Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

John K. Roth is the Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College, where he taught for more than forty years and was the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights). In the mid-1980s, he joined Gordon Bjork and the late Ward Elliott to establish CMC’s Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program. In 1988, Roth was named U.S. National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 

Roth is the author or editor of more than fifty books, including The Failures of Ethics (2015), Sources of Holocaust Insight (2020), Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, and Endangered American Democracy (2023), and Stress Test: The Israel-Hamas War and Christian-Jewish Relations (forthcoming 2025). He has been Visiting Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa, Israel, and his Holocaust-related research appointments have included a Koerner Visiting Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in England as well as an appointment as the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

An honorary member of the Claremont McKenna College Alumni Association, Roth has received its George C. S. Benson Distinguished Achievement Award. The holder of several honorary degrees, he has also received the Holocaust Educational Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award for Holocaust Studies and Research.

Professor Roth’s presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights where he remains an active and engaged advisory board member.

Andrew Sinclair ‘08 is an Assistant Professor at Claremont McKenna College.  He completed his PhD at Caltech before teaching at NYU and returning to CMC.  He has conducted extensive research on primary election reforms and serves as the polling director at CMC’s Rose Institute.

Professor Sinclair's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at CMC. 

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. Her first novel, When the World Was Steady (1995), and her book of novellas, The Hunters (2001), were both finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; and her second novel, The Last Life, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and Editor’s Choice at The Village Voice. Her novel, The Emperor’s Children (2006), was a New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post Best Book of the Year. All four books were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She is also the author of a collection of nonfiction personal essays, Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write
An Autobiography through Essays (2020). Messud has been awarded Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and children. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family. 

Professor Leland de la Durantaye is a critic, translator and professor. He taught at the École Normale Supérieure and at Harvard for many years and now lives in Los Angeles, where he is currently Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College. His journalism and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The London Review of Books, Bookforum, Artforum, The Believer, Cabinet, and others. De la Durantaye is also a translator from the French and Italian; his translation of the Jacques Jouet novel Upstaged (2011) was a finalist for the PEN Best Translated Book of the Year. His nonfiction books are Style is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov (2007), Giorgio Agamben: A Critical Introduction (2009), and Beckett’s Art of Mismaking (2016). He has also published a novel, Hannah Versus the Tree (2018).

Messud's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Literature Department and the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World at CMC.

Andrew P. Miller is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other Middle East issues. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs from 2022 to 2024 and worked at the National Security Council on Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinians during the Obama Administration.

Prior to this, he served as a Senior Policy Advisor to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, covering the Middle East and North Africa, counterterrorism, political-military affairs, and intelligence. From 2017 to 2020, Miller was the Deputy Director for Policy at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and a Nonresident Scholar in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program.

Miller’s previous government assignments included serving as the Director for Egypt and Israel Military Issues on President Obama’s National Security Council from 2014 to 2017, where he was involved in deliberations regarding U.S. security assistance to Egypt and Israel and Middle East Peace, among other issues. He also worked at the U.S. Department of State in a variety of intelligence and policy roles, including in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff, and at the U.S. Embassies in Cairo and Doha. Miller earned a B.A. in Political Science from Dickinson College and an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Mr. Miller's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

Marlies Hollevoet (°1997) is a Belgian composer, currently residing in the USA. Their music has been performed by numerous ensembles and musicians, including the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the Virago Symphonic Orchestra, Brightwork Ensemble, and the Lilith ensemble. They were recently awarded with the prestigious B.A.E.F Music Fellowship 2022-2023 and the University of Rochester’s Sproull Fellowship to pursue their doctoral studies in composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.
Marlies’ music is often based on obsessive rhythms and abstract structures, but never without a sense of humor. They are currently exploring extramusical aspects of performances and how to integrate them into the composition and score and try to create music in an openness to different genres, disciplines and artforms.
Marlies has studied under the guidance of composers Wim Henderickx, Steven Prengels, Bob Morris, Carlos-Sanchez Gutierrez, David Liptak and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.

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Floris Van der Veken (°1998) is a Belgian saxophonist and performance artist currently residing in Rochester, NY. Commended by Augusta Read Thomas for “his deep musicality and a kaleidoscope of characters and moods,” his performances are characterized by a strong emphasis on contemporary repertoire and interdisciplinary collaboration. The search for new repertoire has led Floris to premiere concertos by composers such as Augusta Read Thomas, Marlies Hollevoet, and Wim Henderickx.

Besides performing, Floris is an active researcher and improviser. His research includes the use of extramusical elements by Boulez and Stockhausen, providing theoretical background for interdisciplinary collaborations and improvisations. Floris is currently pursuing a PhD in Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music, after having obtained the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in saxophone performance, studying there under Dr. Chien-Kwan Lin. For his work with his saxophone students, Floris was awarded the 2022-2023 Graduate Teaching Assistant Prize.
 

Melvin Rogers is the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Brown University. He is the author of The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality and the Ethos of Democracy (Columbia University Press) and the award-winning book The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought (Princeton University Press). He is also the editor of John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Ohio University Press), co-editor of African American Political Thought: A Collected History (University of Chicago Press), and co-editor of the book series: Oxford New Histories of Philosophy. He received the 2023 James W. C. Pennington Award from Heidelberg University for his scholarship.

Professor Rogers' Athenaeum presentation kicks off CMC's "Baldwin at 100" conference, and is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies and the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World at CMC.

Governor Spencer J. Cox is a husband, father, farmer, recovering attorney, and Utah’s 18th governor. He served as the 2023-2024 chairman of the National Governors Association.

