Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Stephen Michael Newby currently serves as The Lev H. Prichard III Endowed Chair in the Study of Black Worship, Professor of Music and as Ambassador for The Black Gospel Music Preservation Program at Baylor University. He formerly served as Minister of Worship at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, GA, and as Director for the Center for African American Worship Studies at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, TN. He held a tenured Professor of Music post at Seattle Pacific University, where he also served as Director of University Ministries, Director for the Center for Worship, and Senior Advisor to the University President for Missional Excellence.

He has more than three decades of university-level teaching and administration to his credit. He is a native of Detroit, Michigan, and received his Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Music Education from Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan. He received a Master of Music in Jazz Composition and Arranging from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He returned to Michigan to complete his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and served as an Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Computer Arts. He received his Master of Arts in Theology from Seattle Pacific Seminary.

For more than 35 years, he has served in various church music ministries in Michigan, Massachusetts, Washington, California, Georgia and Texas. His voice and works have earned awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (Continental Harmony Grant), the King County Arts Commission of Washington, The Rackham School Fellowship for Ethnomusicological Research in Dakar, Senegal, and the John Wesley Work III National Composers’ Award. For more than nine years, he served as national anthem conductor for the Seattle Sounders FC. He created concert music for The Cascade Youth Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, Canton Symphony Orchestra, New Haven Symphony, Savannah Symphony, and the New World Theater Orchestra, among others. His concert music works are recorded by Albany Records and Parma Recordings. His gospel music works are recorded and published by Maranatha Music and Newby’s Witness Music. His scholarly works are published by Redemption Press, Oxford University Press and Rowman & Littlefield, his worship and praise choral compositions are published by GIA, Gentry, Fred Bock, and OCP. He writes Op. Eds for Christianity Today. He is editor for PRO MUNDO—the African American Sacred Music Series with Oregon Catholic Press.

Diane White-Clayton (“Dr. Dee") is a classically-trained soprano, pianist, conductor and composer. Originally from Washington, DC, she holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Music Composition from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a B.A. in Music from Washington University in St. Louis. She studied in Paris, France as a Rotary Scholar, representing the United States as an Ambassador of Goodwill. A faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles, White-Clayton is also the former Artistic Director of the famed Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers and the Founding Director of the BYTHAX Ensemble, a professional, musically-diverse vocal group. The body of her music embraces nuances of soulful gospel, colorful jazz harmonies and classical precisions with a passion to touch the depths of our humanity. A Baptist preacher’s daughter, she has held various university and church positions and travels extensively as artist, conductor, and educator. She is an author, speaker, producer and recording artist, as well as a teaching artist for the Walt Disney Corporation. She owns a publishing and artists support company with her husband and best friend, famed R&B percussionist, Joe Clayton.

The BYTHAX Ensemble is a collective of performers with outstanding artistry who desire to serve God and humanity with their musical gifts. Under the direction of Dr. Diane White-Clayton, the ensemble features her original works as well as a vast array of music ranging from gospel to classical. Dr. Dee & BYTHAX impart transformative experiences that heal the heart and inspire the soul. Comprised of choir directors, teachers, ministers, recording artists and business professionals, they are united by their commitment to integrity, faith, and their love of music.

The BYTHAX Ensemble's Athenaeum performance is the 2026 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Event.
 
The BYTHAX Ensemble's Athenaeum performance is also part of a 4-part musical series for this academic year: Devotional and Spiritual World Music featuring Ghanian, South Asian, American Gospel, and Brazilian traditions. 
 

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the author of the New York Times bestseller All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and the acclaimed memoir Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion. 

MacDonald grew up in the Old Colony Housing Project in South Boston, a neighborhood that once held the highest concentration of white poverty in the United States. After losing four of his eleven siblings and witnessing his generation decimated by poverty, crime, addiction, and incarceration, he moved beyond the entrenched borders of his community toward solidarity and coalition-building with Boston’s Black and brown survivors and organizers. In those communities, he learned the power of grassroots organizing and storytelling to transform personal and collective trauma into voice and agency, and brought that work back home to “Southie,” building multiracial working-class led movements. 

