Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Steven Pinker, award- winning experimental psychologist and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard, asks the big questions about human progress and sets out to answer them. A provocative speaker, much in demand, Pinker is a cognitive scientist who has been named by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. His keynotes have helped millions demystify the science behind human language, thought, and action. A professor, a TED speaker, and a bestselling author, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, he is highly respected in the scientific community, his work and opinions are extensively covered in the mainstream media, and he has won a wide general audience.

In his upcoming book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,” Pinker argues that we fail to take advantage of the most powerful tools of reasoning discovered by some of our best thinkers: Logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation. Specifically he explores why—when humanity is reaching new heights of scientific reasoning—there appears to be more fake news, conspiracy theorizing, and medical quackery than ever before. Rejecting the cynicism that humans are inherently irrational, Pinker offers an insightful, hopeful analysis of what rationality really is, why it can feel like it’s scarce, and how we can use it to drive better choices in our personal lives and in the public sphere.

In his earlier book “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress,” Pinker argued that, despite fear-mongering and political upheaval, the world is getting better: Peace, prosperity, knowledge and happiness are on the rise. "Enlightenment Now" was the follow-up to "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Had Declined", which was a #1 Amazon bestseller. 

Pinker’s other bestselling books include “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" and “How The Mind Works.” Pinker’s acclaimed “language” series includes “The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language,” “Words and Rules,” “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature,” as well as “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.”

A native of Montreal, Pinker is Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Previously, he taught at Stanford and at MIT. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has won several teaching prizes, and his research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has received numerous awards, including the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences.

Food for Thought: Podcast with Steven Pinker

Laura Kipnis is a cultural critic and former video artist whose work focuses on sexual politics, aesthetics, shame, emotion, acting out, moral messiness, and various other crevices of the American psyche. Her books include “Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation,” “How to Become A Scandal,” and “Against Love: A Polemic;” among others. Her most recent book is “Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus,” from HarperCollins. Her next book, “Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis,” will be published in February 2022 by Pantheon.

Kipnis is a professor emerita in the department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University where she teaches filmmaking. She has taught previously at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Michigan, and has been a visiting professor at NYU, Columbia University School of the Arts, the University of British Columbia, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Michigan Society of Fellows, the NEA and Yaddo; and has contributed essays and reviews to The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Slate, Atlantic, Harper’s, Playboy, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, and New Left Review. Her essay “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe” was included in "The Best American Essays 2016", edited by Jonathan Franzen; “Domestic Gulags” (from Against Love) is included in "The Contemporary American Essay," edited by Phillip Lopate. 

Kipnis has a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute, an MFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and she has attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Studio Program. 

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

Adapted from http://laurakipnis.com/about/

Adam Jones is a political scientist, writer, and photojournalist based at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. In the fall of 2021, Jones is a William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow at CMC.  Jones is best known for his work in the field of comparative genocide studies and is the author or editor of numerous books on genocide and crimes against humanity including "Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction;" "The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflection; Genocide, War Crimes and the West;" and "Gendercide and Genocide." He has also published two books on the media and political transition. His writings on gender and international politics have appeared in the Journal of Genocide Research, Review of International Studies, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Caribbean Studies, and other publications.

Throughout his career, Jones has developed a distinctive approach to the study of gender and international relations. In 1999, he co-founded the Web-based NGO Gendercide Watch with Carla Bergman and Nart Villeneuve, aimed at "confront[ing] gender-selective atrocities against men and women worldwide." He has also worked as an expert consultant with the United Nations Special Adviser on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. His essays on gender, violence, and international politics are compiled in "Gender Inclusive: Essays on Violence, Men, and Feminist International Relations" (Routledge, 2009). 

Jones was a postdoctoral fellow (2005-07) in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of British Columbia. 

Adam Jones' talk is co-sponsored  by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Adam Jones

Ryan Cirz is the CEO/CSO of Revagenix, Inc., a preclinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of life-changing and life-saving medicines. Previously, he was founder and vice president of research at Achaogen where he oversaw the early-stage (pre-investigational new drug) pipeline and provided intellectual insight/support to all things related to infectious diseases, including late-stage development, commercialization, and medical affairs. Achaogen focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing innovative antibacterials to treat multi-drug resistant infections.

