Athenaeum Spring 2016
W. Kamau Bell offered up a mix of stand-up comedy, video and audio clips, personal stories, real information, and solo theatrical performance to explore and highlight the current state of racism in America. He has emerged as a post-modern voice of socio-political comedy. Named an Ambassador of Racial Justice by the ACLU, W. Kamau Bell is best known for his critically acclaimed TV show, Totally Biased. His new show, United Shades of America, premiered on CNN in early 2016.
Sumi Pendakur, Yuka Ogino, and Mariana Cruz, panelists; Nyree Gray, moderator: A Panel Discussion and Moderated Conversation on Campus Resource Centers to Support Diversity and Inclusion. The PSR Subcommittee on Campus Climate invited students, faculty, and staff to learn about resource center models at different academic institutions and consider potential functions and structures at CMC.
Pardis Mahdavi, Ph.D, is associate professor and chair of anthropology at Pomona College. Her work focuses on gender and sexuality in the Muslim world, including gendered labor, sexual politics, labor migration, human rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health, and human trafficking. She is the author of Passionate Uprisings: The Intersection of Sexuality and Politics in Post-Revolutionary Iran (2008), Gridlock: Labor, Migration and Human Trafficking in Dubai (2011), and From Trafficking to Terror (2013).
Candace Adelberg ’10, Kristie Howard ’15, Mayumi Matsuno ’01, Jacinth Sohi ’11 led a panel discussion about women succeeding in the competitive and male-dominated culture of Silicon Valley. The panelists, CMC grads at various career stages, work at technology firms in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. The panel discussion, moderated by Professor Frederick Lynch, addressed a range of topics including: preparation for careers in tech, how to leverage past accomplishments and personal and professional networks to develop careers in tech, obstacles and challenges faced in the competitive and male-dominated culture of Silicon Valley, and approaches for problem solving, including work/life balance issues.
Professor Randall Kennedy canvassed the many ways in which racial lines have been drawn overtly and, covertly, self-consciously and unconsciously in American life. Professor Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. Kennedy attended Princeton University, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and Yale Law School. He clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. Awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime, and the Law (1997) in 1998, Kennedy writes and speaks on a wide range of topics. His books include For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law (2013), The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (2011), Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (2008), Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (2003), and Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002).
Ravi Aysola '96. As a disabled student of color and survivor of a critical illness, this CMCer learned that compassion and empathy can be the most important things to develop in college. Dr. Aysola is an assistant clinical professor in internal medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is also director of the UCLA Pulmonary Sleep Medicine Program and director of the UCLA Santa Monica Pulmonary & Sleep Medicine Clinic.
John Prendergast is a human rights activist and best-selling author who has worked for peace in Africa for 30 years, including helping facilitate the end of the Ethiopean and Eritrean conflict in the late ‘90s. The standard image of Africa is a starving baby, a continent of helplessness and a population ensconced in victimhood. These impressions are reinforced by the media, especially big-budget motion pictures that portray Africans as helpless or inherently violent. However, contends Prendergast, the reality is far different.
Miguel E. Basáñez was ratified by the Mexican Senate as Ambassador of Mexico to the United States on September 2, 2015. Prior to his appointment as ambassador, he was professor of values, culture and development at the Fletcher School of Tufts University and director of special research and educational projects. In Mexico, he worked to expand democracy by introducing public opinion polls in the 1988 elections.
Nontombi Naomi Tutu was born in South Africa to social activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, Naomi Tutu has spent most of her life working to promote racial and gender equality and will provide a new perspective in handling racism in day to day life. The challenges of growing up black and female in apartheid South Africa have been the foundation of Nontombi Naomi Tutu’s life as an activist for human rights. Those experiences taught her that the whole human family loses when we accept situations of oppression, and how the teaching and preaching of hate and division injure us all. In her speeches, Tutu blends this passion for human dignity with humor and personal stories.
Adam Michnik is the founder and editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, a daily often referred to as “The New York Times of Eastern Europe.” He is among Poland’s most prominent public figures, with a distinctive voice dedicated to dialog, tolerance, and freedom. He was a leading figure in the 1968 student movement in Warsaw, a co-founder of KOR (Committee for the Defense of Workers) in 1976, and a prominent “Solidarity” activist in the 1980s. Author of several books and countless essays, analyses, and interviews, Michnik is the recipient of many prizes, honors, and honorary doctorates, including the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. He regularly travels throughout the world, giving lectures on democracy, totalitarianism, and the paradoxes and dilemmas of contemporary politics.
