Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Dr. Miemie Winn Byrd is a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, where she has served since 2007. Her work focuses on security dynamics in Southeast Asia, economics and security, civil-military and interagency cooperation, leadership, women, peace and security, and organizational development.

Dr. Byrd retired from the U.S. Army after 28 years of distinguished service, including assignments at U.S. Pacific Command supporting Operations Enduring Freedom and serving as a linguist and cultural advisor for U.S. delegations throughout the Indo-Pacific. She also brings 16 years of private-sector experience and holds degrees from Claremont McKenna College, the University of Hawaiʻi, and the University of Southern California, where she earned her Doctorate in Education Leadership.

He is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books 2020) and Afterlives: An AGNI Portfolio of Asian Adoptee Diaspora Writing. His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Naming the Lost: The Fresno Poets; Poetry Goes to the Movies; Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice with a foreword by Common, HERE: Poems for the Planet, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Herrick serves on the advisory board of Terra in.org and Sixteen Rivers Press. He co-founded LitHop in Fresno. He has taught in Qingdao, China; at Kundiman in New York City, and for twelve years in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.

Herrick was born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant. He currently lives with his family in Fresno, California and served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He teaches at Fresno City College. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role. In April 2025, he became the first California Poet Laureate to be officially reappointed to a second two-year term.

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

Jennifer Hunt is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at Rutgers University. From 2013-2015, she served first as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Prior to joining Rutgers in 2011, she held positions at McGill University, the University of Montreal and Yale University. Hunt is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. Her current research focus is the impact of the fluctuating levels of US immigration, while past research has also encompassed wage inequality, unemployment, the science and engineering workforce, technological diffusion, the transition from communism, crime and corruption. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard and her Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Professor Hunt's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy at CMC.

Antar A. Tichavakunda, Ph.D. is a theorist, social scientist, and storyteller. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of California Santa Barbara. 

Tichavakunda has published over thirty peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters. His first book, Black Campus Life: The Lives Black Students Make at an Historically White Institution, is published with SUNY Press and is one of the few ethnographies about Black student life. His second book, Thinking with Critical Race Theory: An Invitation, will be available with the University of California Press in April 2027. An expert on race and higher education, his research has been featured in CNN, the Los Angels Times, Newsweek, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Outside of work, Tichavakunda enjoys watching anime, eating soul food, going to boxing classes, and writing in cafes.

Professor Tichavakunda's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy at CMC.

Bernard Haykel is a scholar of the Arabian Peninsula, focusing on the politics, economics and history of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (GCC) and Yemen. He is professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University where he teaches courses on energy, history and politics. He is the author of Revival and Reform in Islam and editor of Saudi Arabia in Transition, both published by Cambridge University Press. His next book titled The Realm: MBS and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia will be published shortly by Penguin Press. Haykel has received several prominent awards, such as the Prize Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, the Carnegie Corporation and Guggenheim fellowships and the Old Dominion Professorship at Princeton. In 2024 he was elected member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. Haykel appears frequently in print and broadcast media. These include interviews and articles in the Wall Street Journal, PBS, NPR, the New York Times, The New Yorker, Project Syndicate, Al Arabia, Al Jazeera, The Caravan, the Indian Express and the BBC among others. He earned his doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford.

This evening’s recital will also feature the 5Cs’ own a cappella group Midnight Echo, as well as a special performance by Mariachi Serrano of The Claremont Colleges.

Midnight Echo is an all-gender a cappella group at the Claremont Colleges that's been performing since the '90s. Co-led by Jordan Yates ‘27 and Carolina de Salvo SC ‘27, you'll find them performing around campus at Snack Concerts, SCAMFest, and hosting the yearly a cappella musicfest, Human Symphony! Their typical genres span a broad range, and their repertoire includes Sam Smith, Daniel Caesar, Jon Bellion, Shawn Mendes, Queen, Fleet Foxes, and much more. For videos from performances and more information, visit Midnight Echo on YouTube or @midnightechoacappella on Instagram and TikTok!

Mariachi Serrano of The Claremont Colleges is a vibrant student ensemble spearheaded by Robert Gama ‘28 and Lina Lasden PZ ‘29. Dedicated to sharing the rich tradition of Mexican folk music, the group performs classics across campus and throughout the wider Claremont community. Gama and Lasden are excited to join Music Mania for this evening’s performance.