights paralegal at Relman Colfax, a private public interest firm in Washington, DC focused on fair housing and fair lending. In her free time, Farah likes spending time with her family and friends, exploring D.C., and being outdoors. 

Valentina Gonzalez '23 is the Media Coordinator in the communications and external affairs department at the Vera Institute of Justice. In her role, Gonzalez tracks and distributes earned media, manages media inquiries, pitches Vera products to various news outlets, and manages administrative operations, supporting efforts to deliver messaging that advances the Institute's mission to reform the criminal legal and immigration systems. Before joining Vera in 2024, Gonzalez worked as an Elbaz Fellow in the communications division at Human Rights Watch (HRW). At HRW, she supported media strategy for research products on international human rights issues and contributed to large-scale media coverage and postproduction analytics of various products. During her fellowship, she directly worked on projects about Israel/Palestine, immigration in the U.S., the United Nations’ annual Climate Change Conference (COP28), and HRW’s 2024 World Report. Gonzalez earned a BA in International Relations with a sequence in Human Rights, Genocide, and Holocaust Studies from Claremont McKenna College in 2023. 

Michelle Ramirez '23 graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a degree in Public Policy and a Human Rights Sequence and has since been working as an impact litigation paralegal at Children's Rights. While at Claremont McKenna, Ramirez completed her senior thesis on “Examining the Equity of California’s School Funding Formula,” which aimed to measure the impact of equity-oriented school finance reforms in California on student achievement. Before joining Children’s Rights, she interned for the Learning Rights Law Center, the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, and the Department for the Execution of Judgments at the Council of Europe. In her free time, Ramirez likes going to yoga, exploring new cuisines in New York City, and spending time with friends.  

Yi Shun Lai '96 is the author, most recently, of the young adult historical novel A Suffragist's Guide to the Antarctic (Simon & Schuster, 2024). Her memoir, Pin Ups, was published in 2020, and her debut novel, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, was published in 2016. She has delivered inclusivity workshops to everyone from AAA video-game studios to international nonprofits, and also teaches in an MFA program for Creative Nonfiction. She graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 1996 and recently returned to campus as CMC's Assistant Director of Fellowships Advising. When she's not on campus or writing, she can be found teaching her intractable dog useless tricks.

This presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights and the Elbaz Family Post-Graduate Fellowship Program.

 

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Wed, October 16, 2024
Dinner Program
Michelle Dowd

Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain, preparing for the Apocalypse. Raised on a 16-acre plot in the Angeles National Forest, very close to Claremont, Dowd learned to forage daily for edible plants. Knowledge of the outside world came to her only through a few small, chance encounters with the outside world--things like a hospital stay in Los Angeles, or a hidden Sears catalog. By the time she was 17, she made her escape, enrolling at Pitzer College (from which she graduated in 1990). Dowd's memoir, which has been covered in outlets as diverse as The Washington Post, Shondaland, and The Joe Rogan Experience, recounts her upbringing and the lessons she has learned about surviving in the wilderness, in more ways than one. Join Dowd, now a journalism professor, for an intimate evening as she explores the skill of "foraging," or finding what you need, wherever you are, and how you can learn adaptability, intuition, creativity, joy, and abundance from the earth. When you know how to look, there is more than enough.

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Michelle Dowd is a contributor to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, TIME magazine, Alpinist, The LA Review of Books, LA Parent Mag, and other national publications. She was raised on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest where she learned to navigate by the stars and forage for edible plants. Her memoir, Forager: Field Notes on Surviving a Family Cult, showcases her life growing up on an isolated mountain in California as part of an apocalyptic cult, and how she found her way out of poverty and illness by drawing on the gifts of the wilderness.
 

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This event is closed.

Thu, October 17, 2024
Dinner Program
Masha Gessen

Autocrats rise in times of high anxiety. They promise to assuage the anxieties in exchange for people handing over their political agency. Contemporary autocrats specifically promise to return people to an imaginary past when life was predictable and felt safe. The only way effectively to counteract a politics of the past is by conjuring an inspiring politics of the future. Kamala Harris's campaign has hinted at such a politics by adopting the slogan "We are not going back," but seemed to stop there. But what could a politics of the future actually look like? Join M. Gessen, one of the most trenchant observers of modern democracy, for a wide-ranging discussion of the past and future of global politics.

(Photo credit: Damon Winter)

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M. Gessen is a journalist and bestselling author who has covered political subjects from Russia, autocracy, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. Gessen's latest book is Surviving Autocracy, a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. As The New York Times Book Review noted in their review, “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” Their understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. Winner of the National Book Award, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy, against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all. Gessen’s other books include the New York Times bestseller, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, and Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot. An opinion writer at The New York Times, Gessen is the first Distinguished Professor at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and is a founder of the Russian Independent Media Archive, a digital archive focused on preserving the last two decades of independent Russian journalism. They live in New York City. 

Gessen's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, and the Women and Leadership Alliance at CMC.