He currently teaches restorative and transformative justice at Harvard and Northeastern University and is working on a third book which will use storytelling to explore how people heal from atrocity through narrative reclamation and community building.

Mr. MacDonald's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy at CMC.

Paul Hurley is the Sexton Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. The central focus of his scholarship over the past two decades is the moral theory known as consequentialism, of which utilitarianism is one variant, together with the distinctive conception of reasons that accompanies it.  Although this moral theory and the accompanying conception of reasons has been adopted as the default in philosophy, law, policy, and the social sciences, Hurley has argued, in dozens of articles and books (most recently his Against the Tyranny of Outcomes, 2024), that this approach is nonetheless deeply misguided, alienating us from good reasons that reflect what is truly important, and licensing dangerous manipulation, both of ourselves and of others.

In recognition of his work with students, Hurley has received the Apple for the Teacher Award (University of Pittsburgh), the Wig Distinguished Teaching Award (Pomona College, 3 times), and the Huntoon and Senior Huntoon Teaching Awards (Claremont McKenna College). 

Hilary Appel is the Podlich Family Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at CMC. Appel has published numerous books and articles on the politics of economic reform and the foreign policy of Russia and Eastern Europe. Her co-authored book with Mitchell A. Orenstein, entitled From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Post-Communist Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2018), won the Silver Medal Laura Shannon Prize for Best Book in European Studies 2018-2019. Appel has received numerous national fellowships. In addition to her classes and research, Appel currently serves as the Director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies.

Jean-Pierre Murray is an assistant professor of Government at CMC. His research and teaching interests include critical security studies, migration, human trafficking, Latin America and the Caribbean, global and regional governance, international organizations, and international law. His current research (and book project) focuses on the securitization of South-South migration in the Latin America and Caribbean region in which he explores the roles of elite political actors, civil society organizations, and intergovernmental organizations in constructing or contesting narratives and frames about migration and migrants as national security threats, and the corresponding security-based policy responses.

Hicham Bou Nassif is the Weinberg Associate Professor of International Relations and the Middle East at Claremont McKenna College. His expertise spans various fields, including authoritarianism, civil-military relations, and Middle East politics. His scholarship includes "Endgames: Military Response to Protest in Arab Autocracies" (Cambridge University Press) and numerous peer-reviewed articles. He is currently writing a second book on America's policy in the Middle East under Reagan. Proficient in Arabic, English, and French, he brings a multicultural perspective to his work. Beyond academia, he has undertaken extensive fieldwork in various countries in the Middle East, showcasing a hands-on approach to research, specifically focused on military politics in authoritarian contexts.

Jennifer Morrison Taw is Associate Professor of Government and International Relations at Claremont McKenna College, where she teaches an annual freshman honors Introduction to International Relations course, as well as Security Studies, War, War Film, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Race, Gender, & Identity in International Relations. Prior to coming to CMC, Taw taught as an adjunct professor at Occidental College, UCLA, and USC. Earlier in her career, she worked for decade at RAND, where she conducted research for DOD and the US Army on counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, peace operations, and special operations forces.

This Athenaeum program is the featured 2025-26 Jerome H. Garris Dialogue Series at CMC, modeling constructive dialogue across different perspectives. 

Anna Romandash is an accomplished investigative reporter and writer whose work focuses on war, human rights, gender, and social justice. A native of Ukraine, she has extensively covered Russia’s war against her country, documenting its impact on civilians, civil society, and democratic institutions. Romandash is the author of "Women of Ukraine: Reportages from the War and Beyond" and "Stories of Resilience." Her work has appeared in international media outlets, where she has covered issues including displacement, political repression, and the resistance of Ukrainian society under ongoing Russian aggression. 

Ms. Romandash's Athenaeum program is co-sponsored by CMC’s history department, Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, and the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.
 

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Mark Lilla was educated at the University of Michigan and Harvard University. After holding professorships at New York University and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he joined Columbia University in 2007 as Professor of the Humanities wherein he specializes in intellectual history, with a particular focus on Western political and religious thought. His courses include The Modern Self, Enlightenment and Its Critics, and Themes in Intellectual History. 

