2024-2025 Program Calendar
FALL SEMESTER 2024
This is an overview of the Athenaeum's Fall 2024 public calendar -- please note that all information provided here is subject to change without notice.
Detailed information (including registration, sponsorship, and event/talk titles) is available for upcoming events here. Athenaeum events will be posted there as detailed information becomes available. You may view and register for currently open events here.
Events generally open to the CMC Community for registration approximately two weeks in advance. Space permitting, they open to the broader 7C community approximately one week in advance. Unless otherwise noted, registered guests may arrive at 5:30 PM for a reception, and dinner will be served at 6:00 PM. Unless otherwise noted, the program itself, which is open to the public (no registration required), begins at 6:45 p.m. in the Eggert Dining Room in the Athenaeum.
Further information about the Athenaeum's policies is available here.
| Monday, September 9 | Mike Madrid, senior political advisor, The New California Coalition; co-founder, The Lincoln Project; Senior Fellow, UC Irvine School of Social Ecology; author, The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy (2024) |
| Tuesday, September 10 | The Race for the White House 2024: the Presidential Debate (Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump), featuring student and faculty commentary from the Kravis Lab for Civic Leadership (programming at 5:00, dinner at 5:30, debate begins at 6:00) - Registered attendees from the CMC community only |
| Wednesday, September 11 | Ryan Ogliore '00; associate professor of physics, Washington University in St. Louis; deputy principal investigator, Interdisciplinary Consortium for Evaluating Volatile Origins (ICE Five-O); member, Planetary Science Advisory Committee, NASA. "Attack of the Space Volcanoes!" |
| Monday, September 16 | Helena Bottemiller Evich '09, founder and editor-in-chief, Food Fix; former national food and agriculture reporter, POLITICO; former Washington correspondent, Food Safety News; George Polk Award Winner; two-time James Beard Award Winner. |
| Tuesday, September 17 | Jonathan Gienapp, Associate Professor of History and Law, Stanford University; member, Historians Council on the Constitution, Brennan Center for Justice; author, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (2018) and Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique (2024). |
| Wednesday, September 18 | Ruben Piñuelas, law student, University of Michigan; self-exonoree, Pelican Bay State Prison; Executive Board Member, National Justice Impact Bar Association. |
| Thursday, September 19 | Dean Logan, Los Angeles County Registrar/Recorder-County Clerk; chief election official for the largest and most complex county election jurisdiction in the US; past president, California Association of Clerks and Election Officials (CACEO); board of directors, National Election Center; advisor, MIT Election Data Science Lab. |
| Monday, September 23 | YooJin Jang, Assistant Professor of Violin, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester; Co-founder, The Kallaci String Quartet; Winner, 2017 Concert Artists Guild Competition; First Prize winner, 2016 Sendai International Music Competition; other competition wins include the 4th International Munetsugu Violin Competition, the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, the Michael Hill International Competition, and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition. "Athenaeum Concert Series: Musical Conversations" |
| Tuesday, September 24 | Robbie Shilliam, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University; author, German Thought and International Relations (2009),The Black Pacific (2015), Race and the Undeserving Poor (2018), Decolonizing Politics (2021), and Squalor (2023); past vice president, International Studies Association; co-editor, Postcolonial International Studies book series. |
| Wednesday, September 25 | Stuart Eizenstat, Special Adviser on Holocaust Issues, US Department of State; former United States Ambassador to the European Union; former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs; and Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade; former White House Chief Domestic Policy Advisor; author, President Carter: The White House Years (2018), and The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements That Changed The World (2024) (lunch at 12:00 noon, program at 12:20 p.m.) |
| Wednesday, September 25 | Faris Cassell, author, The Unanswered Letter: One Holocaust Family's Desperate Plea for Help (2020, winner of the National Jewish Book Award), and Inseparable: The Hess Twins' Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America (2023); Marion Lewin, one of the subjects of Inseparable, and one of the last living twins to survive the Holocaust. |
| Monday, September 30 | Ganesha Rasiah, Chief Strategy Officer, HP, Inc.; Member, World Economic Forum; former Senior Vice President of Operations, Cisco; former Partner at Deloitte Consulting; Ryan Patel, futurist, prolific commentator on business, political economy, and corporate governance; host, "The Moment with Ryan Patel." |
