Theresa Williamson is the founder of Catalytic Communities (CatComm) based in Rio de Janeiro. An outspoken and respected advocate on behalf of Rio’s favelas, Williamson is also editor-in-chief of RioOnWatch, a watchdog news site and favela news service which tracks the impact of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games on Rio's favelas.

Williamson will give an overview of Rio’s recent mega-event driven boom and bust, and the hope of and actual implementation of policies directed towards favelas. She will examine how favela communities have responded, developed, and grown resistance strategies in response to recent boom development policies in Rio.

What does pre-Olympic Rio teach us about poor urban planning and development policies, as well as effective community organizing and resistance? What can we learn from Rio's favelas about how to organize, and how not to organize our own communities and what would truly inclusionary policies look like? Case studies include the communities of Vila Autódromo, Favela do Metrô, Indiana, Horto, and Providência.

Dr. Williamson’s Athenaeum talk is sponsored by funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

View Video: YouTube with Theresa Williamson

Emilie M. Hafner-Burton is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of International Justice and Human Rights, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, and a joint professor for the department of political science at UC San Diego. She is the author of Making Human Rights a Reality, which takes a look at why it's been so hard for international law to have much impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk.

Most recently, Hafner-Burton served as professor of politics and public policy at Princeton University, where she held joint appointments in the department of politics and the Woodrow Wilson School for International and Public Affairs. She also served as a research scholar at Stanford Law School and fellow of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) with additional appointments at Oxford and Stanford.

Hafner-Burton's research examines ways to improve protections for human rights, the design of international and regional trade policy, and a wide array of other topics related to the use of economic sanctions, social network analysis and international law.

In her Athenaeum talk, Hafner-Burton will explore what social science is teaching us about how to protect human rights around the globe.

Professor Hafner-Burton’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies and the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.

View Video: YouTube with Emilie Hafner-Burton

Karen Rosenfelt ’80 is a producer based at 20th Century Fox, where she is executive producing Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. While at Fox, she has also produced Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters.

A 1980 graduate of CMC, Rosenfelt began her career at ICM Partners as an assistant to talent agent Sue Mengers. She went on to become a creative executive at Jerry Weintraub Productions and a senior vice president at MGM.

Her career as executive producer and producer spans many successful movies, including the megahit Twilight series. Rosenfelt has also produced The Big Year, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and Marley & Me for Fox, and her executive producer credits include the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, and The Devil Wears Prada. Rosenfelt also produced Yogi Bear for Warner Bros., and Max and the upcoming Me Before You at MGM. 

For 16 years, Rosenfelt was a production executive at Paramount, where she oversaw live-action features such as The First Wives Club, Indecent Proposal, Runaway Bride, Save the Last Dance, Coach Carter, and Mean Girls. She was instrumental in setting up Paramount's partnership with Nickelodeon Movies, overseeing film adaptations of the Nickelodeon television properties Rugrats and SpongeBob SquarePants as well as Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, based on the bestselling children’s books.

Yaki Lopez is the Consul for Political Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles. He joined the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010 and began his work at the Division of Strategic Affairs, where he managed issues of regional security; he was also posted in Nairobi, Kenya. Prior to his diplomatic career, he served in an elite intelligence unit in the Israeli Defense Forces and also worked in the private business sector in Israel.

Read more about Yaki Lopez...

View Video: YouTube with Yaki Lopez

Yii Kah Hoe is a Malaysian composer and Chinese dizi player. Bold and avant-garde, his music and composition use sounds and rhythms of many traditional instruments from various ethnic cultures. He is also active in music education and the organization of a contemporary music collective, concerts, and a festival in Kuala Lumpur.

Besides working artistically as a musician and composer, Yii has a strong commitment to environmental activism in Malaysia. In this Athenaeum appearance, Yii will address the question of whether music, and his music in particular, can be engaged with environmental protests while at the same time detached from them and stand alone as a “pure art.” He will show videos of activist performances that involve traditional Chinese music as well as contemporary takes on Chinese music and explore the impact of these performances on the movements.

