Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Marlon James is the first Jamaican author to take home the U.K.’s most prestigious literary award. In the award winning work, James combines masterful storytelling with brilliant skill at characterization and an eye for detail to forge a bold novel of dazzling ambition and scope. He explores Jamaican history through the perspectives of multiple narrators and genres: the political thriller, the oral biography, and the classic whodunit confront the untold history of Jamaica in the 1970’s, with excursions to the assassination attempt on reggae musician Bob Marley, as well as the country’s own clandestine battles during the cold war. James cites influences as diverse as Greek tragedy, William Faulkner, the LA crime novelist James Ellroy, Shakespeare, Batman, and the X-Men. 

A recipient of many literary awards, James was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1970. He graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in Language and Literature, and from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania in 2006 with a masters in creative writing. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and teaches English and creative writing at Macalester College. 

James will talk about "writing from history," specifically Caribbean history, and will also read from his works.

Mr. James' Athenaeum presentation is the 2017 Golo Mann Lecture and is sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies.

J. T. Rogers is an award-winning playwright whose works have been seen across the U.S. and the world. His latest play Oslo was sold at Lincoln Center Theater in 2016 and reopens on Broadway in the spring of 2017. He is the only American playwright to have two plays debut at the National Theatre, London, with Blood and Gifts (National Theatre, London; Lincoln Center Theater, Drama Desk Award Nominee, and Lucille Lortel Award Nominee) and The Overwhelming (National Theatre, London and Roundabout Theatre, NYC). Rogers’s other plays include White People (Off Broadway with Starry Night Productions); and Madagascar (SPF Festival in NYC and Melbourne Theatre Company).

As one of the original playwrights for the Tricycle Theatre of London’s The Great Game: Afghanistan, he was nominated for an Olivier Award. His works have been staged throughout the United States and in Germany, Canada, Australia, and Israel, and are published by Faber and Faber and Dramatists Play Service.

He is a 2012 Guggenheim fellow in playwriting and is under commission from Lincoln Center Theater and the Royal National Theatre. Recent awards include, NEA/TCG and NYFA fellowships, the Pinter Review Prize for Drama, the American Theater Critics Association’s Osborne Award, and the William Inge Center for the Arts’ New Voices Award. Rogers serves on the board of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and holds an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. 

Photo credit: R. Ashley

View Video: YouTube with J.T. Rogers

Lee Jussim is a social psychologist and former chair of psychology at Rutgers University. He led the Best Practices in Science Group at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2013-2015). His book Social Perception and Social Reality: Why Accuracy Dominates Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and Bias (Oxford University Press) received the American Publisher’s Association award for best book in psychology of 2012. He is a co-founder of the Heterodox Academy, which strives to increase viewpoint diversity in academia.

In addition to continuing his work on stereotypes, prejudice, and social perception, his current research focuses on the scientific study of how scientific processes lead to erroneous conclusions, and identifying processes that limit and rapidly correct such errors, and lead to more valid conclusions.

Replay: CMC YouTube Channel

Free Food (For Thought) Podcast

Camille Griep '99 is the author of Letters to Zell and New Charity Blues; she is also a senior editor at the Lascaux Review. She graduated from CMC with a dual degree in biology and literature. After a career in corporate communications, Griep has devoted herself to writing. Yu Shun Lai '96 is the author of Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu; she is also a literary editor at the Tahoma Literary Review and the Los Angeles Review. 

Along with publishing professionals Rachel Kahan and Kim Jones, the evening will feature readings by novelists Griep and Lai and a moderated conversation regarding the panelists' recent experiences with publishing.

This literary panel discussion at the Athenaeum is co-sponsored by CMC's Center for Writing and Public Discourse (CWPD).

View Video: YouTube with Publishing Panel

Birol A. Yesilada is a professor of political science and chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. An expert on Turkish politics and the European Union, he is the author of EU-Turkey Relations in the 21st Century, Islamization of Turkey Under the AKP Rule, and The Emerging European Union, among others.

Yesilada has been an invited policy consultant at various departments of the U.S. government, the Council on Foreign Relations, the RAND Corporation, Booz Allen Hamilton, the Nathan Associates, Barclays Capital, and the World Bank; he is also an academic associate of the Atlantic Council. In 2003, the White House invited him to take part on a commission that drafted the new constitution of Afghanistan.

In his Athenaeum talk, Yesilada will examine how Turkey, once a model of democratic development, fell apart in front of the world’s eyes. What are the underlying causes of the breakdown of democracy in Turkey and what are the likely consequences of recent political developments for Turkey’s place in the European Union and NATO?

View Video: YouTube with Birol Yesilada

Cornell William Brooks is the 18th president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). A civil rights attorney, social justice advocate, and ordained minister, Brooks upholds the mission of the NAACP to secure political, educational, social and economic equality for all Americans. His vision is an NAACP that is multiracial, multiethnic, and multigenerational.

A graduate of Head Start and Yale Law School, Brooks considers himself “an heir” of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in Georgetown, South Carolina, he earned a B.A. with honors in political science from Jackson State University, a Master of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology, where he was a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar; and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and member of the Yale Law and Policy Review. 

Brooks served a judicial clerkship with then-Chief Judge Sam J. Ervin III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He also worked as a staff attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and as Executive Director of the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington. In 1998, honoring his grandfather’s 1946 bid for Congress, Brooks ran as the Democratic nominee for Congress for Virginia’s 10th District – advocating for public education, affordable healthcare, and fiscal responsibility.