Dave Zirin is the author of several books, including What's My Name, Fool. Zirin delivers a provocative, sometimes chilling, look at sports and society. He writes about the politics of sports for The Nation magazine. Winner of Sport in Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism's Excellence in Sports Journalism Award, Zirin is also the host of Sirius XM Radio's popular weekly show, Edge of Sports Radio, in which he addresses, among other things, the implications of racism, homophobia, and sexism in sports. He also co-hosts the radio program The Collision: Sports and Politics, with Etan Thomas & Dave Zirin.
Shahzad Bashir is the Lysbeth Warren Anderson Professor in Islamic Studies at Stanford University and an Andrew F. Carnegie Fellow during the academic year 2015-16. He specializes in Islamic Studies with a particular interest in the intellectual and social histories of Persianate societies of Iran and Central and South Asia circa fourteenth century CE to the present. His published work studies Sufism and Shi’ism, messianic movements originating in Islamic contexts, representation of corporeality in hagiographic texts and Persian miniature paintings, religious developments during the Timurid and Safavid periods, and modern transformations of Islamic societies.
damali ayo is an expert story-teller who offers humor, insight, and creativity to make our culture's toughest topics—including race, gender, and sexual orientation—manageable and even fun. Featured in world-wide publications including Harpers, the Village Voice, Salon.com, the Washington Post, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, Redbook Magazine, The O'Reilly Factor, and Book TV, damali ayo engages audiences to think, feel, and heal through difficult community and personal challenges ranging from race, gender, sexual assault, and sexual orientation to spirituality, chronic illness, the creative process, healing, music, and even trash.
Stephen Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the former director of the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he teaches and writes about political theory, ethics, American constitutionalism, and public policy. He argues that both conservatives who warn of a slippery slope from same-sex marriage toward polygamy, adult incest, and the dissolution of marriage as we know it and many progressives who embrace the new law are wrong. He believes that the same principles of democratic justice that demand marriage equality for same sex couples also lend support to monogamous marriage. In his Athenaeum talk, he will explore the meaning of contemporary marriage and the reasons for both its fragility and its enduring significance.
Mark Takano is the U.S. Congressman to the 41st District of California, which includes Riverside, Moreno Valley, Jurupa Valley, and Perris. He serves on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, the Education and Workforce Committee, and the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. In 2012, he became the first openly gay person of color to be elected to U.S. Congress. Takano’s family roots in Riverside go back to his grandparents who, along with his parents, were removed from their respective homes and sent to Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. After the war, his family settled in Riverside County to rebuild their lives.
Professor Bruce Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he is also the director of both the Center for Security Studies and of the Security Studies Masters of Arts Degree Program. He has been studying terrorism and insurgency for nearly four decades. Appointed by the U.S. Congress to serve as a commissioner on the Independent Commission to Review the FBI’s Post-9/11 Response to Terrorism and Radicalization, Professor Hoffman was a lead author of the commission’s final report. Drawing from his recent book, Professor Hoffman chronicled the battles between Jews, Arabs, and the British that led to the creation of Israel.
Gastón Espinosa is the Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Religion at Claremont McKenna College and co-editor of the Columbia University Press Series in Religion and Politics. Espinosa served as president of La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion at the American Academy of Religion. He has been named an NEH Fellow at the NHC Institute for Advanced Studies (Raleigh-Durham) and the 2016-2017 William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life in the department of politics at Princeton University. He is the author/editor of eight books, including Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Harvard, 2014); Religion, Race, and Barack Obama's New Democratic Pluralism (Routledge, 2012); Religion and the American Presidency: George Washington to George W. Bush (Columbia, 2009); Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism and Culture (Duke, 2008); and U.S. Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States (Oxford, 2005). He has also directed three national surveys on U.S. Latino religions and politics in 2000, 2008, and 2012, surveying more than 7,000 Latinos.
Heather Marlowe is a performer/playwright who has been on stage as an actress/performer, dancer, and musician since 2007. She has studied theater and performance with Kristin Linklater, Gabrielle Roth, and at Berkeley Repertory and American Conservatory Theater. Her work has been most recently seen at The Costume Shop at American Conservatory Theater, Porchlight Storytelling Series, Bawdy Storytelling Series, W. Kamau Bell’s Solo Performance Workshop, Under Saint Marks, and Boxcar Theatre. A sharp-witted and autobiographical story about the aftermath of being drugged and raped while attending San Francisco’s annual Bay to Breakers event, Marlowe’s piece has generated considerable local and national attention for the issues it raises about how rape cases are handled.