A leader in his field, he served as the festival director of Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival 2009, the festival director of SoundBridge festival 2013, and the vice-president of Society of Malaysian Contemporary Composers. Yii has been a senior lecturer at SEGi College Subang Jaya, Malaysia, since 2000.

Yii is also the recipient of many international music and arts awards. His works have been performed widely in the U.S., London, Trinidad, Germany, Mexico, Paris, Italy, Russia, Australia, Bangkok, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.

Mr. Yii’s Athenaeum appearance is co-sponsored by EnviroLab Asia and the Mellon Global Liberal Arts funds.

Shyam Selvadurai is a Sri Lankan-Canadian writer, editor, and winner of many literary awards. Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father, two conflicting ethnic groups whose troubles are a major theme in his work, he immigrated to Canada at the age nineteen. 

Selvadurai’s works reflect his cross-cultural, hyphenated life. Selvadurai will read from his new novel The Hungry Ghosts, his anthology Story-Wallah, and various other works, and he will speak about the advantages of writing from the hyphen between Sri Lankan and Canadian.

In this second of the two-part series sponsored by CMC’s Gould Center for Humanistic Studies and the Public Art Committee, the panel will challenge the idea of the "public" in public art. It will examine the transformative and educational potential that lies in any encounter with art outside the white cube. 

Internationally recognized artists, curators, and scholars will join curator Philipp Kaiser and Professor Robert Faggen to continue the conversation about Claremont McKenna’s exciting public art initiative. 

Panelists include Thomas Hirschhorn, Paris-based artist; Jeremy Strick, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas; and Emi Fontana, Italian-born founder of West of Rome – Public Art, Los Angeles.

NOTE: This program will start at 5 pm with a reception. Dinner will be served at 5:30 pm. The formal program will begin at 6 pm.

The presentation by panelists will be followed by a moderated discussion and a Q & A.

Off-year elections, those that are held in-between federal elections in odd-numbered years, often give us a good picture of the mood of the electorate before a presidential election. 

In 2015 three governorships and four state legislatures will be voted upon, and the results will in part reflect the current political mood of the nation. 

During a moderated panel discussion, with participation from the audience and real-time returns, these and other results will be examined to discern what importance they hold for 2016 and the Republican and Democratic contenders for president.

Moderator Zach Courser will be joined by Professor Ken Miller and Christina Bellantoni, the assistant managing politics editor at the LA Times and former editor-in-chief of Roll Call. In addition to her outstanding national resume, she’s covered Virginia politics in the past, which gives her an edge on discussing VA election returns.

David Quammen is a journalist and award-winning author of several books including Spillover (2012), which explores the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases, especially viral diseases. More recently, he has released two short books drawn from Spillover: Ebola (2014) and The Chimp and the River (2015). 

Educated at Yale College, Quammen was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He is a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award. Other honors include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction and the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing.

A contributing science writer for National Geographic, Quamman travels extensively, often to wild and remote places where human encroachment clashes with centuries of virgin wilderness. 

Read more about David Quammen...


View Video: YouTube with David Quamman

James Sonne is a Stanford Law School professor and founding director of the school's Religious Liberty Clinic, the nation's only program where law students learn through full-time representation of real clients in live disputes in that field. An accomplished teacher, scholar, and practitioner with expertise in law and religion, Sonne received his B.A. with honors from Duke University and his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School. He is a former law clerk to Judge Edith Brown Clement of ­­the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

According to a cover story in California Lawyer published shortly after the clinic first opened, “As the only law school in the country with a clinic devoted exclusively to religious liberty disputes, Stanford is exposing its students to a practice area that has a rich and colorful history.” And, the story quotes Sonne as saying, "part of what [the clinic is doing] is to make clear the difference between the freedom to practice one's religion and the practice itself."

In his Athenaeum presentation, Professor Sonne will address the important task of teaching the practice of religious freedom and the abiding significance of that central constitutional principle in the American legal system.

Read more about James A. Sonne...