| Tuesday, October 1 | Richard Ross, photographer, distinguished research professor of art, UC Santa Barbara; creator, Juvenile-in-Justice (2012 and ongoing); author, Museology (1989), Gathering Light (2000), and Waiting for the End of the World (2004), among other collections; grantee, National Endowment for the Arts, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, MacArthur, Public Welfare Foundation, Center for Cultural Innovation; Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellow. |
| Wednesday, October 2 | Laura Craft, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Portfolio Sustainability Strategies, Heitman; co-chair, Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) Innovation Affinity Group; member, Urban Land Institute (ULI) Greenprint's Performance Committee; Past advisor, United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) and Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB); Ryan Patel, futurist, prolific commentator on business, political economy, and corporate governance; host, "The Moment with Ryan Patel." |
| Thursday, October 3 | John Owens, Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; former clerk, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (lunch at 12:00 noon, program at 12:20 p.m.) |
| Friday, October 4 | Amit Ahuja, Associate Professor of Political Science, UC Santa Barbara; expert on India's multiethnic elections; author, Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movements (2019); co-editor (with Devesh Kapur), Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State (2022). (lunch at 12:00 noon, program at 12:20 p.m.) |
| Monday, October 7 | Juliet Johnson, Professor of Political Science, McGill University; expert on the politics of money and identity, particularly in post-communist Europe; President, Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; author, A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System (2000) and Priests of Prosperity: How Central Bankers Transformed the Postcommunist World (2016); lead editor, Religion and Identity in Modern Russia: The Revival of Orthodoxy and Islam (2005); Elected Fellow, Royal Society of Canada. |
| Tuesday, October 8 | Policy debate sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable: "Resolved: The United States Should Maintain Current Levels of Legal Immigration"; moderator: Aditya Pai '13, former congressional candidate. For the affirmative: Jason Riley, columnist and commentator, The Wall Street Journal; senior fellow, Manhattan Institute; author, Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders (2008), Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberal Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (2014), False Black Power? (2017), Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell (2021), and The Black Boom (2022). For the negative: Sohrab Ahmari, columnist and editor; co-founder, Compact; contributing editor, The Catholic Herald, columnist, First Things; former editor, New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, former senior writer, Commentary; author, The New Philistines (2016), From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith (2019), The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos (2021), and Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty -- and What to Do About It (2023). |
| Wednesday, October 9 | Kenneth Miller, Don H. and Edessa Rose Professor of State and Local Government, CMC; Director, Rose Institute of State and Local Government; author, Direct Democracy and the Courts (2009), and Texas vs. California: A History of Their Struggle for the Future of America (2020); Rose Institute Student Researchers. "California's 2024 Ballot Initiatives" |
| Wednesday, October 16 | Michelle Dowd, memoirist and writer; professor of journalism, Chaffey College; contributor, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, TIME Magazine, Alpinist (among others); author, Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult: A Memoir (2023) |
| Thursday, October 17 | Masha Gessen, journalist, activist, author, translator; staff writer, The New Yorker; opinion columnist, The New York Times; former editor, Vokrug Sveta (Russia's oldest magazine); distinguished professor, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY; contributor, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and more; Hannah Arendt Award winner; George Polk Award winner; author, Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace (2004, National Jewish Book Award Winner), Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene (2008), Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century (2009), The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012), Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot (2014), Brothers: The Road to An American Tragedy (2015), Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Autonomous Region (2016), The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017, National Book Award Winner for Nonfiction), Never Remember: Searching for Stalin's Gulags in Putin's Russia (2018), and Surviving Autocracy (2020). |
| Monday, October 21 | Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-1997); author, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 (2007, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner), The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems (2010), and Summer Snow: New Poems (2020); Brenda Hillman, Olivia Filippi Professor Emerita of Poetry, Saint Mary's College of California; author, Practical Water (2009, LA Times Book Prize), Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (2013, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize), Extra Hidden Life, among the Days (2018, Northern California Book Award), In a Few Minutes Before Later (2024), and Three Talks: Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality (2024). |
