Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Paul Hurley is the Sexton Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where he has been awarded both the Huntoon and Senior Huntoon Teaching Awards. He teaches courses both in CMC’s Philosophy Department, and in its PPE Program. Paul has published articles in ethics, the history of ethics, and meta-ethics. An earlier book length contribution to these debates, Beyond Consequentialism, was published by Oxford University Press.  His new book, Against the Tyranny of Outcomes, comes out with Oxford later this year.  

Paul grew up in New Orleans, and has spent countless hours over the years doing hands on, experience-based research of Mardi Gras.  He rode with the Krewe of Bacchus when doing that was still cool.

Troy Mills is a recent Post-Doctoral Fellow and current Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies of African American and African Diaspora religious histories and the ways in which religious and spiritual practices are used to reclaim personhood and humanity. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, where he received the Marcus Bach Fellowship for Graduate Students in the Humanities. His dissertation, "The Rastafari and the Nation of Islam: From Black Internationalism to Globalization, 1960s–1980s," examines how the Rastafari in Jamaica and the Nation of Islam in the United States reoriented black religious consciousness and identity. At CMC, he has taught Freshman Humanities Seminars on visible and invisible freedom, as well as courses on African American Religions, Bob Marley, and Malcolm X.

Mills will discuss “Mardi Gras, Zulu King, Black Indians, and the Jazz Funerals and the Second Line” and how, in the public sphere, the laid back and jubilant persona of Mardi Gras is built upon the private sphere of black New Orleanians’ rich legacy of resistance against racial and social oppression.

The CIVITAS series 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.

Nyree Gray, JD, is the Vice President for Human Relations and Chief Diversity Officer at Claremont McKenna College. Prior to CMC, Gray served as Associate Professor of Law and Dean of Students and Diversity Affairs at Southwestern Law School, where she provided academic advising and personal counseling to law students; taught in the areas of race and the law; interviewing, counseling, and negotiating; administered policies regarding academic attrition; in addition to supporting the recruitment, retention, personal development and successful academic matriculation of students from various racial, ethnic, cultural, and/or other diverse backgrounds.

John Paul “JP” Brammer is an author and illustrator whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Food & Wine, Catapult, Business Insider, and more. He has been chosen as an OUT 100 honoree and recognized by TIME Magazine for running the popular advice column “¡Hola Papi!”, which first started on Substack with thousands of dedicated subscribers and is now syndicated on The Cut.

Brammer’s first book, also titled ¡Hola Papi!, is a hilarious, heartwarming memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey growing up as a queer, mixed-race kid in America’s heartland to becoming the “Chicano Carrie Bradshaw” of his generation. ¡Hola Papi! is for anyone—gay, straight, and everything in between—who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world, as Brammer offers considered advice and intelligent discourse. Brammer also works with Netflix on The Most, a small team that creates content, consults on projects, and builds community based on the company’s LGBTQ material.

Mr. Brammer will deliver the 2023-24 Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' Ricardo J. Quinones Lecture.
 

Dr. Laura Catena P'24 is a Harvard- and Stanford-trained biologist and physician, and the founder of the Catena Institute of Wine in Argentina. The Institute is dedicated to preserving the Malbec variety and to elevating Argentine wine. She is currently managing director of Bodega Catena Zapata (Est. 1902) and of Luca Winery. In 2023, Catena Zapata was voted #1 World’s Best Vineyard by a group of 500 food, wine and travel writers, and for three years in a row, Catena Zapata was Vivino’s most awarded winery in the world. Laura has been called the “face” of Argentine wine and is author of Argentina’s definitive wine guide Vino Argentino.  Laura's second book, Gold in the Vineyards, an illustrated book about the world’s most famous vineyards, was released in 2020 and won the Gourmand Award for Best in Wine History.  Her third book, Malbec Mon Amour (co-authored with Alejandro Vigil) was featured in the New York Times and was a best seller in Argentina. Dr. Catena has been on the Executive Board of the UC Davis School of Viticulture and Enology since 2017, and is the current Honorary President of WSET, Wine and Spirits Education Trust (the world’s largest wine education organization). Dr. Catena is recipient of multiple awards including 2023 Old Vine Hero and 2022 Drinks Business Woman of the Year.  Follow her on Instagram at @LauracatenaMD

Dr. Catena is the featured parent speaker for Family Weekend 2024.

Michael Chabon is one of the country's most recognized and decorated modern writers. He studied at Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at UC Irvine, and has spent most of the past two decades in California, with brief sojourns in Washington State, Florida, and New York State. Since 1997, he has been living with his wife, Ayelet Waldman, also a writer, and their children, in Berkeley.

