Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Admiral Harry B. Harris was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be U.S. Ambassador to South Korea and served from July 2018 to 2021. Previously, he served 40 years in the U.S. Navy, retiring in June 2018. The first Japanese-American to hold four-star rank in the Navy, he commanded the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Sixth Fleet. He amassed over 4,400 flight hours, including over 400 combat hours. 

Admiral Harris graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and earned a master’s degrees from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council of American Ambassadors.

Admiral Harris will deliver the 2025 Memorial Lecture in Honor of General William W. Crouch ’63, former Chair of the Keck Center Board of Governors.

Angela Vossmeyer is the Rothacker Family Associate Professor of Economics and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. Vossmeyer has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve and other central banks. She is the articles' editor for the Journal of Financial Crises and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her research, with the help of numerous student researchers at the Financial Economics Institute and Lowe Institute of Political Economy, has been published in highly regarded journals in economics, finance, and statistics, and widely cited by academic, news, and policy outlets.

She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Irvine. 

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Omar Dajani is the Carol Olson Professor of International Law at McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific and co-director of the law school’s Global Center for Business & Development. He is recognized as a leading expert on legal aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In 1999, Dajani was recruited to serve as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel, ultimately participating in the summits at Camp David and Taba. He then joined the office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), where he worked on peacebuilding initiatives and played a lead role in marshaling and organizing international efforts to support Palestinian legal and political reforms. Dajani has continued since that time to work as a consultant on a variety of legal infrastructure development and conflict resolution projects in the Middle East and elsewhere – for institutions including the U.S. Department of State, the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF), and the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue.

Widely published in legal and policy journals, Dajani ’s scholarly work explores the links between international law, legal and political history, and contract and negotiation theory. His current research focuses on what’s next for the states of the Middle East. He is exploring the status and protection of ethnic and religious minorities and considering the extent to which federalism and other forms of decentralization offer solutions to ethno-national conflicts in the region.

Dajani holds a B.A. from Northwestern University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Before he began his work as legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team and his academic career at McGeorge School of Law, he clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked as a litigation associate at the Washington D.C., office of Sidley & Austin. 

Professor Dajani's Athenaeum presentation is part of the “Middle East: What Now?” series, co-sponsored by the President’s Leadership Fund.

According to the Washington Post (February 14, 2025), John Kani is “Perhaps most famous now for playing T’Chaka in the movies “Captain America: Civil War” and “Black Panther,” [but] Kani has been a theatrical force for over half a century. Born in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, he gravitated to acting, joining forces in the 1960s with playwright Athol Fugard.” His celebrated acting career stretches five-plus decades, from his native South Africa to across the world. 

Onstage, he gave Tony and Obie Award-winning performances in the plays Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island — which he also co-wrote. Both shows enjoyed American and South African revivals. Kani also received an Olivier Award nomination for My Children! My Africa!

Among Kani’s dozens of films are Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Murder Mystery, and Disney’s 2019 remake of The Lion King (voicing Rafiki).

As a playwright, Kani’s art has also traveled the world. Nothing But the Truth — a play that is now studied in South African schools — won three Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards, an Excellence in International Theatre Award, five Naledi Theatre Awards, and the Olive Schreiner Prize, with productions mounted around the world.

Countless awards and honors have been bestowed on Kani throughout his career, among them honorary doctorates from the University of Durban Westville, Rhodes University, The University of Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University; the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation Award; and the Fleur du Cap Theatre Award for lifetime achievement. In 2005, he received the Order of Ikamanga from the President of the Republic of South Africa, recognizing his contribution to the struggle for the liberation of his country through his work in the arts.

Kani is a patron of the Market Theatre Foundation; in 2015, the Foundation named the main theatre in his honor. In 2017, Whites Road in Port Elizabeth, South Africa’s city center was renamed John Kani Road. The following year, he took home a gold medal from the Kennedy International Committee on the Arts. Kani is also the recipient of the prestigious Sortugui Afrique Cinema Honor in Burkina Faso. Most recently, he was awarded the Voices in Freedom Award by Shared Interest, in New York. Previous recipients include Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Adapted from: https://mlasa.com/actors/john-kani/

Steven Pressman was born and raised in Los Angeles and received an undergraduate degree in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist for many years, both as a reporter and editor at a variety of publications in Los Angeles, Washington DC, and San Francisco.