Lilla has been awarded fellowships by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institut d’Etudes Avancées (Paris), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and the American Academy in Rome. In 1995 he was inducted into the French Order of Academic Palms. 
 
Lilla is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Liberties, and publications worldwide. His books include The Stillborn God, The Reckless Mind, The Shipwrecked Mind, and most recently Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know (2024). 

Professor Lilla’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy at CMC.

Erich Hatala Matthes is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Wellesley College, where he has taught for 13 years. He is the author of two books with Oxford University Press: Drawing the Line: What to Do with the Work of Immoral Artists From Museums to the Movies (2022) and What to Save and Why: Identity, Authenticity, and the Ethics of Conservation (2024). His research and teaching cover a wide range of topic on the ethics, politics, and aesthetics of cultural heritage, art, and the environment.

Professor Matthes's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

Steve Sabicer is a writer, entrepreneur, and the creator of The Enlightened Omnivore, a weekly Substack newsletter and podcast exploring food, craft, and ecology in a rapidly changing world. 

More than a decade ago, he left a successful Fortune 500 career to apprentice as a butcher, eventually helping grow Electric City Butcher into one of Food & Wine magazine’s Top 100 butcher shops by sourcing exclusively from California farms practicing regenerative agriculture.

Sabicer is a graduate of Pomona College and has been featured in Food & Wine, FoodBeast, the Los Angeles Times, and the Orange County Register. He moved ten times before finishing high school and has traveled to more than forty countries. He now lives in Claremont, California, with his wife and three children and escapes whenever possible to his cabin in the Mojave Desert.

 

Erik Ramanathan P’27 served as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Sweden from December 2021 until January 2025. Ambassador Ramanathan was credentialed in Stockholm in January 2022, just five weeks prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. His tenure in Sweden centered on working with Swedes across all sectors of society as they navigated far-reaching changes accompanying the reversal of over 200 years of military non-alignment, the decision and challenging accession process to join NATO, and new understandings of autocratic threats to the democratic values and trade and investment norms that undergird their vibrant economy and way of life.

Leveraging key legislative tools like the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, Ambassador Ramanathan led efforts to ensure the U.S. and Sweden worked hand-in-hand to address challenges and opportunities in climate sustainability and green transition, emerging technology, pandemic and supply chain resilience, and other geopolitical complexities that require greater cross-border coordination and cross-sector collective action than ever before. U.S-Swedish technological and defense cooperation flourished, while bilateral trade in goods and services and Swedish direct investment in the U.S. both roughly doubled in three years, creating over 200,000 new American jobs.

Since returning from Stockholm in January 2025, Ambassador Ramanathan has been a keynote speaker, media commentator, and strategic consultant to multinational public and private enterprises navigating fast-changing geopolitics and global security challenges. He serves on the International Policy Advisory Council of the Center for American Progress, guiding global-facing policy development and education for one of America’s leading nonpartisan think tanks.

Prior to his diplomatic service, Ambassador Ramanathan was a long-time strategic leader and change agent on a portfolio of six institutional boards of directors. He most prominently served as Chairman of Heluna Health, a trailblazing national nonprofit that has been advancing public health for over 50 years. Before that, he was Senior Vice President and General Counsel of ImClone Systems, a Nasdaq-100 biotechnology firm. His academic and teaching experience includes four years as Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession, the world’s leading research program and think tank on the evolving global careers in law.

Ambassador Ramanathan has a passionate interest in empowering and supporting others to thrive at scale, whether it be through health care and community wellness, human rights advocacy, or inspiring military and civilian service veterans to start a career in public service. He has been a prominent LGBT+ community leader and change agent for more than three decades and is the recipient of honors including the Global Vision Award. Among numerous non-profit and public service roles, he has long chaired the board of Immigration Equality, guiding its rapid growth into a highly effective national legal services and advocacy organization for LGBT+ and HIV+ immigrants and refugees.

A native of rural western New York, Ambassador Ramanathan earned a B.A. in behavioral biology with highest honors at Johns Hopkins University and a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. 

Ambassador Ramanathan is the featured speaker for Family Weekend 2026.