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Mon, October 21, 2024
Dinner Program
Robert Hass and Brenda Hillman

Join renowned poets Robert Hass (United States Poet Laureate, 1995-1997) and Brenda Hillman (Winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship, among many other awards) as they read their works and share their personal reflections.

Photo credits: Hass photo—Shoey Sindel; Hillman photo: University of Arizona Poetry Center

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Robert Hass is a poet of great eloquence, clarity, and force, whose work is rooted in the landscapes of his native Northern California. In his tenure as United States Poet Laureate, Robert Hass spent two years battling American illiteracy, armed with the mantra, “imagination makes communities.” He crisscrossed the country speaking at Rotary Club meetings, raising money to organize conferences such as “Watershed,” which brought together noted novelists, poets, and storytellers to talk about writing, nature, and community. When he is talking about poetry itself, Hass is both spontaneous and original, offering poetic insights that cannot be found in any textbook.

A prolific poet, Hass’s books of poetry include The Apple Trees at Olema, and Time and Materials, as well as his most recent best selling collection of poetry, Summer Snow: New Poems. Awarded the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, twice the National Book Critics’ Circle Award (in 1984 and 1997), the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1973, and the 2014 Wallace Stevens Award, Robert Hass is a professor of English at UC Berkeley.

(Adapted from The University of Arizona’s Poetry Center’s website.)

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One of contemporary American poetry’s most eclectic and formally innovative writers, Brenda Hillman is known for poems that draw on elements of found texts and document, personal meditation, observation, and literary theory. Often described as “sensuous” and “luminescent,” Hillman’s poetry investigates and pushes at the possibilities of form and voice, while remaining grounded in topics such as geology, the environment, politics, family, and spirituality. In an interview with Sarah Rosenthal, Hillman described her own understanding of form: “It is the artist’s job to make form. Not even to make it, but to allow it. Allow form. And all artists have a different relationship to it, and a different philosophy of it … I think that when you are trying to open up a territory—in this case I was working with a desire to open the lyric—you have to be greedy, in that you want more than you can do. And you’re always bound to fail.” Praising Hillman’s deft handling of form and subject, Marjorie Welish wrote, “Each poem … creates its own experimental configuration, within which the phrase swerves and discombobulates sense, as several registers of subject complicate the sampling of experiences and also as the experimental format throws the lyric into symbolic disarray one moment and naturalist scrutiny the next. And even more: she writes as if the lyric poem had a political calling.”

Born in 1951 in Tucson, Arizona, Hillman earned degrees at Pomona College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The author of over 10 books of poetry, she has received numerous awards for her work including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, as well as a Pushcart Prize and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. Her collection Bright Existence (1993) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Loose Sugar (1997) a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Her most recent poetry collection, In a Few Minutes Before Later, was published in 2022, and her first prose collection, Three Talks: Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality, was just published in September 2024. She co-translated Ashur Etwebi’s Poems from Above the Hill (2011), Jeongrye Choi’s Instances (2011), and Ana Cristina Cesar’s At Your Feet (2018); and edited or coedited several volumes, including The Pocket Emily Dickinson (2009). She is Professor Emerita at Saint Mary's College of California. 

(Adapted from the Poetry Foundation website.)

Robert Hass and Brenda Hillman's reading at the Athenaeum is co-sponsored by the Literature Department, the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, and the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, all at CMC.

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Tue, October 22, 2024
Lunch Program
James Kreines

James Kreines is the Edward S. Gould Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. His research focuses on the history of European philosophy, especially metaphysics. He is the author of Reason in the World: Hegel's Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal (Oxford University Press, 2015) and has published numerous articles on Kant, Hegel, and post-Kantian European philosophy. In 2014, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Institut für Philosophie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and in 2019, he served as a Dahlem Guest Fellow at the Dahlem Humanities Center, Freie Universität Berlin. He is currently finishing a short book on Hegel and Spinoza. Kreines also serves on the editorial boards of Hegel Bulletin and Hegel-Studien. He teaches courses in the history of philosophy and is developing new courses exploring the history of Buddhist philosophy and Islamic philosophy.

Professor Kreines' Athenaeum presentation celebrates his installation ceremony as the Edward S. Gould Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College.

TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT, PLEASE GO TO https://events.cmc.edu/e/faculty-installation-of-jim-kreines/ - REGISTRATIONS ARE NOT ACCEPTED ON THE ATHENAEUM WEBSITE 

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To register for this event, please go to https://events.cmc.edu/e/faculty-installation-of-jim-kreines/

Tue, October 22, 2024
Dinner Program
Memo Akten

Memo Akten–a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, and researcher, and Assistant Professor of Computational Art at the University of California San Diego–will discuss the conceptual motivations behind some of his recent works and research involving computational technologies, with a focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning, embodied interaction, and mixed reality. From a practical perspective, this includes explorations in real-time, interactive computational systems for artistic, creative expression; and 'intelligent' systems for human-machine collaborative creativity. From a more conceptual perspective, this involves investigations into how we make sense of the world and project meaning onto noise; and more broadly speaking, the collisions between nature, science, technology, ethics, ritual, tradition and religion; particularly in the context of the current social and political polarizations, moral crises and technological submission.

