In recent celebrations leading to the end of the 2024-25 academic year, Claremont McKenna College honored distinguished faculty members for their scholarly achievements, inspirational teaching, and decades of meaningful contributions.
“Scholarship and creativity thrive in our community, thanks to the dedication of our faculty,” said Heather Antecol, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of the Faculty, and James G. Boswell Professor of Economics. “Their research and innovations have shaped conversations, challenged ideas, and expanded knowledge. We celebrate the incredible impact of their work.”
CMC President Hiram Chodosh recognized Paul Hurley with the 2024-25 Presidential Award for Merit, one of CMC’s highest honors.
Hurley, the Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy, has served as director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) Program at CMC. He was recently featured in CMC Magazine for his numerous accomplishments and student-centered approach to teaching.
In remarks awarding Hurley with the honor, President Chodosh cited his “extraordinary service and leadership” and key role in “growing the philosophy department here to what I believe is by far the best in liberal arts education and one of the best in any Carnegie classification.”
“As a professor, Paul brings the great questions of philosophy to bear on the great issues of our time, especially anything related to law and policy,” President Chodosh added. “His students love it. And he loves and champions them.”
Here are the rest of this year’s major faculty award winners:
Jon Shields, Professor of Government and Chair of the Government Department
G. David Huntoon Senior Teaching Award
Shields, who joined the faculty in 2008, teaches American politics and is the author of four books on the American right. He has also published broadly both in academic journals and in popular media outlets.
Student nomination: “I only met Professor Shields this semester, and he has already changed the trajectory of my life. He encourages me to pursue my academic and professional passions, and he has opened up the field of political science to someone who was isolated from it. He fosters respectful dialogue, which also challenges our assumptions on class, political, racial, and gender divides. Professor Shields is a true champion of free speech and viewpoint diversity, which is essential in our education.”
Gabbrielle Johnson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Glenn R. Huntoon Award for Superior Teaching
Johnson joined the faculty in 2020 and specializes in the philosophy of psychology—especially perception and social cognition, the nature of social bias, and AI ethics. She teaches “Introduction to Philosophy: Science, Technology, and Human Values,” “Philosophy of Language,” and “Philosophy of Mind,” among other courses.
Student nomination: “Professor Johnson is incredible at driving her students to think critically, take interest, and challenge themselves. I wouldn’t be the same student without her, and she is the reason for my interest in philosophy in college.”
Minxin Pei, Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow
Faculty Scholarship Award
Pei, a member of the CMC faculty since 2009, is an expert in China and the Pacific Rim, comparative politics, and U.S.-Asia relations. In 2024, Harvard University Press published his book, The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China, and his next book, The Broken China Dream: How Economic Reform Revived Totalitarianism, will be published by Princeton University Press later this year.
Peer nomination: “He is genuinely a public intellectual, an overused term—but it applies to him.”
Adrienne Martin, Akshata Murty ’02 and Rishi Sunak Professor of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and George R. Roberts Fellow
Roy P. Crocker Award for Service
Martin, who is coming off a three-year term as Chair of the Philosophy Department, was recently named Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program. She also serves on the Academic Standards Committee, chaired a tenure and promotion committee, chaired a departmental ad hoc committee working to revise major requirements, and serves as a mentor to faculty colleagues. Additionally, for the past several years, Martin has volunteered to organize Faculty Writing Retreats.
Peer nomination: Martin is “the single most important person in the Philosophy Department for hiring, mentoring, and participating in the promotions of our wonderful crop of younger faculty.” Another cited her “starting and growing the Faculty Writing Retreats: a one-person initiative that has profoundly reshaped the research environment at the College and fosters collegial interaction.”
Heather Ferguson, Associate Professor of History
Jon Shields, Professor of Government and Chair of the Government Department
Dean’s Distinguished Service Award
Ferguson and Shields were both honored with the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award “for their exceptional leadership and unwavering dedication” as the founding faculty co-directors of The Open Academy at CMC. Through First-Year Athenaeum Dinners, they introduced incoming students to the importance of active listening, respectful disagreement, and asking good questions—core tenets of a liberal arts education grounded in open inquiry. With their Saturday Salons, they created intimate spaces for faculty and students to engage in deep discussions on challenging topics, from criminal justice reform to international conflicts.
“Heather and Jon have reinvigorated the classical model of a liberal education,” Antecol added, “ensuring that CMC is a place where ideas are exchanged freely, differences are respected, and students are empowered to think critically and engage meaningfully with the world around them.”
CMC also honored Professor John Farrell, who retired at the end of the academic year, as well as faculty and coaches who achieved milestone anniversaries of service:
Faculty retirement
John Farrell
The Waldo W. Neikirk Professor of Literature in the CMC Literature Department, Farrell earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brown University, and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Harvard University with a dissertation on the novels of Thomas Pynchon.
At CMC since 1990, he taught courses in Literary Theory, American Modernism, Utopia/Dystopia, and the First-Year Writing Seminar, among others. Farrell has published a broad range of journal articles, book chapters, essays, and reviews throughout the years. He also co-hosted, with Professor Alex Rajczi, several seasons of a podcast called Good Question! that covered literature, ethics, pop culture, contemporary art, and sports.
At his faculty installation in 2019, Farrell recalled how he fell in love with literature because of its flawed characters, and how he would inevitably be disappointed if they found their way out of misfortune.
“On behalf of Claremont McKenna and all your colleagues and students over three-and-a-half decades—thank you for your service. You will be greatly missed,” Antecol said.
35 years of service
Richard Burdekin
Mark Costanzo
30 years of service
Ran Libeskind-Hadas (note: 31 combined years at The Claremont Colleges)
Ken Scalmanini
25 years of service
Jonathan Petropoulos
Marion Preest