Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Chloe Martinez is the program coordinator of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse and a lecturer in the department of religious studies. She is a scholar of South Asian religions and a poet.

Bhaven Mistry is the assistant director of the Murty-Sunak Quantitative and Computing Lab and visiting assistant professor of mathematics. His specialty is in the field of biomathematics.

Jessamyn Schaller is associate professor of economics in the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance. Her research focuses on health, labor, public, and demographic economics. 

Diana Selig is the Kingsley Croul Associate Professor of History and George R. Roberts Fellow. She is a scholar of twentieth-century U.S. history and currently serves as the faculty advisor for Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Aseema Sinha is the Wagener Family Professor of Comparative Politics and George R. Roberts Fellow. Her research interests relate to political economy of India, India-China comparisons, International Organizations, and the rise of India as an emerging power.  

Lori Freedman conducts sociological and bioethical research with Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a program of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at UCSF. In addition to being a Greenwall Faculty Scholar alumna, she is an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine at the National Academy of Medicine.

Freedman investigates the ways in which reproductive health care is shaped by our social structure and medical culture. Her book, Willing and Unable: Doctors’ Constraints in Abortion Care, is a qualitative study of the challenges to integrating abortion into physician practice. Unexpected findings from those physician interviews led her to research and write about the intersection of religion and health care, especially in the case of Catholic hospitals, with an interest in how conscientious objection in medical practice operates at the institutional level. Through qualitative interviews with Catholic hospital physicians and patients as well as national surveys of American women, her research lends insight into how institutional policies for reproductive care can be hidden from view, malleable, and/or obstructive to patient autonomy and wellbeing.

(Source: Lori Freedman and https://greenwall.org/faculty-scholars-program/our-faculty-scholars/lori-freedman-phd)

Since 1985 Larry Mantle P’23 has hosted AirTalk, the longest continuously running daily talk program in the history of Los Angeles radio, airing weekdays 10 a.m. to noon.  AirTalk guests are leaders in politics, entertainment, science, health, social debate, history, and the arts and are coupled with the telephone participation of a sophisticated public radio audience. Mantle also hosts the weekly movie review and interview program Film Week Fridays at 11 a.m. and Saturdays at noon.

His awards include the Radio/TV News Association of Southern California Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, the Radio Journalist of the Year from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2012, the Mark Twain Award from The Associated Press in 2013, and the Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2010.

This program is co-sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable whose mission it is to inspire public service.

Food for Thought: Podcast with Larry Mantle P'23

John Mauceri is a Grammy, Tony, Olivier, Emmy award-winning conductor and educator. He was appointed to the faculty of Yale University when he was 22 years old and made his professional orchestral debut at 27. He is the former music director of four opera companies, three symphony orchestras, and has music directed three productions on Broadway.

Mauceri worked with Leonard Bernstein for 18 years, editing and conducting the composer’s major premieres at Mr. Bernstein’s request. In 1991, the Los Angeles Philharmonic created the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for him where, for sixteen seasons, he conducted an unprecedented 325 concerts at the 18,000-seat venue to a combined audience of four million people.

Regarded as the world’s leading performer of the music of Hollywood’s émigré composers as well as composers outlawed by the Third Reich, he has taken the lead in the restoration and performance of many kinds of music with over 70 albums to his name.

His third and latest book, The War on Music, published by Yale University Press, was cited as a “Best Summer Read” by the Financial Times and was a Los Angeles Times “Top Ten Best Seller.” John McWhorter of The New York Times wrote, “It’s a gorgeous thing—every sentence. I am in awe.” His previously published books are Maestros and Their Music—the Art and Alchemy of Conducting and For the Love of Music—A Conductor’s Guide to the Art of Listening (both published by Knopf).

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

Jay Cordes is a data scientist who co-authored the book The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science with Pomona economist Gary Smith to help guide future data scientists away from the common pitfalls he saw in the corporate world. The book won the 2020 PROSE award in the category Popular Science and Popular Mathematics. He also co-authored The Phantom Pattern Problem, also with Gary Smith. Through his work, Cordes hopes to improve the public's ability to distinguish truth from nonsense.

Cordes earned a degree in mathematics from Pomona College and more recently received a Master of Information and Data Science (MIDS) degree from U.C. Berkeley.

(This event was originally scheduled for April 2, 2020.)