Immediately prior to joining the NAACP, Brooks led the Newark-based New Jersey Institute for Social Justice as president and CEO. During his tenure there, the Institute passed a constitutional amendment, bail reform, “Ban the Box,” foreclosure reform, and prison re-entry legislation, which The New York Times hailed as “a model for the rest of the nation.”  Brooks also produced an award-winning documentary on criminal justice.

Mr. Brooks is CMC's 2017 MLK Commemorative Speaker and his talk is co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund.

View Video: YouTube with Cornell William Brooks

Food for Thought: Podcast with Cornell William Brooks

The Claremont Chamber Choir will perform its 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 21 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.

Audio clips of the choir's previous performances are available online.

A complete playbill will be available at the concert.

Given a choice between three important humanitarian public health charities, where would you decide to donate your money? And how would you decide? Maybe based on need? Or maybe lives saved? How about cost-effectiveness? Or economic impact? 

Using outcomes and metrics of impact and cost effectiveness, students from Professor Andrew Schroeder’s Phil 180 class, "Health, Measurement, and Justice," will lobby for the important global public health areas of deworming, anti-malaria, and food fortification efforts worldwide. Specifically, they will pitch for a charity that distributes deworming pills to children in Uganda, one that supports food fortification efforts in Zimbabwe, and one that distributes bed-nets to guard against malaria in Malawi.

Come hear pitches advocating for each of these programs and cast a vote of support—which will actually translate into a monetary donation—for your preferred group. 

Your vote counts!

View Video: YouTube with Global Health Charities

Mark Landler has covered American foreign policy for The New York Times since the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2008, first as diplomatic correspondent, and since 2011, as White House correspondent. In 24 years at the The Times, Landler has been the newspaper's bureau chief in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, European economic correspondent, and a business reporter in New York. 

Mr. Landler’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by CMC’s Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies.

View Video: YouTube with Mark Landler

As a biochemist, Professor Haushalter will share insights into the development of antiretrovirals, which have transformed HIV infection from a terminal illness into a chronic, manageable medical condition. In particular, the latest advances in antiretroviral therapy will be highlighted including the use of these potent medications to prevent transmission of HIV. Finally, the hopes for a cure for HIV will be put into the context of current research in this field. 

Haushalter holds a B.A. in chemistry from Rice University and a Ph.D. in chemical biology from Harvard University. He completed his postdoctoral studies as a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellow at the University of California San Diego. Haushalter is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biology and the Associate Dean of Research and Experiential Learning at Harvey Mudd College, where he has been on the faculty since 2003. The focus of his research and teaching is the biochemistry of HIV. Haushalter serves on the board of directors of Foothill AIDS Project and holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the City of Hope National Medical Center, where he is a collaborator on an interdisciplinary project to develop a gene therapy approach to treating HIV-AIDS.

Professor Haushalter talk is in recognition of World AIDS Day.

View Video: YouTube with Kurt Haushalter

Ambassador Nirupama Rao served in the Indian Foreign Service from 1973 to 2011. A career foreign service officer for 40 years, she served in various world capitals, including Washington, Beijing, and Moscow. She was Indian Foreign Secretary from 2009 to 2011. During her diplomatic career she served in several posts including as the first woman spokesperson of the Indian Foreign Office, as the first woman ambassador from India to China, and the first woman Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. Rao served as ambassador of India to the United States from 2011 to 2013. 

Rao is currently a senior fellow in international public affairs at the Watson Institute at Brown University.

Ambassador Rao's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Nirupama Rao

Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Pierson’s teaching and research includes the fields of American politics and public policy, comparative political economy, and social theory. His commentary on national affairs has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Review of Books. His most recent books are American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (Simon and Schuster, 2010), both co-authored by Jacob Hacker of Yale University.

A prolific writer, Pierson's other recent books include Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (Yale University Press, 2005), with Jacob Hacker; Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (Princeton University Press, 2004), and The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism (Princeton University Press, 2007), co-edited with Theda Skocpol. Pierson is also the author of Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (Cambridge 1994), which won the American Political Science Association's 1995 prize for the best book on American national politics. His article Path Dependence, Increasing Returns and the Study of Politics won the APSA’s prize for the best article in the American Political Science Review in 2000, as well as the Aaron Wildavsky Prize for its enduring contribution to the field of public policy in 2011. He has served on the editorial boards of The American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, and The Annual Review of Political Science. From 2007 to 2010 he served as chair of U.C. Berkeley's political science department.

View Video: YouTube with Paul Pierson

Syaru Shirley Lin is a member of the founding faculty of the master’s program in global political economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She currently teaches political science at the University of Virginia and offers courses on theories of international political economy and cross-Strait relations. Lin graduated cum laude from Harvard College and earned her masters and Ph.D. from the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong.

Lin's most recent book, Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Interests in Taiwan's Cross-Strait Economic Policy (Stanford University Press, 2016) explores how, as Taiwan has become increasingly dependent on mainland China economically, its policies toward China have fluctuated between liberalization and restriction. This study uses a framework that links national identity and economic interest to explain the ongoing debate over Taiwan’s cross-Strait economic policy and the oscillations this debate has produced

Lin was previously a partner at Goldman Sachs, where she was responsible for private equity and venture capital investments in Asia. In that capacity, she spearheaded the firm’s investments in many technology start-ups and was a founding board member of Alibaba Group and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. Prior to her work in private equity and venture capital, she specialized in the privatization of state-owned enterprises in mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Lin’s current board service includes Goldman Sachs Asia Bank, Langham Hospitality Investments, and Mercuries Life Insurance. Appointed by the Hong Kong government, she is a member of the Hong Kong Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation. She also advises Crestview Partners, a private equity fund based in New York, and the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, a Virginia-based foundation that supports the development of new therapeutic medical technology. 

Professor Lin's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Syaru Shirley Lin