Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest, is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Founded in 1988, Homeboy Industries employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of individuals who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.  

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Fr. Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights from 1986 to 1992. At that time, Dolores Mission was the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.  

Fr. Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he along with parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings. This commitment led to the founding of Homeboy Industries in 1988. 

Fr. Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. He also wrote Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (2017) and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness (2021). His most recent work is Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times (2024).

The recipient of many awards, Fr. Boyle has received the California Peace Prize and has been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, President Obama named Fr. Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. Homeboy Industries was the recipient of the 2020 Hilton Humanitarian Prize validating 32 years of Fr. Greg Boyle’s vision and work. Most recently he was one of the recipients of the 2024 The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor. 

 

A native New Yorker, Theodore "Ted" Thomas received his early dance training at the Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center in Queens, N.Y. and then attended La Guardia High School of Performing Arts in New York City. A scholarship student at the Alvin Ailey American Dance School, The Joffrey Ballet School, and The Dance Theater of Harlem, he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance performance from SUNY Purchase College Conservatory of Dance. There he earned various awards for outstanding achievement, most notably, the University’s Presidential Scholarship as well as the Harry Belafonte Award for the Arts. Upon graduation Thomas received the Thayer Fellowship Award for Professional Potential in the Arts. Thomas earned his Master of the Arts in Dance in Higher Education from New York University. He worked for two years as a full-time faculty member, advisor, and artist in residence at Barnard College where his duties included teaching modern and ballet classes, mentoring undergraduate dance students, choreographing in-faculty concerts, and setting and overseeing works by major choreographers.

As a professional dancer, Thomas’ career has performed with The Paul Taylor Dance Company, where he was featured in the 2008 Academy Award Nominated documentary film “Dancemaker.” He also was a recipient of the Princess Grace Award when he was with the Elisa Monte Dance Company. He has danced with The Nikolais & Louis Dance Company, Ballet Hispanico of New York, and Rebecca Kelly Ballet among others.

Currently, Thomas is a Connecticut State and ABT® National Training Curriculum Certified Dance Teacher. He has worked as a theater/production manager, choreographer, and teacher for the Wilton, Greenwich, and New Canaan, Connecticut Public School systems and he co-owns and operates a ballet school and regional not-for-profit ballet company in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Archana Venkatesan is Professor of Religious Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis. Her research interests lie in the translation of early and medieval Tamil poetry into English and in the intersection of text, visuality, and performance in the temples of Tamil Nadu. Her books include The Secret Garland: Āṇṭāḷ’s Tiruppāvai and Nācciyār Tirumoḻi (2010), A Hundred Measures of Time: Nammāḻvār’s Tiruviruttam (2014), and with Crispin Branfoot, In Andal’s Garden: Art, Ornament and Devotion in Srivilliputtur (2015). Her book, Endless Song: Nammāḻvār’s Tiruvāymoḻi (2020), received the 2021 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize from the American Literary Translators Association and the 2022 AK Ramanujan Translation Prize from the Association of Asian Studies. She is currently working on a project on nine interconnected Viṣṇu temples in Tamil Nadu known as the Nava Tirupati.

Her research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and Fulbright. She was also a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow from 2014-2019. In 2022, Venkatesan was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She founded the Religions of India Initiative at UC Davis, which advocates for the academic study of India’s diverse religious traditions.

Professor Venkatesan’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Kutten Lectureship in Religious Studies at CMC.

(Parents Dining Room)

Wendy Lower is the John K. Roth Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and directs the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College. She also chairs the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has published several books on the Holocaust in Ukraine including Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (2005), and is co-editor (with Ray Brandon) of Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization (2008). Her work on gender and the Holocaust, Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been translated into 23 lanuages. Lower's The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, A Holocaust Massacre Revealed (2021) received the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category and was short-listed for the Wingate Prize and long-listed for a PEN. In 2025 she received a fellowship from the Swedish Research Council and Lund University to complete her new co-authored study (with Professor Jonathan Petropoulos) on Himmler’s last days and the historical fates of genocidaires. Lower will compare iconic photos of the Holocaust with those of the Armenian genocide to raise new questions about the role of witnesses and the rise of the  humanitarian photographer in the 20^th century.

Professor Lower's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College and is the Center’s annual lecture dedicated to Armenian Studies.

Lloyd Dixon has extensively studied insurance, compensation, and liability issues related to natural disasters. For California's Fourth Climate Change Assessment, he investigated the impact of changing wildfire risk on the state's residential insurance market. He also serves as the California State Senate's designee to the governing board of the California Earthquake Authority. Dixon holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and bachelor's degrees in general engineering and political science from Stanford University.

Dr. Dixon's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at Claremont McKenna College.

Jonah Goldberg P'25 is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Dispatch. He has been an LA Times columnist for two decades. A senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, he holds the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty.

Before founding The Dispatch, Goldberg was a senior editor and writer at National Review for 20 years. A former Fox News contributor, Goldberg is currently a CNN political commentator and appears regularly on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Goldberg is the author of three New York Times bestsellers, the most recent of which was Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy.

