Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

John “Jack” Stratton Hawley is the Claire Tow Professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. His most recent books on India’s bhakti traditions are A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement (Harvard, 2015), Sur’s Ocean (with Kenneth Bryant, Harvard, 2015), and a poem-by-poem commentary called Into Sur’s Ocean (Harvard Oriental Series, 2016). A Storm of Songs received the Coomaraswamy Book Prize of the Association for Asian Studies in 2017.

Hawley has directed Columbia University’s South Asia Institute and has received multiple awards from NEH, the Smithsonian, and the AIIS. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016-17 he was in India as a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow, working on a project called “The New Vrindavan.”

Professor Hawley’s Athenaeum presentation is part of the Devotion in South Asia series co-sponsored by the Kutten Lectureship in Religious Studies at CMC.

Christian Rudder is one of the founders of OKCupid, one of the largest dating sites in the world, which was sold to IAC in 2011. He still runs it day-to-day, while also heading a small data-mining team that scours the digital universe for meaningful trends on important sites. The original outlet for Rudder’s research took place on OKCupid’s blog, OKTrends, which was not only read by millions of people, but also changed the way companies approach data as a media-relations strategy. His research and findings have been featured in The New York Times, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and were the subject of a New Yorker feature.  

A native of Arkansas, Rudder graduated from Little Rock High School and attended Harvard College where he majored in mathematics. Rudder joined SparkNotes in October 1999, a few months after its founding. Rudder was the creative voice of TheSpark.com, which was the viral content arm of SparkNotes during the site's early rise to popularity. He became TheSpark's creative director in March 2001. Soon after the site's sale to Barnes & Noble, Rudder and the SparkNotes founders left and began working on OkCupid, which launched in February 2004.

Photo credit: Victor G. Jeffreys II

Patrick Chamorel is Senior Resident Scholar at Stanford in Washington, where he teaches international and comparative politics. Chamorel has written extensively on U.S. and European politics. His most recent research has focused on US strategic, political, and economic relations with Europe and the EU, American and European political and business elites, the impact of globalization on governments, business and civil society, Euro-skepticism in America, and U.S. and French presidential elections. He is a regular commentator in the international press, radio, and TV.

In addition to Stanford, he has taught at the University of California (Berkeley and Santa Cruz), George Washington University, and Claremont McKenna College where he was the Crown Visiting professor of Government from 2002-05.

In the 1990's, Chamorel was a senior advisor to the French Prime Minister among other advisory roles in the government. He is a graduate of Sciences-Po in Paris where he also earned his Ph.D. in political science. In addition, he holds a Master in Public Law from the University of Paris.

Professor Chamorel's Athenaeum presentation is sponsored by the Salvatori Center at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Patrick Chamorel

David Day, professor of psychology and academic director of the Kravis Leadership Insitutute, will make a luncheon presentation during the program celebrating his formal installation as the inaugural Steven L. Eggert ’82 P’15 Professor of Leadership and George R. Roberts Fellow. Before coming to CMC in 2016, Day was a professor of organizational behavior and Woodside Chair in Leadership and Management at the University of Western Australia Business School.

Day is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, International Association of Applied Psychology, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and has core research interests in the areas of leadership, identity, and leadership development. In 2010 he was awarded the Walter F. Ulmer Research Award from the Center for Creative Leadership (USA) for outstanding, career-long contributions to applied leadership research.

Evgeny Finkel studies political violence, East European, and Israeli politics. More specifically, he is interested in how institutions and individuals respond to violence, crisis, and rapid change and works extensively at the intersection of political science and history. He is the author of Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (2017). He is currently working on a book project that focuses on Holocaust survivors who fought in the 1948 War in Israel/Palestine and simultaneously working on projects that analyze the causes and impact of political violence in Eastern Europe and Israel/Palestine. His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, East European Politics and Societies, Democratization, and several other journals and edited volumes.

An assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, Finkel was born in the former Soviet Union and grew up in Israel where he received his B.A. in political science and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He went on to receive a  Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where his dissertation won the American Political Science Association 2013 Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best dissertation in comparative politics.

