Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

An engaged voice in conversations about artificial intelligence and education, Dr. Smith advocates for thoughtful approaches to preparing students for a future shaped by emerging technologies. Her perspective is grounded in her work as an historian, examining how periods of technological and social transformation reshape institutions, communities, and human experience.

Theresa Smith, Ph.D. holds a Bachelor of Arts in history with a minor in Spanish from UC Berkeley, a Master of Arts in history from UC San Diego, and a Ph.D. in history from UC San Diego with focuses in early modern European history, modern European history and colonial Latin American history. She is the author of The Emerging Female Citizen: Gender & Enlightenment in Spain, published by UC Press in 2006.

Steven Zhou (Moderator) is an Assistant Professor of Psychological Science at Claremont McKenna College. His research is in the application of multivariate statistics and data science (including natural language processing and generative AI) to questions of leadership, career development, and personality at work. 

Tom Le (PRO side) is an Associate Professor of Politics at Pomona College. His research focuses on demographics and security, how violence is legitimized in international relations, and developing a cradle-to-grave theory of how states utilize their populations for national security. 

C. Monica Capra (PRO side) is a Professor of Economic Sciences at Claremont Graduate University. Her research investigates the complexities of human decision-making, involves interdisciplinary collaboration with data scientists and neuroscientists, and explores how advanced AI technologies can enhance behavioral and experimental research methodologies.

Sarah Marzen (PRO side) is an Associate Professor of Physics at the Department of Natural Sciences. Her research uses machine learning to better understand biological data, interprets biological organisms as machine learners, and uses science to produce societally positive results in scattered ways.

Joseph Osborn (CON side) is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Pomona College. He is an AI researcher exploring representations of interactivity for computational systems, drawing from his fine arts game design background and computer science training.

Avaneesh Narla (CON side) is an Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences at Claremont McKenna College. His interdisciplinary research in physics, biology, and mathematics focuses on how individual elements interact to create complex collective behaviors.

Yuval Avnur (CON side) is a Professor of Philosophy at Scripps College. His research focuses on doubt, skepticism, and its history as it applies to everything from whether this is reality to how we get our news online these days.
 

Amy Berg ’08 is associate professor of philosophy at Rice University. She works on ethics and political philosophy, including the philosophy of well-being. Her book The Well-Rounded Life is forthcoming in November with Princeton University Press.

Before going to Rice, she taught at Oberlin College, Rhode Island College, and UNC Chapel Hill. She received a PhD in philosophy from UC San Diego and a BA in philosophy and government from Claremont McKenna College.

Shawn Skelly, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness in July 2021, making her only the second out transgender person to be confirmed and the highest ranking in the history of the executive branch. 

She served in the Obama Administration as a Special Assistant in DoD and as the Executive Secretary of the Department of Transportation. In 2017 President Obama appointed Skelly to serve as a Commissioner on the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, which considered methods to increase national participation in in all forms of service to address national security and other public service needs of the Nation.

Skelly served in the U.S. Navy for twenty years on active duty as a Naval Flight Officer. She helped co-found the advocacy organization Out in National Security and currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve LGBTQ+ equality.

Shawn Skelly's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by The Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC. 

Jeffrey Rosen is the CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He was previously the legal affairs editor of The New Republic and a staff writer for the New Yorker. 

Rosen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Pursuit of Happiness and Conversations with RBG. His new book is The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America. 

Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Law Institute. In 2024, the French government recognized him as a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Jeffrey Rosen's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy and The Kravis Lab for Civic Leadership, both at CMC.

Zachary Horvitz is a PhD candidate in computer science at Columbia University, where he studies rare behaviors in AI systems and methods for controlling them at inference time. His research has appeared at leading machine learning and natural language processing conferences, and his work on humor and language models received an ACL Outstanding Paper Award. He is supported by a Google PhD Fellowship. Previously, he was a research lead at Rad AI, whose products are now used by more than 40% of U.S. health systems. He earned his A.B. and Sc.M. from Brown University, where he studied computer science and anthropology.

Manjari has held fellowships at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology at Halle, Germany, and the Social Science Research Council in the United States. Her papers have received prizes from the Society for Social Studies for Science and the American Anthropological Association. She received her PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University, her MSc in Science and Technology Policy from SPRU Sussex University, and her BA from Harvard University.

She is a nationally respected physician leader and public health innovator who transformed the College of Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU). Since 2016, she has served as Dean of the College of Medicine, leading the creation of CDU’s independent medical school and securing LCME accreditation for the university to award the MD degree for the first time. The new school—only the fourth at a historically Black university—welcomed its inaugural class of 60 diverse students in 2023.

As founding dean, she expanded the College of Medicine faculty from 100 to more than 600 and reestablished residency programs in South Los Angeles, including Family Medicine, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Internal Medicine, and Psychiatry. She also helped attract unprecedented philanthropic support from MacKenzie Scott, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Sutter Health.

A former Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health and longtime Harvard faculty member, Dr. Prothrow Stith is widely known for pioneering the framing of youth violence as a public health issue. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a graduate of Spelman College and Harvard Medical School.
 

During her 32-year diplomatic career, Ambassador (ret.) Kate Marie Byrnes served in senior leadership positions across Europe, including as U.S. Ambassador to North Macedonia (2019-2022). Her diplomatic assignments included U.S. European Command, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Greece, Spain, Afghanistan, Hungary, Bolivia, Türkiye, and the U.S. Department of State. Fellowships with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the International Women's Forum Leadership Foundation reinforced her commitment to cultivating effective leadership and public service.

Ambassador Byrnes holds a Bachelor of Science in International Relations and a Master's Degree in Policy Management from Georgetown University. As Founder and Principal of KMB Strategies and as Distinguished Fellow at the University of Tennessee Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs, she continues to advance international cooperation, develop future leaders, and help organizations translate global challenges into opportunities for meaningful action.

Read more about Javier’s work at the following: https://www.prhspeakers.com/speaker/javier-zamora. 

Javier Zamora's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at CMC.