As a filmmaker, Pressman directed and produced 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus, which premiered on HBO in 2013 and received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Historical Programming. His following film, Holy Silence, premiered on PBS in 2020. Pressman’s third film, The Levys of Monticello, has won numerous awards while screening at more than 100 film festivals around the country since its release in 2022.  His latest film, Moses Ezekiel: Portrait of a Lost Artist, began playing at film festivals in 2024. Pressman is currently in production on his next film Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie.

Mr. Pressman’s Athenaeum lecture is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College.

SPECIAL SCHEDULE: Dinner will be served at 5:50 pm. Film will be screened during dinner starting at 6:00 pm and will be followed by comments from Steven Pressman and audience Q & A. 

Beth Murphy’s connection to Afghanistan spans over two decades. She first filmed in the country in December 2001, just after the fall of the first Taliban regime, and has since chronicled both the struggles and triumphs of Afghan women and girls through the critically acclaimed documentaries Beyond Belief (Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance Channel, Netflix) and What Tomorrow Brings (HotDocs, PBS-POV), as well as through reporting for many national and international news outlets. Following the most recent Taliban takeover, Murphy returned to Afghanistan to document the rapidly unfolding crisis, bearing witness to the devastating impact on women and girls.

Murphy is founder of Principle Pictures. Her honors include: Emmy Awards, World Press Photo Award, Overseas Press Club Award, Scripps Howard Award, National Headliner Award, Webby Award, RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award, AWRT’s Gracie Allen Award, One Shared World International Outreach Award, and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards.

Her podcast series with UNICEF, Hidden Heroes, is about women and girls finding solutions and saving lives.

Ms. Murphy is the keynote speaker for the 2025 Women and Leadership Alliance.

SPECIAL SCHEDULE: Dinner will be served at 5:45 pm. Film will be screened during dinner starting at 6:00 pm and will be followed by comments from Beth Murphy and audience Q & A. 

Award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author, and changemaker Beth Murphy has built her career on the belief that empathy fuels action—and that storytelling is one of the most powerful tools to inspire both. She is founder of Principle Pictures. Her honors include: Emmy Awards, World Press Photo Award, Overseas Press Club Award, Scripps Howard Award, National Headliner Award, Webby Award, RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award, AWRT’s Gracie Allen Award, One Shared World International Outreach Award, and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards.

David Farber is the Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Kansas. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago after which he spent a year working on Capitol Hill. Since then, he has been a professor of history and has published numerous books on American political culture, social change movements, democratic practice, and the history of capitalism. He has been a visiting scholar or lecturer in Japan, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Lebanon, Australia, China, Russia, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Professor Farber will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2024-25 Lerner Lecture on Hinge Moments in History.

Sir Malcolm Evans, KCMG (Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George) and OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), is the Principal of Regents Park College at Oxford University. 

Prior to his role at Oxford University, Sir Malcolm was Professor of International Law at the University of Bristol, where previously he had been Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law. His research interests center on the international protection of human rights, with particular focus on the prevention of torture and the freedom of religion in recognition of which he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2015. He also works extensively on issues concerning the international law of the sea, including in particular questions concerning maritime boundaries and the protection of human rights at sea. Among his many roles, Sir Malcolm has served as a member and, from 2011-2020, Chair of the United Nations Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture. In 2015 he was appointed a Member of the Panel of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales, then the largest and most wide-ranging public inquiry yet undertaken, which concluded its work in late 2022. He has also served as a member of the Advisory Panel on Freedom of Religion and Belief of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Sir Malcolm read Law at Regent’s Park College (1979-82), returning for doctoral research (1983-87) for which he was awarded the degree of DPhil.  Sir Malcolm holds an Honorary Doctorate from Bangor University and is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. 

 

Rob Henderson is a writer and social commentator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and more. He is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for The Free Press and The Boston Globe. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he earned his undergraduate degree from Yale and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. His research focuses on social class, psychology, and cultural divides.

Shaped by his firsthand experiences, Henderson's memoir has sparked national discussion on class and opportunity, with The Wall Street Journal highlighting his critique of how affluent individuals often promote ideals they do not live by, and The Washington Post describing Troubled as “a mystifying book about hypocrisy.” 

Jon Shields, moderator, teaches American politics and chairs the government department at CMC. He has authored many books on American conservatism including Trump’s Democrats and Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University. Notably, his American Culture Wars class dives deep into matters of marriage, sex, and gender.

Mr. Henderson’s Athenaeum program is co-sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable at CMC.