Cirz earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Scripps Research Institute and his Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and molecular biology from Penn State University.

View Video: YouTube with Ryan Cirz

Food for Thought: Podcast with Ryan Cirz

Ilan Wurman '09 is an associate professor at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He writes on administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism, and his academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, and the Texas Law Review among other journals. He is also the author of "A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism" (Cambridge 2017), and "The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment" (Cambridge 2020). 

Prior to entering academia, Wurman clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and practiced law for three-and-a-half years at Winston & Strawn in Washington, D.C. He also served as deputy general counsel on Rand Paul's U.S. presidential campaign in 2015 and as associate counsel on Tom Cotton's U.S. Senate campaign in 2014. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Claremont McKenna College.

Professor Wurman will deliver the Salvatori Center's 2021 Lofgren Lecture on American Constitutionalism. 

View Video: YouTube with Ilan Wurman '09

A corporate strategist, executive coach, and leading expert in the intersection of humor and business, Naomi Bagdonas '09 is the coauthor of the national bestseller "Humor, Seriously" and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

Bagdonas facilitates interactive sessions for boards and leadership teams of Fortune 100 companies and nonprofits, and helps leaders create cultures of levity, creativity, and inclusivity within their organizations. She advises executives and celebrities for events ranging from Saturday Night Live and The Today Show appearances to company all-hands meetings and political campaign speeches. 

Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, Financial Times, Good Morning America, and on her mother's fridge.

In her spare time, Bagdonas runs a program teaching improv comedy in San Francisco's county jail, backpacks in the Sierras, and fosters a revolving door of rescue dogs whom she adores and who systematically destroy everything she owns.

She's a proud Claremont McKenna College grad where she studied economics and psychology as a Robert Day Scholar and whose time here set her on a trajectory for a nontraditional and very fun career (she says, "Thanks, CMC!"). She also holds a MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

View Video: YouTube with Naomi Bagdonas '09

Food for Thought: Podcast with Naomi Bagdonas '09

Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher, and author. She is credited with creating a new form of theater and is applauded for her one-woman shows. Her most recent original work, "Notes from the Field," looks at the vulnerability of youth, the criminal justice system, and contemporary activism. The New York Times named the stage version among The Best Theater of 2016 and TIME Magazine called it one of the Top 10 Plays of the Year. HBO premiered the film version in February 2018. It was nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award.

By looking at current events from multiple points of view, Smith’s theater combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance. Plays include Fires In the Mirror, Twilight: Los Angeles, House Arrest, and Let Me Down Easy. Twilight: Los Angeles was nominated for two Tony Awards. Fires in the Mirror was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize.

In 2012, President Obama awarded Smith the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal. She is a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Other awards include the prestigious 2013 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for achievement in the arts, the George Polk Career Award in Journalism, and the Ridenhour Courage Award. In 2015, she was named the Jefferson Lecturer, the nation’s highest honor in the humanities. She has been given several honorary degrees including those from Yale, Juilliard, University of Pennsylvania, Smith College, and Spelman.

Smith is also a television and film actress. Credits include such shows as Shonda Rhimes’s new “untitled project”, ABC’s series For the People and Blackish. She also co-starred on Showtime’s Nurse Jackie and was featured on the long running series, The West Wing. Films include The American President, Rachel Getting Married, Philadelphia, Dave, Rent, and Human Stain.

Smith is a Full Professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she founded the former Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue.

Reproduced from https://www.annadeaveresmith.org/

Sameer Pandya is a fiction writer and an interdisciplinary literary and cultural studies scholar whose fiction and scholarship considers the question of cultural dislocation and racial identity among South Asian Americans. His first book “The Blind Writer: Stories and a Novella,” longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award, follows the lives of first‑ and second‑generation Indian Americans living in contemporary California. His novel “Members Only,” which considers the racial politics of our current moment, was named an NPR Best Books of 2020 and was a finalist for the 90th Annual California Book Award in Fiction. His scholarly essays have been published in the Journal of Asian American Studies, South Asian Popular Culture and Amerasia. Pandya has also published widely in the popular press, with work appearing in The Atlantic, ESPN, Salon, Sports Illustrated, New York Daily News, among other places. 

