Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Imam Adeel J. Zeb is a Muslim chaplain, interfaith scholar, and frequent speaker. He currently serves as a co-University Chaplain at the Claremont Colleges. Before coming to Claremont in 2016, he was the Muslim Chaplain/Director of Muslim Life at Duke University. He has also served as the Muslim Chaplain/Imam at Wesleyan University, Trinity College, and American University, among others. Zeb is the president elect of the National Association of College and University Chaplains.

He has given Friday khutbah (sermons) on Capitol Hill, at the State Department, and mosques nationally. He has been featured on media including CNN, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, and the Huffington Post over a 10-year span. He was a participant in the International Higher Education Interfaith Leadership Forum and has completed the prestigious fellowship for the Study of Auschwitz and Preventive Ethics and has certifications in conflict management, interfaith conflict management, and mediation from the United States Institute for Peace.

Zeb holds degrees from Baylor University in business administration and Arees University in traditional Islamic studies, a master's degree in Islamic chaplaincy from Hartford Seminary, and in tajweed and Qur'anic recitation from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

View Video: YouTube with Adeel Zeb

Tariq al-Jamil is associate professor of religion and chair of the department of religion at Swarthmore College. He is also coordinator of Swarthmore's Islamic Studies Program. al-Jamil is an expert on medieval Islamic social history and law, with a particular focus on Shi'ism. He has conducted research on Sunni-Shi'i relations and addresses issues related to the academic study of Islam and the social history of Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. His published works and research interests include: Islam and inter-communal violence, pre-modern religious identity, religious dissimulation, the transmission of knowledge in Islam, and women in Islamic jurisprudence. He is the author of Power and Knowledge in Medieval Islam (I.B. Tauris 2017). Al-Jamil received his B.A. from Oberlin College, M.T.S. from Harvard University, and M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri '94 is professor of religion and humanities at Reed College. GhaneaBassiri focuses on Islamic social and intellectual history in the classical and modern periods, Islam in America, material dimensions of religion, and religious diversity in US history. He is the author of A History of Islam in America (Cambridge 2010). In 2006 he was named a Carnegie Scholar and in 2012 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. GhaneaBassiri received his B.A. From Claremont McKenna College in 1994, and his A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. 

Professors Tariq al-Jamil and Kambiz GhaneaBassiri's Athenaeum conversation is co-sponsored by the Kutten Lectureship in Religious Studies at CMC.

Firoozeh Dumas was born in Abadan, Iran and moved to Whittier, California at the age of seven. 

Dumas grew up listening to her father, a former Fulbright Scholar, recount the many colorful stories of his life. In 2001, with no prior writing experience, Firoozeh decided to write her stories as a gift for her children. Random House published these stories in 2003. Funny in Farsi was on the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists and was a finalist for the PEN/USA award in 2004 and a finalist in 2005 for an Audie Award for best audio book. (She lost to Bob Dylan.) She was also a finalist for the prestigious Thurber Prize for American Humor, the first Middle Eastern woman ever to receive this honor. (She lost that one to Jon Stewart.) 

In 2008, Dumas published a second set of stories, Laughing Without an Accent, which also became a New York Times bestseller. In 2016, she published her first book of middle grade fiction, It Ain’t so Awful, Falafel and received high praise from readers of all ages.

Dumas has also written for the New York Times, Gourmet Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets and has also been a commentator on National Public Radio. She has spoken at hundreds of schools, conferences and festivals. She believes that everyone has a story to tell and that everyone’s story counts.

Ms. Dumas' Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored with the Friends of Claremont Library.

Photo Credit: Francois Dumas

Cary Davidson '75 practices political, election, and nonprofit organization law. He represents corporations, trade associations, nonprofit organizations, ballot measure campaigns, candidates and lobbyists, assisting them in complying with the various local, state and federal laws regulating campaigns and lobbying. Davidson has represented or served on the boards of many LGBT organizations, including Equality California, Access Now for Gay & Lesbian Equality, Human Rights Campaign and the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Davidson has served as president of the California Political Attorneys' Association; president of Equality California and Equality California Institute; president of the Claremont McKenna College Alumni Association; president of Congregation Kol Ami; and chair of the Board of Overseers of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He has received several awards for his civic and community involvement including the Harvey Milk Legacy Award from Christopher Street West (Los Angeles Pride); the Jack L. Stark Award from Claremont McKenna College; the Lifetime Achievement Award and State Farm Good Neighbor Award from Equality California; the Allan Tebbetts Award from the California Political Attorneys Association; and the Guardian of Justice Award from Congregation Kol Ami.

Davidson graduated in 1975 from CMC and received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1978.