Chabon’s first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was originally written for his master’s thesis at U.C. Irvine and became a New York Times bestseller. Chabon’s second novel, Wonder Boys, was also a bestseller, and was made into a critically-acclaimed film featuring actors Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire.

Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), was selected by the American Library Association as one of the Notable Books of 2000 and won the New York Society Library Prize for Fiction, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2020, the New York Public Library voted The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay one of the 125 most important books of the last 125 years.

His New York Times bestselling novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), an alternate history detective story, won both the Nebula Award and Hugo Award for Best Novel. His other novels include Gentlemen of the Road (2007), Telegraph Avenue (2012), and Moonglow (2016). Moonglow was awarded the California Book Award’s Gold Medal as well as the Jewish Book Council’s 2016 Modern Literary Achievement Award “for his general contribution to modern Jewish literature, including his most recent work, Moonglow.”

Chabon has lectured widely on topics including the art and craft of writing, the tradition of Jewish fiction, and Vladimir Nabokov, to name but a very few. In March 2012 he was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is also the recipient of the 2020 St. Louis Literary Award, and was the chairman of the board of directors at the MacDowell Colony from 2010 - 2020.

Michael Chabon's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World.

Mike Murphy is one of the Republican Party's most successful political media consultants, having handled strategy and advertising for more than 26 successful gubernatorial and Senatorial campaigns. He served as a top campaign advisor to John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with dozens of other GOP Senators, Governors and Members of Congress. Murphy has worked on five GOP Presidential campaigns and has advised foreign leaders in Europe and Latin America. In 2020 he served as a key strategist for Republican Voters Against Trump.

Murphy is also a well-known pundit; he wrote the popular “Murphy’s Law” column for TIME and is a longtime senior analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. He co-hosts the popular weekly podcast “Hacks on Tap” with David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs. 

Murphy currently serves as co-director the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future. He serves on the boards of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. He served as a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Murphy also works as a writer and producer in the entertainment industry.

Murphy was born in Detroit, Michigan and attended the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He lives with his wife Tiffany and daughter Audrey in Los Angeles.

Jameson Mitrovich '24 is a senior at CMC studying Government. He is the managing editor of the Claremont Independent.

Nate Weisberg '24 is a senior at CMC studying Government and Legal Studies. He is the editor-in-chief of the CMC Forum.

Ben Lauren PZ '25 is a junior at Pitzer College studying English and Media Studies. He is the editor-in-chief of The Student Life.

John J. Pitney Jr., is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Politics at CMC. Among his extensive list of accomplishments and advisees at CMC, he has been teaching the "Politics of Journalism" course for many years. 

This Athenaeum program is co-sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable at CMC.

Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. His areas of expertise include China, comparative politics, the Pacific Rim, U.S./Asia relations, and U.S./China relations. He is also a non-resident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. In 2019, he was the Library of Congress Chair on U.S.-China Relations. Prior to joining Claremont McKenna College in 2009, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as its director of the China Program from 2003 to 2008. He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press,1994), China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 2006), and China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (Harvard University Press, 2016).

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

Dr. Mikhail Alexseev is the Bruce E. Porteous Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University. Dr. Alexseev is a native of Kyiv and has been working at SDSU since 2000. His publications focus on threat assessment in interstate and internal wars, ethnic relations, nationalism, and immigration in Russia/Eurasia, with a special focus on the sociopolitical effects of the war in Ukraine. Dr. Alexseev is the author of award-winning books and dozens of articles appearing in journals like Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, Political Behavior, Political Communication, Europe-Asia Studies, Nationalities Papers, Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, among others. His research has been funded by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. Dr. Alexeev’s editorial opinion articles on Russian and Post-Soviet affairs have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Toronto Globe and Mail, USA Today, and The Seattle Times.

Dr. Mitchell A. Orenstein is Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught courses on globalization, socialism, and Russian and Eastern European politics. He is also Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Dr. Orenstein’s award-winning books have covered modern hybrid warfare, neoliberal economics, fiscal reform, political transitions, and minority socioeconomics in Eastern Europe. His research articles have been featured in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and SCID, and his essays and op-eds in the Journal of Democracy, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times.

Dr. Hilary Appel is the Podlich Family Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. She is the Director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies. Her research examines the politics behind post-Communist economic reforms, the role of EU and NATO in Eastern Europe, and Russian foreign policy. In addition to publishing multiple books, including From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Postcommunist Countries, co-authored with Mitchell Orenstein (Cambridge University Press), she has authored numerous academic articles in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Politics, Review of International Political Economy, Post-Soviet Affairs, East European Politics and Societies, and others. She has been awarded national fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright Foundation, National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Harriman Institute, and the Institute for the Study of World Politics. She is an active contributor to the media coverage of the war in Ukraine. 