Chris Temple ‘12 is a film director and the founder of Optimist, a non-profit film studio in Los Angeles. He is best known for directing the feature documentaries Living On One Dollar, Salam Neighbor, and Five Years North. His films have been released globally by Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and PBS, and have premiered at Tribeca, DOCNYC, Full Frame, AFI Docs, & MountainFilm. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Variety, and The Atlantic, and has helped raise over $91 million dollars for poverty alleviation and refugee support efforts. He’s been honored with the 2016 Muslim Public Affairs Council Annual Media Award; recognized alongside Bill Gates and Angelina Jolie as one of the top 100 visionary leaders of 2015 by YPO’s Real Leaders Magazine; and accepted by the U.S. State Department into the American Film Showcase.

Zach Ingrasci '12 is a film director and the co-founder of Optimist, a production company committed to making documentaries that nurture optimism and create impact. Best known for directing the feature documentaries Living On One Dollar, Salam Neighbor, This Is Not Financial Advice and Five Years North, Zach’s films have been released by Netflix, Amazon Prime, National Geographic, PBS and HBO. Every Optimist film is accompanied by an impact campaign to create measurable outcomes. His projects have raised over $119 million for the films’ causes and have changed over 606,869 lives.

Kevin W. McNeely '75 is the president and CEO of the KHR Family Fund and the longtime former Executive Director of the Sonoma International Film Festival, where he served for over 17 years. Under his leadership, the festival grew into a celebrated platform for independent film, cultural exchange, and community engagement. Now serving as Director Emeritus, Kevin continues to support the arts through philanthropy and creative advocacy. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Claremont McKenna College and brings decades of experience in film production, festival curation, and nonprofit leadership.

Meta Valentic PO '94 began her career as the youngest member of the DGA Assistant Director's Training Program. Her assistant director credits include “Nixon”, “Castle”, “Lost”, (nominated for 2 Directors Guild Awards) “Bones”, “The Dropout”, and the Emmy and Golden Globe winning musical comedy “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”. Most recently, she was the Unit Production Manager on the successful action drama “9-1-1” for ABC. Valentic has been Producer’s Guild Diversity Workshop Fellow, and a Sundance Film Financing Intensive Fellow. She is a judge and conference panelist at the annual Austin Film Festival. She spearheaded the Producers Guild of America’s Mentorship Program and helped create new Mentoring pathways for producers. Valentic grew up in Washington D.C. and attended The Sidwell Friends School, where she developed a lifelong love of politics and Quaker values (and believes they are not mutually exclusive). 

Zoe Pinczower '17 is an accomplished post-production professional with nearly seven years of experience at Netflix, where she currently coordinates post-production for animated series. Her background includes roles at Disney ABC Television and CBS Television Studios, as well as research and media production during her time at Claremont McKenna and Scripps College. 

Jeffrey Ding teaches in the Political Science Department at George Washington University. He was previously a fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, part of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. He has also conducted research at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and Oxford's Centre for the Governance of AI. 

Ding received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He is an expert on great power competition and cooperation in emerging technologies, the political economy of innovation, and China's scientific and technological capabilities.

Professor Ding will deliver the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies' 2025 Arthur Adams Family Distinguished Lecture on International Affairs. 

In his book "The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It," Corey Brettschneider, constitutional law and political science professor at Brown University, articulates how John Adams waged war on the national press of the early republic, overseeing numerous prosecutions of his critics. In the lead-up to the Civil War, James Buchanan colluded with the Supreme Court to deny constitutional personhood to African Americans. A decade later, Andrew Johnson urged violence against his political opponents as he sought to guarantee a white supremacist republic after the Civil War. In the 1910s, Woodrow Wilson modernized, popularized, and nationalized Jim Crow laws. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon committed criminal acts that flowed from his corrupt ideas about presidential power. 

But Brettschneider also shows that these presidents didn’t have the last word—citizen movements brought the United States back from the precipice by appealing to a democratic understanding of the Constitution and pressuring subsequent reform-minded presidents to realize the promise of “We the People.”  His book ultimately is about citizens—Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Daniel Ellsberg, and more—who fought back against presidential abuses of power. 

Their examples give us hope about the possibilities of restoring a fragile democracy.

Adapted from https://vivo.brown.edu/display/cbrettsc

Professor Brettschneider will deliver the 2024-2025 Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World's Lofgren Lecture Program on American Constitutionalism.

Edward F. O’Keefe is the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. He previously spent two decades in broadcast and digital media at ABC News, CNN, and NowThis, during which time he received a Primetime Emmy Award for his work with Anthony Bourdain, two Webby Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and a George Foster Peabody Award for ABC’s coverage of 9/11. 

A former fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, he graduated with honors from Georgetown University. 

Mr. O'Keefe's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Adapted from https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Loves-of-Theodore-Roosevelt/Edward-F-OKeefe/9781982145682