| Tuesday, October 22 | Memo Akten, artist, musician and creative technologist; Assistant Professor of Computational New Media Art, UCSD; Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica winner; exhibitor, The Grand Palais, The Barbican, The Royal Opera House, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Sonar Festival, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai Ming contemporary Art Museum; co-founder, The Mega Super Awesome Visuals Company and Marshmallow Laser Feast. |
| Wednesday, October 23 | Michael Chambers, co-founder and former CEO, Aldevron (biotechnology, cell & gene therapy); board of directors, Sarepta Therapeutics; "100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs," Goldman Sachs. |
| Monday, October 28 | Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, writer, essayist, and memoirist; author, The Undocumented Americans (2020, shortlisted for National Book Award for Nonfiction), and Catalina: A Novel (2024) |
| Tuesday, October 29 | Steph Cha, crime fiction writer and critic; author, Follow Her Home (2013), Beware Beware (2014), Dead Soon Enough (2015), and Your House Will Pay (2019, LA Times Book Prize for Mystery winner). |
| Monday, November 4 | Jack Pitney, Roy P. Crocker Professor of American History and Politics, CMC; author, The Politics of Autism: Navigating the Contested Spectrum (2015), Is Congress Broken? The Virtues and Defects of Partisanship and Gridlock (2017, with William F. Connelly, Jr., and Gary J. Schmitt), Defying the Odds: The 2016 Elections and American Politics (2017, with James W. Caeser and Andrew E. Busch), After Reagan: Bush, Dukakis, and the 1988 Election (2019), Un-American: The Fake Patriotism of Donald Trump (2020), and Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics (2021, with Andrew E. Busch). |
| Tuesday, November 5 | The Race for the White House 2024: Election Night Coverage |
| Wednesday, November 6 | Pae White, artist and sculptor; exhibitor, Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, MoMA, Tate Modern, Oslo Opera House, Los Angeles International Airport Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others; sculptor, Qwalala (CMC campus) |
| Monday, November 11 | Robin Bartlett '67, former 1st Lieutenant, 1st Platoon, A Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), Vietnam War, 82d Airborne Division; author, Vietnam Combat: Firefights and Writing History |
| Tuesday, November 12 | Mary Sue Milliken, chef and restaurateur; owner, City Café, CITY Restaurant, Border Grill, Ciudad; creator and co-host, Too Hot Tamales, Tamales World Tour; cookbook author, City Cuisine (1989), Mesa Mexicana (1994), Cantina: The Best of Casual Mexican Cooking (1996), Cooking with Too Hot Tamales (1997) and Mexican Cooking for Dummies (1999/2002) |
| Wednesday, November 13 | John Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy; co-founder, CMC's PPE Program; Founding Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, CMC); Ina Levine Invitational Scholar, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; U.S. National Professor of the Year (1988); author, Ethics During and After the Holocaust: In the Shadow of Birkenau (2005), The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (2010), The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities (2015), Losing Trust in the World: Holocaust Scholars Confront Torture (2017), and Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, and Endangered American Democracy (2023, with Leonard Grob). |
| Monday, November 18 | Andrew Sinclair '08, Assistant Professor of Government, CMC; author, Nonpartisan Primary Election Reform: Mitigating Mischief (2015, with Michael R. Alvarez); contributor to the Journal of Public Policy, the British Journal of Political Science, the California Journal of Politics & Policy, the Routledge Handbook of Primary Elections, and The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Persuasion, among others. |
| Tuesday, November 19 | Claire Messud, novelist; Joseph Y. Bae and Janice Lee Senior Lecturer on Fiction, Harvard University; Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellow; author, The Emperor's Children (2006), The Woman Upstairs (2013), The Burning Girl (2017), Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography in Essays (2020), A Dream Life (2022), and This Strange Eventful History (2024); Leland de la Durantaye, Professor of Literature, CMC; author, Style is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov (2007), Giorgio Agamben: A Critical Introduction (2009), Beckett's Art of Mismaking (2016), and Hannah Versus the Tree (2018). |
| Wednesday, November 20 | Floris van Der Veken, saxophonist and performance artist, 2020 Laureate of the 'Oranjebeurs' for music; assistant-conductor of l'Orquestra del Conservatori Superior de Música de les Illes Balears; Marlies Hollevoet, composer and pianist, BAEF Music Fellow. "Athenaeum Concert Series: Transmitting Rituals in Music" |
| Thursday, November 21 | Melvin Rogers, Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Associate Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Brown University; author, The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (2008), and The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought (2023). |