Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Jack Glaser is a social psychologist who studies racial bias in criminal justice. His research on implicit bias, motivation to control prejudice, and racial profiling reside at the nexus of psychological science and policing. In particular, he investigates the unconscious operation of stereotypes and prejudice using computerized reaction time methods, and is investigating the implications of such subtle forms of bias in law enforcement and he is interested in racial profiling, especially as it relates to the psychology of stereotyping, and the self-fulfilling effects of such stereotype-based discrimination. 

Glaser received his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1999 and joined the faculty of UC.. Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy in 2000. In addition to teaching and research, he is currently serving as the associate dean at the Goldman School. He is also a principal investigator on the National Justice Database, funded by NSF and Google.org and the author of Suspect Race: Causes and Consequences of Racial Profiling (Oxford, 2015).

View Video: YouTube with Jack Glaser

A senior analyst for CNN and staff writer for The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin is noted as one of the country’s most esteemed experts on politics, media, and the law. The author of critically acclaimed best sellers, Toobin delved into the historical, political and personal inner workings of the Supreme Court and its justices in his books The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court and The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court. His recent book, American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst, was released in August 2016, and examines the 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst.

After a six-year tenure at ABC News, where he covered the country’s highest-profile cases and received a 2000 Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elian Gonzales custody saga, Toobin joined CNN as a legal analyst in 2002 where he now serves as the senior legal analyst. Also a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1993, he has written articles on such subjects as the Bernie Madoff scandal, the case of Roman Polanski, and penned profiles of Justices Clarence Thomas, Steve Breyer, John Paul Stevens, and Chief Justice John Roberts. Prior to joining The New Yorker, Toobin served as an assistant United States Attorney in Brooklyn, New York. He also served as an associate counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh.

Toobin received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Mr. Toobin is the Spring 2018 speaker for the Res Publica Society Speaker Series.

Photo credit: Great Talent Network

Amal Kassir is a Syrian-American spoken word poet and artist. Born in Denver, Colorado, she comes from a "dinner table of tabouleh and meat loaf, Syrian father and Iowan-German mother, best meals of both worlds."

As a university student, Kassir designed her own undergraduate degree called ‘Community Programming in Social Psychology’ which combines child psychology, writing, and education to develop curricula for refugee children with trauma. A strong proponent for education, she is dedicated to building individual agency particularly in under-served and vulnerable populations by emphasizing the power of writing.

Kassir has performed in 10 countries and over 45 cities and has conducted workshops, given lectures, and recited her poetry in venues ranging from youth prisons to orphanages, from refugee camps to universities, from churches to community spaces. She hopes to take part in the global effort for literacy in war-struck areas and refugee camps and runs a project called More than Metaphors that focuses on the education initiative for displaced Syrian children.

Recipient of multiple awards including as winner of the Grand Slam at the Brave New Voices International Youth Competition, Kassir has performed on the TED stage and been featured on the PBS NewsHour.

When she is not studying or performing, she waitresses at her family’s Syrian restaurant in Denver.

Food for Thought: Podcast with Amal Kassir

Lars Schoultz, William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Political Science, received his B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His area of special interest is inter‑American relations.

Schoultz has held a Fulbright‑Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Buenos Aires to study Argentine electoral behavior, two postdoctoral research grants from the Social Science Research Council to study United States policy toward Latin America, and a Ford Foundation grant to study U.S. immigration policy. He has been a MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security and held residential fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and at the National Humanities Center. Schoultz is the recipient of the Tanner Award (1982), the Class of 1994 Award (1994), and the William Friday Award (2006), all for teaching excellence, and he is a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Order of the Grail/Valkyries, both student honoraries.

A prolific author, his books include Human Rights and United States Policy Toward Latin America (1981), The Populist Challenge: Argentine Electoral Behavior in the Postwar Era (1983), National Security and United States Policy Toward Latin America (1987), Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America (1998), That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution (2009), and In Their Own Best Interests: A History of the U.S. Effort to Improve Latin Americans (forthcoming 2018). Other scholarly writings have appeared in The American Political Science Review, The American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, International Organization, The Journal of Politics, The Journal of Latin American Studies, The Latin American Research Review, and Political Science Quarterly.

View Video: YouTube with Lars Schoultz

 

Jelani Cobb, staff writer at the New Yorker and professor of journalism at Columbia University, writes about the enormous complexity of race in America. In 2015, he received the Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism for his New Yorker columns for combining “the strengths of an on-the-scene reporter, a public intellectual, a teacher, a vivid writer, a subtle moralist, and an accomplished professional historian." He is also the recipient of the 2017 Walter Bernstein Award from the Writer’s Guild of America for his investigative series Policing the Police, which aired on PBS Frontline in 2016.

Cobb was formerly associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut, where he was director of the Africana Studies Institute. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations. He is the author of "Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress," "To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic," and "The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays." His forthcoming book is "Antidote to Revolution: African American Anticommunism and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1931."   

Mr. Cobb is CMC's 2018 MLK Commemorative Speaker and his talk is co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund.