Food for Thought: Podcast with Jay Cordes

Peter Mansoor, Ph.D., is the General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair of Military History at The Ohio State University is a frequent media commentator on national security affairs. A distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he earned his doctorate from The Ohio State University. He assumed his current position in 2008 after a 26-year career in the U.S. Army that included two combat tours, and which culminated in his service as executive officer to General David Petraeus in Iraq. He is the author of Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq and Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War. His most recent work is the co-edited volume The Culture of Military Organizations.

Evan Wollen (LTC, retired) served as a field artillery officer in the US Army, retiring in October 2016 after 22 years in service. A World War I historian, Wollen has served as a professor of history at the United States Military Academy, head coach for the women’s Army rugby team, and deputy director of the US Army’s Combat Studies Institute. Currently a freelance writer, Wollen is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His last job on active duty was as 35th professor of military science at CMC. Wollen is a graduate of Amherst College.

Colonel Mansoor’s Athenaeum visit is supported by the CMC Chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society, a national organization headquartered in Washington, DC, with a mission to launch students into the fields of foreign policy and national security. This event commemorates 2022 Veterans' Day in recognition of all retired and active service men and women. 

Serhii Plokhii (Plokhy) is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. A leading authority on Eastern Europe and Russia, he has published extensively on the international history of the Cold War. His award-winning books include The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy.

Professor Plokhii will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2022-23 Lerner Lecture on Hinge Moments in History.

View Video: You?Tube with Serhii Plokhii

Alex Ehrlich, CEO of startup financial services company Percapita Group, is building an institution that aims to confront the historic lack of diversity in financial services, and to serve well the consumers across America whose economic needs are greatest. 

Ehrlich spent forty years on Wall Street: Starting at Goldman Sachs (1979-2003), he then moved to UBS (2003-09), and finally to Morgan Stanley (2009-20). He served as a managing director of all three companies and led or co-headed numerous large and highly successful businesses. At Morgan Stanley, he chaired the Diversity Council of that firm’s Investment Bank; it was this work that led him to retire from traditional banking, and seek the business model, partners, and capital that would enable Percapita to launch in early 2023.

Ehrlich also serves on the national boards of iMentor and ThanksUSA, and is a Non-Executive Director of Sharegain PLC. He has for many years been a frequent lecturer on culture, leadership, and diversity.

Mr. Ehrlich's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Financial Economics Institute at CMC.

Jesse Washington is a journalist and documentary filmmaker for ESPN’s Andscape, a Black-led media platform dedicated to creating, highlighting, and uplifting the diverse stories of Black identity. He is the co-author of I Came as a Shadow which details the life of the late and legendary Georgetown basketball coach, John Thompson; he is author of the novel Black Will Shoot. Washington is currently writing the autobiography of the sports agent Rich Paul.

With a long career in journalism and writing, Washington has been, since 2015, a senior writer for ESPN's The Undefeated, a platform for exploring the intersections of race, sports, and culture that created the basis for Andscape. He has won a National Journalism Award from the Asian-American Journalists Association, Journalist of the Year award from the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, two feature awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, and a 2019 Associated Press Sports Editors Top 10 award for column writing.

Washington has a B.A. in English from Yale University. A lifelong member of the Baha'i Faith, he notes that he still gets buckets.

Mr. Washington’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

John Fund
John Fund is national affairs columnist for National Review magazine, a contributor to Fox News.com, and an on-air analyst for Newsmax TV. He is an often-quoted expert on the interconnections between politics and economics.

He previously served as a columnist and editorial board member for The Wall Street Journal. for 27 years.  

He is the author or co-author of several books, including Our Broken Elections: How The Left Changed The Way You Vote (2021), Obama's Enforcer: Eric Holder (2014), Who's Counting(2012); and Cleaning House: America's Campaign For Term Limits (1994).

Born in Tucson, Arizona, he worked as a research analyst for the California Legislature in Sacramento before beginning his journalism career as a reporter for the syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. He has reported on foreign affairs from over 40 countries. 

Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, called him "the Tom Paine of the modern Congressional reform movement." He has won awards from the Institute for Justice, The Competitive Enterprise Institute and The Fund for American Studies. 

Gowri Ramachandran
Gowri Ramachandran serves as senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy program. Her work focuses on election security, election administration, and combatting election disinformation.

Before joining the Brennan Center, she was professor of law at Southwestern Law School, in Los Angeles where she taught courses in constitutional law, employment discrimination, critical race theory, and the Ninth Circuit Appellate Litigation Clinic. Her work has been published in Election Law Journal, North Carolina Law Review, and Yale Law Journal online, among others.