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Memo Akten is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, and researcher creating Speculative Simulations and Data Dramatizations investigating the intricacies of human-machine entanglements. His work explores perception and states of consciousness; the tensions between ecology, technology, science and spirituality; and for more than a decade he’s been working with Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and our Collective Consciousness as scraped by the Internet, to reflect on the human condition. He writes code and uses algorithmic / data-driven design and aesthetics to create moving images, sounds, large-scale responsive installations and performances. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London, specializing in artistic and creative applications of Artificial Intelligence, and he is currently Assistant Professor of Computational Art at University of California San Diego (UCSD). Akten has received numerous awards including the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, his work has been widely exhibited and performed internationally and featured in major publications.

Dr. Akten's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

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Thu, October 24, 2024
Dinner Program
Rajiv Vinnakota, Hiram Chodosh, and Vernon Grigg

Join Institute for Citizens & Scholars President Rajiv Vinnakota, President Hiram Chodosh, and Kravis Lab Executive Director Vernon Grigg in a discussion about current U.S. levels of civic preparedness and leadership and the role that higher education must play in elevating them.

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Rajiv Vinnakota is the seventh president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation). Prior to joining C&S in July 2019, Vinnakota served as the EVP of the Youth & Engagement division at the Aspen Institute. For 18 years, Vinnakota was the co-founder and CEO of The SEED Foundation, the nation’s first network of public, college-preparatory boarding schools for underserved children. In addition to being a former trustee and executive committee member for Princeton University, Vinnakota is the former national chair of its annual giving committee. He majored in molecular biology and also earned a certificate of studies from the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs & Public Policy.

A renowned scholar and innovator in higher education and global justice reform and graduate of Wesleyan University and Yale Law, Hiram Chodosh is president of Claremont McKenna College, a recognized leader in freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and constructive dialogue through CMC’s nationally recognized Open Academy. Chodosh has also worked closely with Vinnakota and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars on a large national collaboration of college and university presidents to raise levels of civic preparedness and leadership.

A lawyer by training, Vernon C. Grigg III, Executive Director of the Kravis Lab for Civic Leadership, holds degrees from Yale Law School (J.D.), the London School of Economics (G.SC.), and the University of Michigan (BA). Grigg comes to the Kravis Lab from his role as CEO & President of Up with People, a fifty-five-year-old international nonprofit education and arts organization where he managed a global team of 50 employees across three continents and led the nonprofit to sustainability and health despite the challenges of the worldwide pandemic.

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Fri, October 25, 2024
Lunch Program
Governor Jared Polis and David Dreier '75

In today’s world, civil discourse is the exception rather than the rule. That's precisely why the Dreier Roundtable recognizes public servants who engage in a vigorous clash of ideas while recognizing that their political adversary is not their enemy. Through the National Governors Association, Governor Jared Polis (D-CO), partnered with Governor Spencer Cox (R-UT) to create the Disagree Better Initiative. In recognition of this, join former U.S. Representative and CMC Trustee David Dreier '75 for a presentation of the Dreier Roundtable Civility Award to Governor Polis, followed by a conversation about the future of American politics. Plans are underway to have Governor Cox receive his Civility Award on November 25th. 

Note: This special luncheon begins at 11:00 AM. Lunch registration is limited to members of the CMC Community. The program begins at 11:30 AM.

Read more about the speaker

Jared Polis, the 43rd Governor of Colorado, is an entrepreneur, education leader, and public servant. After launching several successful companies, including one out of his college dorm room, Polis committed himself to making sure other Coloradans had the opportunity to pursue their dreams. Polis founded schools for at-risk students and new immigrants and started nonprofits to help veterans and entrepreneurs.

Prior to serving as Governor, Polis served on the State Board of Education where he worked to raise pay for teachers and reduce class size for students, and represented Colorado's 2nd Congressional district, where he was rated the most effective member of the Colorado delegation.

As Governor, Polis has focused on saving Coloradans money, keeping our economy strong, and preserving our Colorado way of life. Polis delivered universal free full-day kindergarten, signed a number of bills to save families money on health care, and made significant progress towards the goal of 100% renewable energy by 2040, all while cutting taxes for small businesses and investing in affordable housing and transportation. His efforts to expand health care access to medically underserved communities and to ensure that equity and justice remain central to building a Colorado for All have produced impactful legislation and made progress toward his administration’s bold vision. 

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David Dreier '75 was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1980, where he served until January 2013. In Congress, he became the youngest — and the first Californian — chairman of the Rules Committee, playing a pivotal role in shaping all legislation for House debate. Dreier, a former chair of Tribune Publishing and a passionate advocate for press freedom, founded the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation to build the first public memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., celebrating press freedom and honoring slain journalists. Dreier received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College and his M.A. in American government from Claremont Graduate University the following year. He serves as a trustee at CMC.

This Civility Award and subsequent discussion is sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable at CMC.

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Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
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Claremont, CA 91711

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