Pandya graduated with highest honors from U.C. Davis and earned his Ph.D. in the Program in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. He is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at U.C. Santa Barbara.

Professor Pandya’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse and celebrates the 10^th Anniversary of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Sameer Pandya

Food for Thought: Podcast with Sameer Pandya

Born in Missoula, Montana, and raised in Helena blocks away from the State Capitol, Steve Bullock '88 P'24  is a product of public schools, graduating from Helena High. He received his undergraduate degree from Claremont McKenna College and law degree from Columbia University School of Law.

Bullock served as Montana’s attorney general from 2009-2013. As attorney general, Bullock defended Montana’s hundred-year ban on corporate campaign spending, gaining national prominence for leading the challenge to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

Bullock was elected Montana’s 24th Governor, serving from 2013-2021. He worked with a Republican-majority legislature to improve access to health care, kick dark money out of state elections, make record investments in education, protect access to public lands, invest in infrastructure, and strengthen Montana’s economy. Bullock brought diverse interests together to address challenging issues, from sage grouse and forest management to the Main Street Montana Project. By executive action, he led the nation in preserving net neutrality and combating dark money. Nationally, Bullock was elected Chair of the National Governors Association, Western Governors Association and Democratic Governors Association.

Since leaving public office, he served as an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, is serving as the court-appointed Independent Monitor over Purdue Pharma, and is serving on various corporate, political and nonprofit boards and committees.  

Prior to serving in elected office, Bullock’s jobs included Montana Assistant Attorney General, attorney in private practice, adjunct instructor at George Washington University Law School, and Tour Boat Captain on the Missouri River. 

David Dreier '75 was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1980, where he served until January 2013. In Congress, he served as the youngest—and the first from California—chairman of the Rules Committee, playing a pivotal role in fashioning all legislation for debate in the House.

Serving 32 years in Congress and as longtime Chairman of the House Rules Committee, Dreier was a co-sponsor of the first Bipartisan Retreat Planning Committee in 1997, noting that “I believe greater civility in the House is a cause certainly worth pursuing”; widely known for his belief in reaching across the aisle, NBC news noted when he retired from Congress in 2013 that “Dreier Departure Bad News for Congressional Civility.”  

Dreier received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College in 1975 and his M.A. in American government from Claremont Graduate University the following year. He serves as a trustee at CMC.

This inaugural Civility Award and subsequent discussion is sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with David Dreier '75, Steve Bullock '88 P'24, John J. Pitney, Jr.

Mark Juergensmeyer is the William F Podlich Distinguished Fellow and Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the founding director of global studies and the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies.

He is a pioneer in the global studies field, focusing on global religion, religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics. He has published more than three hundred articles and twenty books, including the revised and expanded fourth edition of the award-winning “Terror in the Mind of God” (University of California Press, 2017), and his co-edited “Oxford Handbook of Global Studies” (Oxford University Press, 2018). His most recent book is "God at War: A Meditation on Religion and Warfare".

Daniel F. Kelly, M.D. ‘82 is director of Pacific Neuroscience Institute (PNI) at Providence Saint John’s Health Center and professor of neurosurgery at Saint John’s Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California. He is internationally recognized for advancing techniques of minimally invasive “keyhole” and endoscopic brain tumor surgery. He has also overseen development of innovative programs at PNI including the launch of Pacific Brain Health Center in 2018 focused on cognitive, memory and mood disorders, and has been the creative force behind PNI’s Treatment & Research in Psychedelics (TRIP) program.