Food for Thought: Podcast with Jelani Cobb

Councilmember Lindsey P. Horvath was elected to the West Hollywood City Council on March 3, 2015. She previously served as a councilmember for two years from 2009-2011, and as mayor from April 2015 to April 2016.

Horvath is widely known for her leadership on women’s issues. As an elected official, she led West Hollywood to create its first-ever community response team to domestic violence and to be the first city in California to take action in recent efforts on sexual harassment best practices and reporting procedures. She also serves as a global coordinator for One Billion Rising, a global campaign of the V-Day movement to end violence against women and girls. She is an advocate for A Window Between Worlds, UN Foundation, Running Start, and CARE.

Horvath was first appointed to the West Hollywood Women's Advisory Board in 2007, focusing on the issues facing women and families in West Hollywood, and has collaborated with community leaders and organizations in successfully advocating for the full funding of the backlog of untested rape kit evidence in the city and county of Los Angeles. She previously served in leadership for a variety of organizations, including as president of the Hollywood Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) LA-Westside as well as Young Feminist VP of California NOW.

In addition to her service as an elected official, Horvath works as an entertainment advertising executive, and has created award-winning campaigns for movies and television. She graduated cum laude with a B.A. in political science and gender studies from the University of Notre Dame.

Councilmember Horvath is the keynote speaker for the inaugural Elect Her workshop sponsored by a grant from the Women and Gender Leadership Fund at CMC.

The Claremont Chamber Choir will perform its celebrated, annual holiday celebration. The Choir, part of the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges, is an auditioned, mixed ensemble of about two dozen students and will be led by conductor Charles W. Kamm, associate professor of music at Scripps College and director of choirs in the Joint Music Program. The Choir will sing the music of Palestrina, Molly Ijames, and Eric Whitacre, plus holiday music by Jonathan Dove, Caroline Malonee, and traditional favorites.

View Video: YouTube with Claremont Chamber Choir

Qurrat Ann Kadwani is an actress, producer, MC, TV host, and philanthropist. A graduate of Bronx High School of Science and a theater graduate of SUNY Geneseo, she is the founding artistic director of eyeBLINK (www.eyeblink.org).  

A frequent guest on television programs including Law and Order: SVU, The Blacklist, Mr. Robot, Falling Water, and more, Kadwani teaches monologue writing and performance workshops, monologue prep, and audition prep classes. Her film credits include Antigone 5000, The Tailor, One Night Stand, Last Saturday with Morli, among others. 

Kadwani’s one-woman show They Call Me Q played off-Broadway in 2014 for seven months at St. Luke's Theatre in New York City. In addition to performing on multiple campus and at cultural venues, in December 2013, United Nations Unicef also invited Kadwani to perform.

In reviewing her show, the Village Voice says Kadwani “delivers a winning tale.” NY Theatre Guide wrote, “Filled with charm, humor and heart… They Call Me Q is comedic without seeming over the top, and thought provoking without being preachy.” Broadway World wrote, "In some rare cases, the decision to share tales of one's past can give the audience a theatrical experience that it will remember far after the last show."

The recipient of many service awards, Kadwani has been the host for Chase the Race 2016, MC of events for non-profit organizations such as World Women’s Global Council at the United Nations, Sapna NYC, Your Dil, Lend A Hand India, and SOS Children's Villages India, among others.

Kadwani also coordinates an annual philanthropic project A Slice of Hope as well as the annual Echoes of Love, a suicide prevention fundraiser with music. 

Ms. Kadwani’s Athenaeum performance is co-sponsored by ASCMC’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. 

First elected to the Legislature in 2010, Senator Holly Mitchell represents nearly one million residents of the 30th Senate District, which ranges from Century City to South Los Angeles and takes in Culver City, Cheviot Hills, Crenshaw District, USC, downtown L.A. and a portion of Inglewood.

A third-generation native Angeleno, Mitchell sits on the Senate Health Committee; the Joint Committee on Rules; the Public Safety Committee; the Labor and Industrial Relations Committee; and the Insurance, Banking and Financial Institutions Committee. She also chairs the Senate Select Committee on Women and Inequality, which she founded. Additionally, she is chair of the Senate Budget Committee. Mitchell previously headed California’s largest child and family development organization, Crystal Stairs, and worked for the Western Center for Law and Poverty.

Frequently cited for her leadership and advocacy on behalf of children, families, the elderly, and the disabled, Mitchell was named the 2017 Lois DeBerry Scholar by Women in Government Leadership and this year received the first Willie L. Brown Jr. Advocacy Award from the California Black Lawyers Association. The National Conference of State Legislatures last summer elected her to its national executive committee. Her advocacy on behalf of the expansion of mental health services earned her the Legislator-of-the-Year Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness California. 

Senator Mitchell’s Athenaeum presentation is part of the "Behind the Veil: Women, Race, Leadership, and Social Change in the Nonprofit Sector” (“BTV”) speaker series. BTV explores leadership models and perspectives by harnessing the power of first person narrative and storytelling by nonprofit CEOs on the front lines of social change.