Murhaf Jouejati, Ph.D., specializes in Syrian and Middle East political affairs—both as an academic and as a practitioner. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Middle East studies and Global Affairs and Chair of the Class of ’55 (both History and Political Science departments) at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Jouejati taught International Relations and Middle East studies at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi (2015-2020); the National Defense University’s NESA Center for Strategic Studies (2005-2015); the George Washington University (2000-2015), and the American University in Washington DC (2003-2005). He was the resident scholar at the Middle East Institute (1998-2000).

As a practitioner, Jouejati served as political advisor to the European Commission Delegation in Damascus (1998-2000); National Program Officer for Syria with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP); Presidential envoy to the Syria-Israel peace talks; and previously advisor to the Syrian peace delegation.

Jouejati holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Utah and an M.A. in Arab area studies from Georgetown University. He is the author of several book chapters and journal articles on Syrian foreign policy and other related Middle East security issues. 

Professor Jouejati's Athenaeum presentation is part of the “Middle East: What Now?” series, co-sponsored by the President’s Leadership Fund.

Civitas Sessions is an Athenaeum lunch series designed to build real-world civic skills and the knowledge needed to live thoughtful, productive lives as responsible community members and leaders. Each session will deliver practical knowledge and discuss how the subject matter applies to important current issues. With a welcoming ‘come-as-you-are’ atmosphere, the Civitas Sessions focus on the stuff you need to know before it becomes the stuff I wish I had known… 

Ioannis (Yannis) Evrigenis, the Alice Tweed Tuohy Professor of Government and Ethics, teaches courses on ethics and international relations and the social contract, and is the author of books and articles on a wide range of topics in political thought, including Fear of Enemies and Collective Action, for which he received the Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science. Before joining CMC, he taught at Tufts University, where he served as Director of the International Relations Program and co-founded Tufts' Civic Studies major, along with Erin Kelly and Peter Levine, with whom he also co-taught Introduction to Civic Studies. In addition to grants and fellowships for his research, he has received several grants for civic education and has led a number of civics seminars for K-12 teachers, early-career scholars, and community college faculty. Evrigenis is the incoming director of The Open Academy at CMC.

Vernon C. Grigg III is a seasoned trial lawyer and educator dedicated to education, inclusion, and public service. Holding degrees from Yale Law School (J.D.), the London School of Economics (G.SC.), and the University of Michigan (BA), Grigg has served as CEO & President of Up with People, where he led a global team through challenging times. His legal career includes representing diverse clients, from government officials to Fortune 100 companies, and significant pro bono work in civil rights. He has taught at Golden Gate University School of Law and has international experience, including groundbreaking roles in South Africa and Israel. Certified in intergroup dialogue, Grigg aims to advance CMC’s mission in civic engagement and civic leadership as executive director of Kravis Lab. 

Nyree Gray is the Vice President for Human Relations and Chief Diversity Officer at CMC and Isabela Cabrera ’27, 2024-25 is the ASCMC Diversity and Inclusion Chair.

Attendance at this event is limited to CMC students. 

Shanna Rose is the Alice Tweed Tuohy Associate Professor of Management and Government and director of CMC's public policy major. Her areas of expertise include American politics, public policy, and federalism and she teaches courses on public policy analysis, empirical methods, and state and local politics and policy.

Rose is the author of Responsive States: Federalism and American Public Policy (with Andrew Karch; Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Financing Medicaid: Federalism and the Growth of America’s Health Care Safety Net (University of Michigan Press, 2013). Her latest book manuscript, on the politics of minimum wage policy in the United States, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. 

Rose holds a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in political economy and government from Harvard University. 

Kenneth P. Miller is the Don H. and Edessa Rose Associate Professor of State and Local Government and director of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at CMC. He has written extensively on state politics and policy, direct democracy, constitutional law, courts, and political polarization. 

Miller is the author or co-author of several books and articles regarding state and national politics, policy, and law. His book Texas vs. California: A History of the Struggle for the Future of America (Oxford 2020) explores why the nation’s two largest states have polarized politically, and how they have assumed leadership of the nation’s red and blue state blocs. His book Direct Democracy and the Courts (Cambridge 2009) analyzes the initiative process within the checks and balances system.

Miller received his B.A. from Pomona College, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Eric Helland is the William F. Podlich Professor of Economics and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of over 50 books and articles on topics in law and economics ranging from bounty hunters to judicial elections. His current research focuses on elections, the judiciary, and mass litigation.

This Athenaeum program is the featured 2024-25 Jerome H. Garris Dialogue Series at CMC, modeling constructive dialogue across different perspectives.