Gov. Cox has a long track record of public service, serving as a city councilmember, mayor, county commissioner and state legislator before being appointed as Utah’s lieutenant governor in 2013. He was sworn in as governor on Jan. 4, 2021.

During his first term in office, Gov. Cox has cut $1.1 billion in taxes, implemented landmark changes in water law, water conservation and infrastructure planning, locked in record funding for education and teachers, enacted universal school choice, and secured funds for affordable housing. A long-time advocate for suicide prevention and mental health resources, he’s become a national voice on protecting youth from the harms of social media. He also signed early education and workforce program funding, launched the One Utah Health Collaborative, and expanded opportunities for women, diverse communities and those living in rural parts of the state.

With a focus on solutions, Gov. Cox promotes respect in politics and innovation in government, works across party lines to find common ground, and regularly participates in hands-on service projects. These elements are the foundation of his NGA Chair’s Initiative, “Disagree Better: Healthy Conflict for Better Policy.”

A sixth-generation Utahn, Gov. Cox was born and raised in Fairview, a town of 1,200 in the center of the state. He met First Lady Abby Palmer Cox at age 16 and they married after he returned from serving a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mexico. He attended Snow College, Utah State University, and the Washington and Lee University School of Law, then clerked for U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart and worked at a Salt Lake City law firm. Several years later, Gov. Cox and First Lady Cox moved back to Fairview to raise their four children – Gavin, Kaleb, Adam, and Emma Kate – on the family farm. The governor, first lady and Emma Kate currently reside in the Kearns Mansion, also known as the Governor’s Mansion, in Salt Lake City.

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David Dreier '75 was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1980, where he served until January 2013. In Congress, he became the youngest — and the first Californian — chairman of the Rules Committee, playing a pivotal role in shaping all legislation for House debate. Dreier, a former chair of Tribune Publishing and a passionate advocate for press freedom, founded the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation to build the first public memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., celebrating press freedom and honoring slain journalists. Dreier received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College and his M.A. in American government from Claremont Graduate University the following year. He serves as a trustee at CMC.

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Aditya Pai ‘13 is a trial attorney and recent Democratic congressional candidate for CA-45, a perennially ‘purple’ district in north Orange County. The campaign’s platform was Service Over Politics: anti-corruption, pro-choice, with a focus on helping working families afford the American dream.

Pai’s public service includes three years of youth organizing at the Orange County Red Cross, over 2,000 hours of pro bono legal aid to low-income tenants, youth mentorship through Big Brothers Big Sisters, and current board and leadership roles with Dev/Mission, Habitat for Humanity Orange County, and the Dreier Roundtable. His work has garnered service awards from the California Bar, Harvard, the Urban Land Institute, and the Disneyland Resort.

Pai earned a B.A. Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Claremont McKenna College, where he served as student body president, and M.Phil. and J.D. degrees in history and law from Cambridge University and Harvard Law School, under the supervision of Nobel Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen. Previously, he was manager of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, focusing on fiscal analysis.

Pai grew up in Irvine, CA and is a naturalized American citizen from Bombay. He documented his campaign at paiforcongress.com/documentary and now writes about politics and culture at paipolitics.substack.com

This Civility Award and subsequent discussion is sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable at CMC.

The Claremont Colleges Debate Union (CCDU), directed by John Meany, is a 5C program centered at Claremont McKenna College; it is among the largest and most successful college debating societies in the nation. The Debate Union offers three major debate and communication programs – intercollegiate competitive debating, public/professional communication training and events, and educational outreach. Programming is national and international. Students may participate in any or all programming.

Members of the CCDU attend 25 or more debate tournaments each year. CCDU teams have won 5 national championships (varied formats) and placed second five times, ranked in the nation’s top ten in 24 of the past 29 years, and received many, many hundreds of team and individual awards at major national and international competitions. Additionally, the CCDU's Public Debate Program has served hundreds of thousands of middle and high school students in the US and in 39 other countries, primarily representing socially and economically marginalized communities. CCDU students produce text and video curricular materials, conduct educational research, direct instructional seminars for secondary school teachers and students, manage tournament operations, and judge at competitions. The Public Debate Program's US middle school national debate championship is now the largest debate tournament competition in the country.

Adrian Flynn '25 is an International Relations and Public Policy dual major from New York City, and was a Woolley Athenaeum Fellow in the 2023-2024 academic year. Alongside his interest in international space policy and science diplomacy, Adrian is an artist and guitarist.

Professor Ward E.Y. Elliott (1937 - 2022) was the Burnet C. Wohlford Professor Emeritus of American Political Institutions. He joined the CMC faculty in 1968, and had the rare distinction of serving under all five CMC Presidents. A scholar of American government, constitutional law, the Supreme Court, and the economy, Elliott held three degrees from Harvard, and served for two years as Order of Battle Officer in the U.S Army's 1st Cavalry Division at the Korean DMZ. His interests extended into smog prevention and Shakespeare; a prolific author, he published numerous articles in journals including Ethics, Shakespeare Quarterly, Oxfordian, Tennessee Law Review, Computers in the Humanities, and the Transportation Quarterly. Alongside John Roth and Gordon Bjork, he co-founded CMC's Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program in 1985. Even after his retirement in 2014, Elliott remained active at CMC, attending his last Athenaeum dinner in October 2022. He passed away on December 6, 2022 at the age of 85 and is missed by generations of CMC faculty, staff, and students.