Quotables
As one of the nation’s top scholars and strategic leaders, President Hiram Chodosh is often called upon to comment on trends in higher education or pressing issues facing colleges and universities. Here is a sample of his media interviews.
Real Clear Education
September 24, 2021
President Hiram Chodosh was interviewed about results of the 2021 College Free Speech Rankings and Survey, which placed Claremont McKenna as the No. 1 college in the nation for free expression. “At CMC, we respect and engage in robust discussions around diverse viewpoints, including those with which we most strongly disagree,” Chodosh said. “We seek to examine the underlying basis for those disagreements, including any about the proper protections and limitations of free speech. This is how we can learn from disagreements and reach stronger levels of shared understanding. This is how responsible people serve and lead others, not through the sheer exercise of power, but through the power of persuasion.”
The story highlighted CMC’s commitment to free speech, noting that dialogue and debate are central to CMC’s culture. The school sponsors The Athenaeum, a public-affairs program that brings a range of speakers to campus to meet with students and discuss important political and cultural issues. It dedicates several pages on its website to affirming and explaining the school’s commitment to free expression. According to the Free Speech Survey, 54 percent of CMC students surveyed felt it was “very” or “extremely” clear that the administration protected free speech on campus.”
More Quotables
New York Times
January 20, 2022
The New York Times interviewed Hiram Chodosh about the National Collegiate Athletic Association schools and conferences vote to adopt a new constitution, and take the first step in decentralizing.
Representing the joint Division III athletics teams from Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd and Scripps Colleges Division III athletics program, Chodosh said: “We’re just the virtual kale on the Division I burger.” He also noted that Division III carries the banner for the term student-athlete, adding, “without the rest of us, it may just start to look like a commercial enterprise."
Los Angeles Times
August 6, 2020
President Chodosh was interviewed in a story about how campuses are preparing for a number of scenarios due to the lack of clear and timely state guidance for campus reopenings amid COVID-19. The uncertainty has resulted in a “wild array of different configurations of approaches and solutions” among campuses, said Chodosh. According to the story, CMC had begun planning a fall return months ago, envisioning classes in larger spaces or outdoors, students in single rooms or small-group dorms, takeout food eaten outside with safe distances among friends. Chodosh’s campus plans far exceed Los Angeles County’s draft reopening protocols for colleges and universities, which Chodosh helped create as a member of the higher education task force. He said failing to take “measured risks” to reopen and simply waiting for a vaccine was not a “sensible way to confront the challenge.”
Read moreNew York Times
August 2, 2020
In a front-page story, “Covid Tests and Quarantines: Colleges Brace for an Uncertain Fall,” President Chodosh was quoted on the challenges facing U.S. colleges: “We have learned how to close safely. But the big question now is, can we open safely?”
Los Angeles Times
April 30, 2020
President Chodosh was interviewed in a Los Angeles Times story about how colleges may look when they reopen to students from teaching classes outdoors to offering food to go. “These strategies may not work. They may not be feasible,” Chodosh cautioned. “But we need to exhaust the path before we get to that particular dead end.”
Read moreFortune
May 4, 2020
President Hiram Chodosh was interviewed by Fortune magazine for an article featuring CMC’s “heroic” effort to meet the needs of their 2020 graduates, who were facing the “worst career environment” that college students “have faced since the Great Depression.”
CMC expanded its robust internship program, accomplishing something “unprecedented.”
“We’re expanding our internship program into the immediate postgraduate environment,” Chodosh said. Thanks to “a very generous anonymous donor,” Chodosh explained that 2020 grads would be eligible for a summer of training in high-value skills and potentially for financial support in low-paid or unpaid work—à la internships—until next June, up to $10,000 per quarter. As Chodosh told the class of 2020, “This funding will enable you to work for an employer who may not be able initially to hire you.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
April 9, 2020
President Chodosh was featured in an in-depth Chronicle of Higher Education article that illustrated how four college presidents decided to close their campuses and helped pave the way for the rest of the country to follow suit. President Chodosh’s difficult decisions were highlighted in the story: “He considered this a moment where the community had to make a sacrifice. If they dispersed, they may save lives. Reflecting on the decision days later, he took a long pause before calling it an imperative. By midday Wednesday, the announcement was out. Claremont would extend spring break by a week. Faculty members would virtualize courses for afterward. And most students would be required — the team had settled on required to leave.”
Read moreThe Washington Post
June 12, 2019
The Washington Post interviewed President Hiram Chodosh about the role sports play in admissions to the nation’s most prestigious private colleges and universities.
Chodosh said that CMC, a Division III college, aspires to be “the go-to college for the scholar-leader-athlete.”
He acknowledged a concern, however, about all the money that affluent parents pour into athletic trainers, traveling clubs, sports camps and other activities—separate from high school sports teams—that give their children an edge in the recruiting chase.
Too often, he said, wealth and privilege determine “who becomes a competitive athlete in a world where we have structured sport and play to an extreme.” Those disparities, he continued, pose a challenge for the country and for colleges that want to level the playing field. “We have a lot more work to do there.”
Los Angeles Times
March 17, 2019
The Los Angeles Times interviewed CMC President Hiram Chodosh in an article about the stereotypes of elite colleges being exclusively for wealthy families.
Access and affordability, Chodosh said, are rooted in the founding vision of the College, whose first students in 1946 were World War II veterans. He further detailed how the College “has stepped up its commitment” to low-income students, as well as students who are the first in their families to attend college.
“I’m concerned about a growing frustration with elite institutions generally, including higher education institutions, that becomes very corrosive and can serve to undermine the tremendous investment and success of our leading colleges and universities,” he said.
Los Angeles Times
November 13, 2015
In a video interview with the Los Angeles Times, President Hiram Chodosh discussed how higher education can help students “develop a full sense of home and belonging” while simultaneously committing “to notions of free and critical inquiry and speech.”
“These are not … mutually exclusive goals,” Chodosh said. “We need to do—and can do—both at the same time. And part of our process, part of our commitment here at Claremont McKenna College, is to commit to that process of building security and self-confidence and a sense of belonging in each and every one of our students. And to engage the whole community to think deeply about the problems of our country, the challenges of a pluralistic society, and to join together to build community and build that capacity.”