She serves on the Ninth Circuit’s Fairness Committee, which considers racial, religious, gender, and other disparities in the administration of justice.

Ramachandran received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from Yale College and a master’s degree in statistics from Harvard University. While in law school, she served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. After graduating from law school in 2003, Ramachandran served as law clerk to Judge Sidney R. Thomas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Billings, Montana.

(Source: https://www.brennancenter.org/experts/gowri-ramachandran)

This event is co-sponsored by the Jerome H. Garris Dialogue Series at CMC with additional support from the Open Academy and the Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America, all at CMC.

Mark Baldassare is president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California ("PPIC"), where he holds the Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Chair in Public Policy. He is a leading expert on public opinion and survey methodology, and has directed the PPIC Statewide Survey since 1998. He is an authority on elections, voter behavior, and political and fiscal reform, authoring ten books and numerous reports on these topics. He often provides testimony before legislative committees and state commissions, and regularly hosts PPIC’s Speaker Series, a public forum featuring in-depth interviews with state and national leaders. Previously, he served as PPIC’s director of research. Before joining PPIC, he was a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of California, Irvine, where he held the Johnson Chair in Civic Governance. He has conducted surveys for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the California Business Roundtable. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Baldassare's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at CMC. 

Timothy Frye is the Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy and professor of political science at Columbia University.      

Frye worked on a cultural exchange program for the United States Information Agency in six cities in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and advised the Russian Securities and Exchange Commission in the 1990s. He directed the Harriman Institute at Columbia from 2009 to 2015 and co-directed a research laboratory at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow from 2011-2022.

Frye is the editor of Post-Soviet Affairs and the author of four books, most recently Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Pushkin House Prize for best non-fiction book about Russia. He will hold the Library of Congress Chair on US-Russian Relations beginning in January 2023.

Frye earned a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from Middlebury College, an M.A. in International Affairs and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. He taught at The Ohio State University for 8 years before he returned to Columbia University in 2006

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

Food for Thought: Podacast with Timothy Frye

Joe Soss is the inaugural Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service at the University of Minnesota, where he holds faculty positions in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the department of political science, and the department of sociology. His research and teaching explore the interplay of politics, inequalities, and public policy.

Soss’s work has focused primarily on how various forms of social welfare and criminal justice governance in the U.S. have intersected with class, race, and gender as intersecting axes of oppression and predation. Soss's co-authored book, Disciplining the Poor (2011), was selected for the 2012 Michael Harrington Award (APSA, New Political Science), the 2012 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award (ASA, Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities), the 2012 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award (American Library Association), and the 2015 Herbert Simon Award (APSA, Section on Public Administration).

In 2016, Soss was honored with the University of Minnesota's campus-wide award for outstanding contributions to graduate education, named a Distinguished University Teaching Professor, and inducted into the UMN Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Soss's current book project, co-authored with Joshua Page, is Preying on the Poor: Criminal Justice as Revenue Racket.

PProfessor Soss's Athenaeum presentation is part of the "Race Across Disciplines" series which explores how different academic disciplines approach research, insights, and findings around race and is supported by CMC's Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America.

Food for Thought: Podcast with Joe Soss

Stephanie Muravchik
Stephanie Muravchik is coauthor, with Jon A. Shields, of Trump’s Democrats, which was published in September 2020 by the Brookings Institution Press. It is a political ethnography of three blue strongholds that flipped Republican in the 2016 election. Her research explores the intersections of politics with class, family, and religion. Her first book was American Protestantism in an Age of Psychology (Cambridge, 2011). She teaches government at Claremont McKenna College.

Jon Shields
Jon Shields is a professor of American politics and chair of the government department at Claremont McKenna College. Shields is the author or co-author of three books on the American right, including Trump’s Democrats (with Stephanie Muravchik)(Brookings, 2020) and Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University (Oxford 2016). His writings have also appeared in a wide range of popular outlets, including the Bulwark, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times.

Previously, he taught at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs and Cornell University, and he is also a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance. 

His latest book on Liz Cheney , on which this talk is based, is co-authored with Stephanie Muravchik.

Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of two poetry collections: Far District and House of Lords and Commons. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others. He is a contributing editor to the literary journals The Common and Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art and teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University.

(Source: http://www.ishionhutchinson.com/)

Mr. Hutchinson’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

Photo credit: Neil Watson