Kelly is a 1982 graduate of Claremont McKenna College where he studied biology and chemistry. He attended Georgetown University School of Medicine and completed a neurosurgical residency training in 1993 at George Washington University Medical Center. He was professor of neurosurgery and vice-chief of clinical affairs for the UCLA Division of Neurosurgery until 2007 when he joined JWCI and Providence Saint John’s Health Center, where he currently serves on the Saint John’s Board of Directors and is chief of neurosurgery.

View Video: YouTube with Daniel Kelly '82

Food for Thought: Podcast with Daniel Kelly '82

Katy Milkman is the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a secondary appointment at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Her research explores ways that insights from economics and psychology can be harnessed to change consequential behaviors for good, such as savings, exercise, vaccination take-up, and discrimination.

Milkman has received numerous awards for her research including an early career award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. When under 30, she was named one of the world’s top 40 business school professors under 40 by Poets and Quants and she was a finalist for the Thinkers 50 2017 Radar Thinker Award.

She has published articles in leading social science journals such as Management Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and The Journal of Finance and reached a wide audience through regular coverage in major media outlets such as NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and Harvard Business Review. She also frequently writes about topics related to behavioral science for The Washington Post and Scientific American. In 2018, she began hosting Charles Schwab’s popular podcast “Choiceology with Katy Milkman”, which explores key lessons from behavioral economics about decision making.

A multiple-time recipient of the excellence in teaching award for the Wharton undergraduate division, Milkman was voted Wharton's “Iron Prof” by the school’s MBA students for a PechaKucha-style presentation of her research, and has repeatedly been one of ten finalists for the Anvil Award for Wharton’s most outstanding MBA teacher.

She is the former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, an APS Fellow, and an associate editor at Management Science, where she has handled manuscripts about behavioral economics since 2013. She has worked with numerous organizations on research and/or consulting, including Humana, Google, Wipro, Cummins Engines, the U.S. Department of Defense, 24 Hour Fitness and the American Red Cross. Katy co-directs the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, whose work is being chronicled by Freakonomics Radio.

Milkman received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University (summa cum laude) in operations research and financial engineering and her Ph.D. from Harvard University's joint program in computer science and business.

Atul Gawande, M.D., M.P.H., is a surgeon, writer, and public health leader. He is a practicing endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is founder and chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He is also co-founder of CIC Health, which operates COVID-19 testing and vaccination nationally, and served as a member of the Biden transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. Recently, he was nominated by President Biden to lead Global Health, including COVID, at USAID.

In addition, Gawande has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1998 and written four New York Times best-selling books: "Complications," "Better," "The Checklist Manifesto," and "Being Mortal." He is the winner of two National Magazine Awards, AcademyHealth’s Impact Award for highest research impact on healthcare, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Lewis Thomas Award for writing about science.

Fengyu Wu is a research associate at the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Southern California and a B.S. in economics from the Singapore Management University. Her research centers on the economics of happiness, health economics, development economics, and political economy. She studies the determinants of subjective well-being in populations around the world, in particular, the effects of both economic and social conditions, including among others: income, consumption, interpersonal comparisons, supportive relationships, and social capital. She also investigates the factors that influence individuals’ socioeconomic attitudes and political preferences, with special attention on identifying and explaining differences between men and women.

Wu has been teaching student seminars on the social science of happiness at Wake Forest University. She is one of the founding members of the China Happiness Report, and she also contributed to the World Happiness Report 2021.

With a focus on happiness from the economic perspective, Dr. Wu's Athenaeum talk is part of a 3-part series on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Happiness co-sponsored by the Berger Institute at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Fengyu Wu

Valerie Tiberius is the Paul W. Frenzel Chair in Liberal Arts and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. Her work explores the ways in which philosophy and psychology can both contribute to the study of well-being and virtue. She is the author of “The Reflective Life: Living Wisely With Our Limits,” “Moral Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction”, and “Well-Being as Value Fulfillment: How We Can Help Others to Live Well”

With a focus on happiness from the philosophical perspective, Professor Tiberius's Athenaeum talk is part of a 3-part series on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Happiness co-sponsored by the Berger Institute at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Valerie Tiberius

Food for Thought: Podcast with Valerie Tiberius