Professor Finkel’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Evgeny Finkel
 

Clifford Welch is a professor of contemporary Brazilian history at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo.

Jay Bellissimo P’20 is the general manager and chief revenue officer of the Watson & Cloud Platform at IBM where he has been since 1991. He is responsible for the go-to-market strategy across IBM’s core cognitive and cloud-based technologies, including large transformation engagements, channels, business partners and major client engagements.

Since he IBM in 1991, Bellissimo has held numerous management and leadership positions. Prior to his current role, he was the general manager for IBM Cognitive Solutions where he led the customer engagement and product strategy for IBM’s portfolio of cognitive-based solution technologies across 18 industries. He also served as the GM for customer experience for IBM Watson. He initiated the first wave of cognitive computing commercialization in key industries, such as healthcare, public sector and financial services, which would eventually be adopted by 36 countries and in five different languages and also led IBM’s Global SAP Consulting business. In this role, he led the strategy, sales and managed the client relationships, and operations. 

Bellissimo holds a B.A. in Political Science from St. Michael’s College.

Mr. Bellissimo’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE).
 

Food for Thought: Podcast with Jay Bellissimo P'20

A former Peace Corps volunteer and public school social studies teacher, Jonathan Zimmerman P'18 is a professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania. His scholarship has focused broadly on the ways that different peoples have imagined and debated education across time and space. He has authored books about sex and alcohol education, history and religion in the curriculum, Americans who taught overseas, and historical memory in public schooling. His most recent work, co-authored with Emily Robertson, The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools (University of Chicago Press), examines campus politics in the United States, including controversies over diversity, sexual assault, and “political correctness.”

Zimmerman’s academic work has appeared in the Journal of American History, the Teachers College Record, and History of Education Quarterly. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books, and other newspapers and magazines. Before teaching at Penn, he taught for for 20 years at New York University, where he won NYU's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008 and where he also served as chair of the department of Humanities and Social Sciences in NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Zimmerman holds a Ph.D. in history from the Johns Hopkins University. 

Author of several books, he has received book and article prizes from the American Educational Research Association, the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and the History of Education Society, where he served as president in 2009–2010. 

Professor Zimmerman's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund.

View Video: YouTube with Jonathan Zimmerman P'18
 

At 24, Kevin Breel is a successful writer, comedian and activist.

And he suffers from depression.

His 2015 debut memoir “Boy Meets Depression” achieved critical acclaim. Forbes Magazine called it “a small book well worth reading” and NPR dubbed it “honest and compelling.” His TED Talk “Confessions of a Depressed Comic” has amassed over 4 million views world-wide making it one of the most viewed TED talks along with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

As a comedian, Breel has headlined theaters and colleges with his unique, story-telling style. As an activist for mental health, he has been a guest speaker colleges across North America, including Harvard University, Yale, and MIT and has also spoken at Fortune 500 companies and for the government of Canada.

A recipient of multiple awards for social activism around mental health, Breel has helped fundraise millions of dollars for mental health awareness campaigns, has helped to advise political reform around mental health issues, and is one of the National Ambassadors for the prestigious Bell LET’S TALK Campaign. 

Achill Schürmann is a professor of mathematics at one of Europe's oldest universities in Rostock. His research and teaching lie at the intersection of classical topics like algebra and geometry and modern applications of computational mathematics. He has held positions at Peking University (Bejing), University of Magdeburg (Germany), University of Bordeaux (France), and TU Delft (Netherlands), among others.

Among his areas of interest and research are polyhedras, geometrical objects in space, generalizing the notion of a polygon in the plane. The properties of polyhedra were studied by the ancient Greek mathematicians and philosophers, and include the famous Platonic solids—tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron, named for the numbers of their faces. In modern day mathematics, polyhedra are studied for their beautiful geometry, as well as for their numerous applications in the digital age.