View Video: YouTube with Holly Mitchell

Hilton Als began contributing to The New Yorker in 1989, and became a staff writer in 1994, theater critic in 2002, and lead theater critic in 2012 and brings a rigorous, sharp, and lyrical perspective on acting, playwriting, and directing. With his deep knowledge of the history of performance—not only in theater but in dance, music, and visual art—he demonstrates how to view a production, how to place its director, its author, and its performers in the ongoing continuum of dramatic art. His reviews are provocative contributions to the discourse on theater, race, class, sexuality, and identity in America.

Before coming to The New Yorker, Als was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe. Als edited the catalogue for the 1994-95 Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art.” His first book, The Women, was published in 1996. His most recent book, White Girls, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014 and winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Non-fiction, discusses various narratives of race and gender. He also wrote the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of The Early Stories of Truman Capote.

Among numerous accolades, the New York Association of Black Journalists awarded Als first prize in both Magazine Critique/Review and Magazine Arts and Entertainment in 1997. He was awarded a Guggenheim for creative writing in 2000 and the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2002-03. In 2016, he received Lambda Literary’s Trustee Award for Excellence in Literature. In 2017, Als won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Als is an associate professor of writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and has taught at Yale University, Wesleyan, and Smith College. 

Professor Hilton Als’ Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' Lerner Lectureship in 1960s' Culture Fund. 

Photo credit: Brigitte Lacombe

Gibb Schreffler is assistant professor of music and director of ethnomusicology at Pomona College. A scholar engaged in both the contemporary ethnographic and historical study of musical culture, his diverse areas of expertise include the vernacular music and dance of South Asia’s Punjab region, the work-songs of 19th-century American sailors, and the aesthetic practices of Jamaican DJs. His work related to traditional Punjabi drummers appears in numerous journals including Asian Music, South Asian History & Culture, Popular Music & Society, Sikh Formations, and Journal of Punjab Studies.

Professor Schreffler’s Athenaeum performance and presentation is co-sponsored by the Sikh Studies Fund.

View Video: YouTube with Gibb Schreffler

Jonathan Strom's work focuses on the history of religion in Germany, with particular attention to the interrelation of theology and culture, the emergence of the Protestant clergy, lay revival movements, and conversion. He is author most recently of German Pietism and the Problem of Conversion and was co-editor of the new Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions. His current book project is a cultural history of the priesthood of all believers.
​
Strom’s research interests include pietism in continental Europe, the history of the Protestant clergy, and the emergence of modern forms of piety and religious practice. He has written widely on the clergy, lay religion, and reform movements in post-Reformation Germany, and is the author/editor of three books, most recently Pietism and Community in Europe and North America, 1650-1850 (Brill, 2010). Strom is currently at work on two projects, one on conversion narratives in German pietism and another on the history of the common priesthood.

View Video: YouTube with Jonathan Strom

Ron Naveen believes that penguins are indicators of ocean change and, ultimately, sentinels of change. Since 1994, the Oceanites’ Antarctic site inventory has been monitoring and analyzing penguin and seabird population changes across the vast Antarctic Peninsula, where it’s warming faster than anywhere else on earth except the Arctic. Working with collaborative partners, The Lynch Lab at Stony Brook University, Penguin Lifelines at the University of Oxford (UK), and One Oceans Expeditions (Canada), Oceanites represents the world’s only nonprofit, publicly supported Antarctic research program. Oceanites is the only project monitoring the entire Antarctic Peninsula region — analyzing change across the warming Antarctic Peninsula and  interpreting, translating, and decoding why what happens in Antarctica—to its penguins, wildlife, land, ice, and surrounding Southern Ocean—affects all of us.

Mr. Naveen's Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Roberts Environmental Center and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, both at CMC.

What is modernity? Where are modernity's points of origin? Where are its boundaries? And what lies beyond those boundaries?  Professors Ellen Rentz, John Farrell, and Seth Lobis of the CMC Literature Department will join Jason Crawford of Union University and author of "Allegory and Enchantment: An Early Modern Poetics" (Oxford) and Blanford Parker, author of "The Triumph of Augustan Poetics" (Cambridge) for a lively discussion of how early modern English authors envisioned themselves breaking from the medieval.

The discussion is sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies.

An expert in machine learning and natural language processing, Apoorv Agarwal is dedicated to understanding and improving how humans and machines benefit from working together. His work, which focuses on sentiment analysis, relation extraction, text summarization, and automated Q&A, has received more than 1,000 citations across the international research community. 

Agarwal received the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship award in recognition of his work as first author on two separate patents for IBM’s Watson. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University, and received the Andrew P. Kosoresow Memorial Award for Outstanding Performance in Teaching. Agarwal has published more than 30 academic papers in machine learning and natural language processing. In 2014, he was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps program, which allowed him to lay the foundation for founding his company, Text IQ.  

Beyond academia, Agarwal has been cited by American Banker, WIRED, Popular Science, New Scientist, and Science Magazine, among others. With Text IQ, he aspires to harness and channel the complementary strengths of humans and machines towards solving high-stakes enterprise data problems. Among other novels, his research focused on the work of C.S. Lewis and Jane Austen. He is one of the co-creators of the Ted Talk "Artificial IntelliDance," a performance which explains AI to a non-technical audience through dance. 

View Video: YouTube with Apoorv Agarwal