Faculty

Minxin Pei, the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow, has been named the inaugural Library of Congress Chair in U.S.-China Relations.

Pei will begin an eight-month residency at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress beginning in January, 2019. As the first U.S.-China chair, Pei will foster policy-relevant research, programming, and bipartisan legislative discussion on U.S. relations with China, with a focus on public policy challenges likely to face legislators in the future.

Associate Professor of History Albert Park has received two prestigious fellowships to support a year in Japan and Korea researching how rural environmental movements influence contemporary agriculture infrastructure policies.

Park received a Fulbright Fellowship to support his work in east Asia and an Abe Fellowship for his research in Japan.

The Fulbright Fellowship facilitates relations between the United States and citizens of other countries. Park will be asked to give public talks, mentor students, and engage with the local community in addition to his research.

Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government Charles R. Kesler is one of three recipients of the 2018 Bradley Prizes for individuals who work to “restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism.”

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation will bestow the awards, which carry a $250,000 stipend, at the 15th annual Bradley Prizes ceremony on May 15 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Visiting professor Mary Gaitskill is one of eight writers to receive the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The awards were established in 1941 to encourage creative work in the arts. This year’s awards of $10,000 will be presented in May.

Among the previous winners have been Langston Hughes, Hannah Arendt, and Flannery O’Connor. Gaitskill said she was “touched to appear on the same list as Flannery O'Connor and Hannah Arendt, especially, as I have both of those luminaries on my syllabus this semester.”

Claremont McKenna College will showcase faculty scholarship from the past calendar year at the second-annual Faculty Publications and Grants celebration on Feb. 16. CMC professors authored or co-authored more than 200 works, and most will be displayed inside McKenna Auditorium. Many faculty members will also be on site to discuss their research.

Why are women paid less than men? Do companies unconsciously close doors to minority applicants by the way they recruit? Does the bottom line suffer when companies are not diverse?

Claremont McKenna College economist Jeffrey A. Flory spent a sabbatical year looking for these answers. Flory and 20 researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Columbia University, and CMC are working with five industry leaders to measure and manage the effectiveness of workplace diversity efforts.

Prof. Zhaohua Irene Tang has been awarded a $412,415 National Institutes of Health grant to study cancer and other disease prevention and expand undergraduate research opportunities at CMC and the W.M. Keck Science Department.

The NIH grant comes through the Academic Research Enhancement Award program, which is offered to institutions that do not traditionally receive NIH funds. The goal is to increase hands-on research opportunities and enhance the research culture on campus.

Two members of the CMC community joined the company of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Queen Elizabeth II, Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and Walt Disney by accepting Mexico’s highest honor granted to foreigners.

Government Professor Roderic A. Camp and former U.S. Congressman David Dreier ’75 were presented the Order of the Aztec Eagle by Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Carlos Sada, in a ceremony at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles last month.