View Video: YouTube with Cary Davidson '75

Rolena Adorno is the Sterling Professor of Spanish at Yale Univerrsity. Born and raised on a farm in Iowa, she began her study of Spanish-language literatures as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa and then as a Fulbright Scholar to Madrid, Spain. With a strong commitment to undergraduate teaching, Adorno has taught (in Spanish) very popular courses in Latin American literature and culture of the modern and earlier periods, and she is committed to the encouragement of Spanish-language studies for non-native and heritage speakers. A recipient of the Modern Language Association’s Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement, she is the first awardee whose work focuses on Hispanic literary and cultural studies.

Adorno's research is devoted to Latin American literature of the Spanish colonial period. Seemingly esoteric, this field of study raises issues pertinent to those faced today. Her books, The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative, Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Colonial Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction, explore the uneasy encounters between Spanish and Amerindian cultures, the debates about the rights of conquest and colonization, the emergence of literary voices (those of Amerindian as well as European heritage), and the resonance of the Spanish colonial heritage in Latin American literature today.

Appointed by President Obama in 2009, she serves on the National Council on the Humanities (NEH). She is an honorary professor at La Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Adorno is a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar and her Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Maria A. Trujillo ’01 serves as the Human Trafficking Program Manager at the Colorado Department of Public Safety, Division of Criminal Justice, Office for Victims Programs. In this role, Trujillo coordinates the efforts of the Colorado Human Trafficking Council that was legislatively established by the Colorado General Assembly. Trujillo joined the division in December 2014 after spending the previous six years in Houston as the executive director of the non-profit organization, United Against Human Trafficking (UAHT), whose mission is to prevent and confront human trafficking by raising public awareness, training front-line professionals and empowering the community to take action. Prior to her time at UAHT, Trujillo lived in Washington, DC where she worked for the international development organization, Health Volunteers Overseas.

Trujillo has served as a speaker and expert technical advisor on the issue of human trafficking at the national, state and local levels, including at the White House. She has also been recognized for her work combating human trafficking as a “Circles of Change” honoree by Building Bridges for Peace (2012) and a “Table Talk” honoree by the University of Houston’s Friends of Women’s Studies (2015).

Trujillo graduated with an IR major from Claremont McKenna College in 2001. She obtained her master’s degree in International Communications from American University.

Ms. Trujillo’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.

View Video: YouTube with Maria Trujillo '01

Food for Thought: Podcast with Maria Trujillo '01

Haim Koren (Klein) served as Israel’s Ambassador to the Republic of Egypt between 2014 and 2016. He previously served as Ambassador to South Sudan and as the Director of the Middle East Division in the Center of Political Research in Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During his tenure with the Ministry, his positions included serving as Director of the Political Planning Division and as Deputy Spokesman of the Press Division. He has also served in various other diplomatic capacities in Chicago, USA; Alexandria, Egypt; and Kathmandu, Nepal.

Ambassador Koren earned his Ph.D. from the University of Bergen in Norway. He is an expert in the Arab World, including the Arabic language, media, and extremism. Since 2011, he has been a member of Advisory Board of IFIMES (The Slovenian Institute of Middle East and Balkan Studies) and from 2016 a member of the Board of the Ezri Center for Research of Iran and the Persian Gulf at Haifa University.

Between 1992-1994 Ambassador Koren was a member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. From 2008 to 2011, he was Instructor at the National Defense College of Israel. He has given lectures and seminars on Arabism and Islam, the Ideology of Radical Islam, the Global Dimension of the Foreign Policy in Israel, and New Framework for Thinking on the Middle East.

Ambassador Koren's Athenaeum talk is made possible in partnership with the Claremont International Relations Society.

Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a recipient of the 2014-15 New York Public Library's Cullman Center Fellowship. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, her first novel, was a New York Times Bestseller, a 2013 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, an NPR Best Books of 2013, and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the second selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. Mathis taught creative writing at The Writer's Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph's College, Brooklyn. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Ms. Mathis' Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse.

Photo credit: Elena Seibert

Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and a commentator for Fox News. After joining the Journal in 1994, he was named a senior editorial writer in 2000 and a member of the editorial board in 2005. Riley writes opinion pieces on politics, economics, education, immigration, and race. A frequent public speaker, he is a longtime commentator for Fox News.

Riley is the author of Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders (2008), which argues for a more free-market-oriented U.S. immigration policy; and Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (2014), which discusses the track record of government efforts to help the black underclass. He has also worked for USA Today and the Buffalo News. Riley holds a B.A. in English from SUNY-Buffalo.

Mr. Riley's Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government.

(Source: Manhattan Institute Website)

View Video: YouTube with Jason Riley

Food for Thought: Podcast with Jason Riley

Nader El-Bizri is a professor of philosophy and director of the Civilization Studies Program at the American University of Beirut. He also serves on editorial boards of journals and book series, and is the general editor of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity series published by Oxford University Press. He has also acted as a consultant to the Science Museum in London, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva, and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York/Berlin, and has contributed to BBC radio/TV cultural programs. He received various awards including the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Prize in 2014.

