Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Suzanne Young Murray professor at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University, where he also teaches the history of race and public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is the former director of the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the leading research facilities dedicated to the study of the African Diaspora. His academic work focuses on racial criminalization and the origins of the carceral state. He is the author of “The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America” (Harvard University Press, 2010), which won the 2011 John Hope Franklin Best Book Award in American Studies. His articles and scholarship have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, New Yorker, and the Washington Post.  

Muhammad is a native of the South Side of Chicago. He graduated with a B.A. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and received his Ph.D. in American history from Rutgers University, specializing in 20th century United States and African-American history.mHe also holds honorary doctorates from The New School (2013) and Bloomfield College (2014).

Professor Muhammad's Athenaeum talk is part of the Race and Law Enforcement in America series.

View Video: YouTube with Khalil Muhammad

Andrew Jacobs has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1995. Over the years, he has covered a variety of beats, from the New York City Police Department and criminal courts, to the American South, Styles and New Jersey politics. He is currently based in New York City and covers a number of topics, including Brazil and China's relationship with the rest of the world.

Jacobs was part of a team of reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the September 11 attacks in Manhattan, and in 2009 he was part of a team of reporters that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting related to the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal.

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

View Video: YouTube with Andrew Jacobs

Food for Thought: Podcast with Andrew Jacobs

Steven E. Schier is the Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science at Carleton College. He is the author or editor of 21 books, including the prize-winning Panorama of a Presidency: How George W. Bush Acquired and Spent His Political Capital (M.E. Sharpe, 2008).

He has analyzed U.S. politics in national newspaper columns and television appearances and is the lead author of Presidential Elections with David Hopkins, Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, now in its 14th edition from Rowman & Littlefield.

Professor Schier’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government.

View Video: YouTube with Steven Schier

John J. Pitney, Jr. is Roy P. Crocker Professor of American History and Politics at Claremont McKenna College where he teaches courses on Congress, interest groups, political parties, and mass media. A leading expert on the structure and practice of American politics, Pitney is a widely published author or co-author of six books on American politics, including The Art of Political Warfare (2001) and The Politics of Autism: Navigating The Contested Spectrum (2015). He is currently writing a book on the 1988 presidential campaign. In addition to his books, Pitney has published numerous scholarly articles and short essays, and is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines. He is routinely featured on NPR and other television and radio programs. 

Pitney has not only shaped the study of government at Claremont McKenna College for nearly 30 years, he has also helped shape government itself through his many roles, including as the acting director for the Research Department of the Republican National Committee (1990-1991) and as the Senior Domestic Policy Analyst for the US House Republican Research Committee, among other important appointments. 

Pitney holds a B.A. in political science from Union College, where he was co-valedictorian, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. He received the CMC Presidential Award in 2013 and was named one of the 300 best professors in the United States by the Princeton Review in 2012. 

View Video: YouTube with John J. Pitney, Jr.

Food for Thought: Podcast with John J. Pitney, Jr.

Andre Clewell is a noted writer, lecturer, teacher, and practitioner in the field of ecological restoration. He has taught at Florida State University, owned and operated a restoration company, and helped found the Society for Ecological Restoration. His book, Ecological Restoration Principles Values and Structure of an Emerging Profession is used as a text world-wide in restoration and conservation study.

Marc Brody ’83 is a National Geographic grantee and expert for his work to conserve giant pandas and restore their habitat in the Wolong Nature Reserve, for which he is a senior advisor. For over 20 years, Brody has designed and managed a wide range of environmental programs in China, focusing on resource management and planning and stewardship education.

Clewell, in collaboration with Brody, restores fragmented giant panda habitat in Sichuan, China. Following internationally recognized standards and procedures developed by the Society for Ecological Restoration, Panda Mountain, founded by Brody, is working alongside a coalition of Sichuan government agencies and research institutes, Chengdu area universities, and villagers from Wolong to initiate a long-term process to protect the region's biodiversity, including wild panda habitats. 

View Video: YouTube with Andre Clewell and Marc Brody '83

Linda Hervieux is an author, journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Daily Beast and nbcnews.com. A native of Lowell, Massachusetts, she lives in Paris, France. FORGETTEN: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, At Home and At War was published in 2016.

In telling the story of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, Linda Hervieux offers a vivid account of the tension between racial politics and national service in wartime America, and a moving narrative of human bravery and perseverance in the face of injustice.

Ms. Hervieux is the Veteran's Day Athenaeum speaker for 2016.

View Video: YouTube with Linda Hervieux

Food for Thought: Podcast with Linda Hervieux

Panelists include Andrew Busch, Crown Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at CMC, whose work has chronicled parties and elections in modern politics; Emily Pears, assistant professor of government at CMC, whose research specialization lies in nineteenth-century federalism; and Jean Schroedel, professor of politics and policy at CGU whose scholarship examines women's rights, Native Americans, and voting access.  

Michael Andrew Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who has written for the Los Angeles Times for three decades, during which time he has served as a financial and political writer, an investigative reporter, a technology writer and editor, and a foreign correspondent in Africa and Russia.

Hiltzik’s latest book, out of many, Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex, has just been published by Simon & Schuster. His book Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century (2010), was a New York Times best-seller. Currently serving as the L.A. Times’ business columnist, he also blogs on economics, business, and public policy at the Economy Hub blog on the newspaper's website.

A graduate of Colgate University and Columbia University, Hiltzik received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for articles exposing corruption in the entertainment industry. His other awards for excellence in reporting include the 2004 Gerald Loeb Award for outstanding business commentary and the Silver Gavel from the American Bar Association for outstanding legal reporting.

View Video: YouTube with Michael Hiltzik

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

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

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

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

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

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