Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

John K. Roth is the Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where he taught for forty years. He is the author or editor of more than sixty books, including most recently Saving the American Dream: Meditations for Dark Times. 

During his CMC tenure, he joined Gordon Bjork and the late Ward Elliott to found the College’s PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) Program. The founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights), Roth was named the 1988 US National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 

Roth’s CMC honors include the George C. S. Benson Distinguished Service Award, the highest bestowed by the Claremont McKenna College Alumni Association; the Donald C. McKenna Humanitarian Award; and induction into the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Athletics Hall of Fame. 

Professor Roth’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.

Musa al-Gharbi's research explores how people talk about, think about, and produce a shared understanding of contested social phenomena to include race, inequality, social movements, extremism, policing, national security, foreign policy and domestic U.S. political contests and more.

Al-Gharbi's second book, Those People, is slated for publication by Princeton University Press in late 2026 and will explore the causes and consequences of the growing social distance between the symbolic professions and growing swaths of the broader societies they are embedded in.

Musa al-Gharbi is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at the Stony Brook University. In addition to his scholarly work, Professor al-Gharbi is a columnist for The Guardian. His journalistic essays have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, The Atlantic, New Republic, The Nation, and many other outlets. He is also regularly tapped by other journalists to contextualize current events, including spots with NPR, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Economist, CNN, USA Today, Voice of America, and beyond. And independent of his own direct participation, his work is regularly discussed in mass media outlets.

Professor al-Gharbi’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy and The Kravis Lab for Civic Leadership, both at CMC.

Her first novel, Adèle (Dans le jardin de l’ogre), was published in 2014 and examines female sexual addiction and self-destruction within a societal context of repression and shame. This debut work garnered critical attention and was nominated for the Prix de Flore and won the La Mamounia Prize, marking her arrival on the French literary scene.

Slimani’s second novel, The Perfect Nanny (Chanson douce), published in 2016, became her international breakthrough. The psychological thriller about a nanny who murders the children in her care won the Prix Goncourt — France’s most prestigious literary award — in 2016, making Slimani the first Moroccan woman to receive it. The novel was later adapted into film and translated into multiple languages, and was recognized as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2018.

Following this success, Slimani published works that expanded her literary range: the essay Sex and Lies (2017), a series of intimate testimonies from women in the Arab world that highlights sexual politics and gendered silences; In the Country of Others (2020), the first in a family-history trilogy set in post-World War II Morocco; Watch Us Dance; and I’ll Take the Fire (Penguin, June 9, 2026).

Beyond her books, Slimani has been honored for her advocacy and cultural impact. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron appointed her as his personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. For her activism in women’s rights and freedom of expression, she was awarded the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom in 2020. Themes across her work consistently probe power dynamics, sexual politics, motherhood, identity, and the social structures that shape personal freedom.

Slimani's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by The Open Academy, The Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, The Center for Writing and Public Discourse, The Department of Literature (CMC),The Department of Modern Languages (CMC), and President's Office, all at CMC.

Years later as an adult, Narayan turned research skills acquired as an anthropologist and folklorist towards these intriguing family stories. Though her father was no longer alive, his elderly cousin shared materials relating to Vishwakarma and Ellora gathered across seven decades. Circles of extended relatives shared a complex mythology about the transmission of artisans’ skills and tools at Ellora. 

While family stories may lay claim to a place, other perspectives offer different frames. Narayan's quest took her through libraries, archives and museums around the world, and across the borders of scholarly disciplines. In this talk she shares the making of her book, Cave of My Ancestors. 

Kirin Narayan is the author of seven books, scholarly works on South Asian anthropology and folklore as well as a family memoir, a novel, and a “how about” book on ethnographic writing with exercises and prompts. Her first book, Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching (Pennsylvania, 1989) won the inaugural Victor Turner Prize for ethnographic writing. Her most recent book, Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora (Chicago, 2024), a “questography” recounts the quest to understand a family legend through the multidisciplinary tools of scholarship. 

Having earned a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, Narayan has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Australian National University. Her research has been supported by the American Institute of Indian Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Australian Research Council. 

Kirin Narayan's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies. 

Sam Mihara is a national lecturer on the topic of Mass Injustice. Following his incarceration, Mihara graduated from U.C. Berkeley and UCLA Graduate School with degrees in Engineering. He was then hired by the Boeing Company where he worked as a rocket scientist for 42 years. After retirement, Sam became a national lecturer on the topic of Memories of Injustice. He has won several awards including the prestigious NEH Jefferson Lecturer for year 2024, the only Japanese American so honored.

Anderson's career trajectory combines scholarly research on transnational Japan with over 25 years of experience in public history. She has worked on numerous exhibits at multiple institutions, including the Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles). She most recently led the research stage for a major project on Japanese American food. Other exhibits include Don’t Fence Me In: Coming of Age in America’s Concentration Camps (2023) and (with USC) Sutra and Bible: Faith and the Japanese American World War II Incarceration (2022-2023). At the San Diego Museum of Us, she created Cannibals: Myth and Reality (March 2016 - ongoing).

Anderson is also a scholar of religion and empire in Japan, and has published on Christianity in Japan, the Japanese empire, and Japanese immigrants before World War II. Her publications include Christianity in Modern Japan: Empire for God (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) as well as articles and book chapters on religion and imperialism in Japan and the Pacific. She dual majored in Literature and Philosophy at CMC (’99). She holds a PhD in modern Japanese history from UCLA (2010).

This program is a part of the Gould Center's Celebration of Coeducation Speaker Series.

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.

Michelle Berenfeld is the John A. McCarthy Professor of Classics at Pitzer College. An archaeologist and fellow of the American Academy in Rome, she has carried out research in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Her new book, Lessons From A Lost Republic: What ancient Rome can teach us about this American Moment (Spiegel & Grau), grew from her widely read Atlantic essay, “The Roman Way to Trash a Republic,” published last year. The book offers a lively, compact history of the collapse of the Roman Republic into autocracy and offers insights for Americans who want to avoid a similar fate. This is her first book for a public audience. Her academic research has appeared in numerous scholarly publications.