This Athenaeum panel is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

In April 2022, Candace Valenzuela '06 was appointed by the Biden-Harris Administration to serve as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Regional Administrator in the Southwest Region. As regional administrator, Candace Valenzuela is based in Fort Worth and oversees HUD operations, eight field offices and federal housing assistance throughout the five- state region, which covers Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. She is one of 10 HUD regional administrators. She is a mother, an educator, and a former school board trustee. She credits HUD and public education with giving her the stability she and her family needed to thrive as she experienced food and housing insecurity throughout childhood. After becoming the first in her family to graduate college, Valenzuela has since devoted her life to fighting for opportunities for others. She first ran for her local school board to improve Texas schools, becoming the first Latina and first Black woman to serve on the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board. While on the board, she worked to ensure that faculty and staff would be able to afford to live in the district they served and that students would have a strong education to help them overcome life’s challenges. Valenzuela was the Democratic nominee for Congress in Texas’ 24th District in 2020. She previously worked as a development manager for Metrocrest Services, a half-century-old non-profit that has worked hard to fight hunger, housing insecurity, and unemployment in her community.

Ms. Valenzuela's talk is co-sponsored by the Kravis Lab, and is also part of the Athenaeum's 40th Anniversary Series, which celebrates the achievements of CMC alumni from across the years and invites them to return home to Claremont.

Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her most recent book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States and is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The book component of her signature project, You Are Here, which focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world, will be released this April with Milkweed Editions.

Ms. Limón's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

Anthony Rendon is Speaker Emeritus of the California State Assembly, representing an Assembly district in Southeastern Los Angeles County. He served as Speaker from 2016 until 2023, the second-longest speakership in California history. In his seven years as Speaker, he helped build a three-quarters Democratic supermajority in the legislature—what he called a “gigamajority.” Rendon also led some of the most progressive and productive legislative sessions in the state’s history, solidifying California’s reputation as a national leader on a range of policy issues. Politico described his speakership as “one of California’s most consequential” which presided over a “progressive policy bonanza.”

Rendon is a native Southern Californian. After graduating from high school he worked in warehouses and other manual jobs, then pursued higher education, eventually earning a Ph.D from U.C. Riverside. Prior to serving in the Assembly, he worked as an educator, non-profit executive director, and environmental activist.

Speaker Emeritus Rendon's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Rose Institute for State and Local Government at CMC.

Matthew D. Lassiter, Professor of History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan, is a scholar of the twentieth-century United States with a research and teaching focus on political history, urban/suburban studies, racial and social inequality, and the history of policing and the carceral state. His most recent book, The Suburban Crisis: White America and the War on Drugs, was published in 2023 by Princeton University Press. He is also author of The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton University Press, 2006); coeditor of The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (Oxford University Press, 2009); and lead author of the website exhibit of Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era (U-M Carceral State Project, 2021). Lassiter is co-director of the U-M Carceral State Project and co-PI of its Documenting Criminalization, Confinement, and Resistance research initiative. He is also director of the affiliated Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab, which involves undergraduate and graduate student researchers in collaborative public engagement projects.

Professor Lassiter's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the History Department and the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom and the Modern World at CMC.

POSTPONED - This event has been postponed

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. 

Logan Skelton is a much sought-after pianist, teacher and composer whose work has received international critical acclaim. Skelton has concertized widely in the United States, Europe and Asia and appeared on many national public radio and television stations, as well as on radio in China and national television in Romania. He has recorded numerous discs for Centaur, Albany, Crystal, Blue Griffin, Equilibrium, Supertrain and Naxos Records, the latter two consisting of collaborations with fellow composer-pianist William Bolcom. He has been a juror for prominent piano competitions and regularly appears in international festival settings. As a composer and arranger his work is published by Muse Press. He has creatively reimagined various piano works of Liszt, Mozart, Bartók, and contributed substantially to the upcoming Gershwin complete edition. Skelton has a special affinity for art song, having composed nearly two hundred songs, including numerous song cycles. A devoted teacher, Skelton has been repeatedly honored by the University of Michigan including the Arthur F. Thurnau professorship, among the highest honors given to faculty members at the university. Skelton’s own piano students have won awards in many national and international competitions. He has served on the faculties of Manhattan School of Music, Missouri State University, and the University of Michigan.

For part of his performance, Skelton will be joined by Athenaeum Concert Series founder and director Sheena Hui '19 on piano.

The 2023-2024 Athenaeum Concert Series is funded in part by the generous donation of Frank Hobbs ’74 and Victoria Shevlin Hobbs.