He will focus on the adaptive assimilation and expansion of the various branches of the ancient Greek sources in scientific knowledge within the Arabic intellectual milieu.

Professor El-Bizri's Athenaeum lecture is facilitated by a Mellon Global Fellowship grant.

As vice-president of applied learning for The Ken Blanchard Companies, Dr. Victoria Halsey builds leadership capacity using an inside-out approach focused on situational leadership to help individuals understand themselves so they can be effective leaders.

Halsey is the author of Brilliance by Design, an instructional design strategy with a learner-focused model. She is a co-author of The Hamster Revolution and The Hamster Revolution for Meetings. In addition, she is a co-author of Ken Blanchard’s Leading at a Higher Level, an all-inclusive reference of Blanchard leadership philosophies and teachings.

Halsey received a bachelor’s degree in American studies from the University of California, Davis; a master’s degree in educational administration from San Diego State University; and a Ph.D. in educational leadership from University of San Diego.

Ms. Halsey's  2017 Women's Leadership Workshop talk at the Athenaeum is co-sponsored by RDS, KLI, and the Berger Institute. 

To register for this special half-day program WLW program, please use the WLW 2017 registration form.

Amy Whitaker is a writer, artist, and teacher who works at the intersection of creativity, business, and everyday life and is the author of Art Thinking, a “manifesto and a love story” for how creativity and business go together. A graduate of Williams College, she holds an MBA from Yale University and an MFA in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. She is an assistant professor at NYU in Visual Arts Administration.

Whitaker has worked for museums including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate as well as for international financial institutions. She teaches and lectures widely. Her first book, Museum Legs, was selected as the common summer reading assignment for the first year class at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) in 2010.

The premise of her most recent book, Art Thinking, is that if you are making a work of art in any field, you aren't going from a known point A to a known point B, but rather inventing point B. That process is exploratory and open-ended—and therefore sometimes at odds with the cultural pressures to succeed economically and professionally. The independent thinking behind inventing point B is closely tied to robustness of democratic exchange, to the values of a liberal arts education, and to interdisciplinary approaches to addressing the great problems of our day.

Professor Whitaker's Athenaeum talk is sponsored by the Mellon Creativity Roundtable, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), the Kravis Leadership Institute (KLI), and the Center for Writing and Public Discourse (CWPD).

Food for Thought: Podcast with Amy Whitaker

Daniel Livesay, assistant professor of history, focuses his research on slavery in the Colonial Americas, free people of color in the Atlantic world, and the intersections between ideas of race and family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; slavery and aging in North America and the Caribbean. He is the author of Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race West Indians in Britain and The Atlantic Family, 1733-1833, forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press. He is currently at work on a new project that explores slavery and aging in North America.

Sarah Sarzynski, assistant professor of history, research focus examines modern Brazilian cultural and political history, popular culture and film, the Amazon, the Cold War, social movements, memory and oral history, regionalism and regional identities in Brazil related to poverty, religion, race and gender. She is currently completing a book entitled Revolution in the Terra do Sol: The Cold War in Brazil, which will be published by Stanford University Press.

Tamara Venit Shelton, associate professor of history, focuses on the social history of the American West, with a particular interest in race, labor, and environment. She is the author of A Squatter’s Republic: Land and the Politics of Monopoly, 1850-1900, published by University of California Press. She is currently working on a book project about Chinese doctors in the United States between 1850 and 1945.

Born and raised in California, Steve Hackel earned his B.A. at Stanford University and his Ph.D. in American History from Cornell University with specializations in early America and the American West. He now teaches at U.C. Riverside.

Within the larger field of early American history, Hackel's research specializes on the Spanish Borderlands, colonial California, and California Indians. He is especially interested in Indian responses to colonialism, the effects of disease on colonial encounters, and new ways of visualizing these processes through digital history.

Hackel has published a biography on Fray Junipero Serra, the principal founder of California's mission system, and a monograph on Indian life in the California missions, as well as numerous essays. He is the general editor of the Early California Population Project and the Project Director for the Early California Cultural Atlas. He co-curated the Huntington Library’s international exhibition, “Junípero Serra and the Legacy of the California Missions.”

Yitzhak Hen is the Anna and Sam Lopin Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, where he teaches late antique and early medieval history. An expert on religious and cultural history of the early medieval West, he is interested in the intellectual and religious culture of the post-Roman Barbarian kingdoms of Western Europe and devotes part of his research to the examination of early medieval manuscripts, and to the study of early medieval liturgy in its cultural, social, and religious context.

Hen is the author of Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, AD 481-751 (1995), The Sacramentary of Echternach (1997), The Royal Patronage of Liturgy in Frankish Gaul (2000), and Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West (2007). He co-edited The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (2000), The Bobbio Missal: Liturgy and Religious Culture in Merovingian Gaul (2004), among many others. 

Professor Hen's Athenaeum talk is facilitated by a Mellon Visiting Scholar grant.