During the Fall 2017 semester, Schürmann is visiting CMC as a Podlich Distinguished Fellow. His Athenaeum lecture is complemented by an introductory half-semester course at CMC on the mathematical theory of polyhedra and its applications in economics and social choice theory.

Ryan McMahon ’08 is a multi-platinum music producer and songwriter. After graduating from Claremont McKenna College with an economics-accounting degree, he went on to write and produce hit songs including “Shut Up & Dance” with Walk The Moon and “I Got You” with Bebe Rexha. He has also written songs for The Chainsmokers, Halsey, and Tove Lo, among others. In 2016, he signed a record deal with LA Reid at Epic Records as an artist with his group Captain Cuts.

At the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, McMahon’s "Shut up and Dance" won Top Rock Song, Top Radio Song, and Song of the Year.


 

Zachary Courser '99 is the research director of the Dreier Roundtable and a visiting assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. He has published articles on the emergence of the Tea Party movement, and is a contributor and editor of the forthcoming volume Parchment Barriers: Political Polarization and the Limits of Constitutional Order. Courser has taught political science courses at a number of institutions, including the University of Virginia, Claremont McKenna College, Boston College, and Washington and Lee University. In fall 2016, Courser established CMC's Policy Lab, an innovative new undergraduate course focused on public policy analysis of real world problems in coordination with a Washington DC think tank. He also has taught and researched internationally at Sciences Po Lyon in France, and worked as a senior program director and fellow for the Legatum Institute in London. He has experience working in Washington, DC, both on Capitol Hill and as the interim director of Claremont McKenna College’s Washington Program. He is a regular political commentator on NPR affiliate KPCC's AirTalk program in Los Angeles, and frequently gives talks on American politics.

Ali Asani is professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures at Harvard University where he was both an undergraduate and graduate student. A specialist of Islam in South Asia, Asani's research focuses on Shia and Sufi devotional literature and traditions in the region.

Asani served as the director of Harvard’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program from 2010-2016. He serves on the faculty of the departments of South Asian Studies and African and African-American Studies. He teaches a range of courses covering South Asian and African languages and literatures as well as courses on various aspects of the Islamic tradition including “Understanding Islam and Contemporary Muslim Societies” and “Religion, Literature, and the Arts in Muslim Cultures,” among others. He also teaches about Muslim communities in the West.

Asani is recipient of the Harvard Foundation medal for his outstanding contributions to improving intercultural and race relations. He is also the recipient of Harvard's Petra C. Shattuck prize for excellence in teaching.

Professor Asani's Athenaeum presentation is part of the "Devotion in South Asia" series co-sponsored by a curricular development grant from the Dean of Faculty's Office at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Ali Asani

George Anders is a contributing editor at Forbes magazine, and the author of five business book including The New York Times bestseller Perfect Enough. Earlier in his career, he spent two decades as a top feature writer for The Wall Street Journal, where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. In 2011, he served as a founding editor of Bloomberg View, writing editorials on a wide range of economic and social issues.

Anders is a frequent public speaker, including at colleges and corporations. He has spoken at Texas Tech, the University of Central Florida, Harvard, Stanford, and the London School of Economics. He also has been a guest speaker at Google, Microsoft, Rolls-Royce PLC, and various industry conferences in Arizona, Florida, California and Peru. He is prominent on digital-media platforms as a LinkedIn Influencer and a four-time top writer on Quora. 

View Video: YouTube with George Anders

A renowned sex and relationship educator, Kate McCombs believes that meaningful conversations coupled with accurate information can help us create a healthier and more joy-filled world.

In her presentation, McCombs will focus not only mindful choices around safer sex practices, but also offer tips on how to build a sexy and safe toolkit without compromising health or personal boundaries.

McCombs earned a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor’s in Anthropology from U.C. Berkeley. In her approach to healthy relationships, she combines, in her words, “ the upstream problem-prevention approach of public health with anthropology exploration of cultural context."

Ms. McCombs' Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by ASCMC, the Title IX Office, CARE, and the emPOWER Center and is part of the CMC Advocates' Safe Sex Week of programming.

View Video: YouTube with Kate McCombs