Sometimes when Carson Stubstad ’22 walks around campus at a quiet moment, he’s transported back to when he visited Claremont McKenna College for the first time and realized it was the college for him. “It’s almost surreal when I remember that day and now I am living it, and doing so much more than I ever could have imagined,” Stubstad said.
Wali Shaikh ’24 had never set foot on the CMC campus until last summer when pandemic restrictions finally lifted. Coming to Southern California from Alexandria, Va., for his sophomore year, “was a shock, but a pleasant surprise,” he says.
“I love being out here,” Shaikh says. “Everyone I’ve met has been extremely kind and helpful, both the professors and the students. I’ve met some of my closest friends here, including my best friend and girlfriend, Salina Muñoz.”
After attending high schools in the Netherlands, Iowa, and California because of family moves, Brooklyn Button ’22 knew what to look for in a college. Size topped the list of her priorities. Location was another.
“I value the culture of a small school since I enjoy really getting to know my peers and teachers,” she said. She also realized soon after moving to California for 12th grade that she wanted to stay. “From the good weather to the beaches to the mountains to the happy people, I knew I wanted to make SoCal my home for the next four years,” she said.
Desmond Mantle ’23 chose to attend Claremont McKenna College for many reasons. The good weather, CMC’s proximity to his hometown, Pasadena, and “the small size of the community paired with the resources of the wider consortium” all factored into his decision. But his assessment of his first two years at CMC centers on cultural concepts like open-mindedness and inclusivity.
“I think my favorite thing about CMC is that my peers generally engage in respectful dialogue about controversial issues,” he said
In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, Prof. Minxin Pei explored the costs of deglobalization for China in a world divided by Putin’s war: reduced access to major Western markets, loss of access to the technologies it needs to build a knowledge economy, and the loss of efficiency gains from dynamic competition. “Although the coming deglobalization process will leave everyone worse off, China stands to lose the most,” he said.
In this New York Times opinion piece, Prof. Jon Shields, co-director of CMC’s Open Academy, explains how he gets students to engage in open inquiry with a mix of classroom norms and guidelines. “While robust defenses of free expression and debate, like the ‘Chicago Principles’ ... are important,” he writes, “they do little to soften the climate of fear that has gripped our campuses.” This is because they “neglect the concrete social norms necessary to facilitate and regulate the collective search for truth in college classrooms.”
Prof. Hilary Appel was interviewed on CNBC to assess the ceasefire negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, as well as security guarantees sought from NATO by Ukraine President Zelenskyy. “There is no way that the security guarantees that he hopes to get from the existing NATO member states and other countries are the least bit realistic,” she said.