Steve Cousins P’16 is a partner at the St. Louis law firm of Armstrong Teasdale. He is lauded for his role in helping break down racial barriers for local African American lawyers in St. Louis. In 2014, he was recognized as an Inspiring St. Louisan by the St. Louis County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Mr. Cousins provided background and context to what caused the rioting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, propose a way forward, and suggest ameliorative roles that can be played by those both civically and professionally active and engaged in addressing Ferguson and “Ferguson-esque” challenges facing our country.
Seth Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in San Francisco and author of the best-selling book Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Subversives traces the FBI's secret involvement with three iconic figures at Berkeley during the 1960's: the ambitious but neophyte politician Ronald Reagan, the fierce but fragile radical Mario Savio, and the liberal University of California's President Clark Kerr. Mr. Rosenfeld address was titled: "A Cautionary Tale About the Dangers of Secrecy and Power: How J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Tried to Silence the Free Speech Movement, Fire UC President Clark Kerr, and Help Ronald Reagan."
Geoffrey Robertson explained how democratic countries can combat genocide denial without denying free speech, and makes a major contribution to understanding and preventing these horrific crimes. Robertson has been counsel in many landmark cases in constitutional, criminal, and media law in the courts of Britain and the Commonwealth and he makes frequent appearances in the Privy Council and the European Court of Human Rights. His recent cases include among others: appearing for the Wall Street Journal in Jameel v WSJ, the landmark House of Lords decision which extended a public interest defense for the media in libel actions; representing Tasmanian aborigines to stop Britain’s Natural History Museum from experimenting on the remains of their ancestors; arguing the Court of Appeal case which first defined “terrorism” for the purpose of British law; arguing for the right of the public to see royal wills and representing a trust for the education of poor children in litigation in Anguilla over a billion dollar bequest.
Athenaeum Fall 2015
Toshia Shaw is the founder of Purple W.I.N.G.S. (Women Inspiring Noble Girls Successfully), which seeks to demystify misconceptions about who is at risk for sexual violence. Having personally overcome domestic violence and sex-trafficking, Shaw draws on her own experiences in an effort to relate and connect with the girls and women she serves and transforms. In 2006 realizing that girls in her community were being trafficked in staggering numbers, she felt compelled to start speaking up about the issue of domestic minor sex trafficking in Las Vegas, Nevada. She transforms and inspires with her harrowing journey out of sex trafficking.
Wajahat Ali, a journalist at Al Jazeera America, is a lawyer, an award-winning playwright, a television host, and a consultant for the U.S. State Department. Ali helped launch the Al Jazeera America network as co-host of Al Jazeera America's The Stream, a daily news show that extended news and conversation to social media and beyond. Author of The Domestic Crusaders, the first major play about Muslim Americans post-9/11, he is also the lead author and researcher of Fear Inc.: Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America. He speaks on the multifaceted Muslim-American experience and the emergent generation of millennials poised for social change. Mr. Ali’s Athenaeum talk was co-sponsored by the President’s Leadership Fund.
Victoria Sanford is professor and chair of anthropology and founding director of the Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies at Lehman College. She holds a doctorate in Anthropology from Stanford University where she studied International Human Rights Law and Immigration Law at Stanford Law School. A prolific author, her books include, among others, Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala and Tierra y Violencia en Guatemala. In August of 2012, she served as an invited expert witness on the Guatemalan genocide before Judge Santiago Pedraz in the Spanish National Court’s international genocide case against the Guatemalan generals. Professor Sanford’s Athenaeum talk was sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College.
Olivia Gatwood and Megan Falley of Speak Like a Girl offered an interactive, feminist show that used spoken word as a tool to highlight gender inequality and related issues. Through humorous and passionate performances, Gatwood and Falley address issues such as street harassment, body image, rape culture, and the perils of the patriarchy. Falley and Gatwood are National Poetry Slam and Women of the World Poetry Slam finalists and have been featured on TV One’s Verses and Flow. Speak Like A Girl’s appearance at the Athenaeum was co-sponsored by the Center for Public Writing and Discourse.
Anne Fausto-Sterling's current research is focused on applying dynamic systems theory to the study of gender differentiation in early childhood. Using her empirical work on mother-infant interactions to develop a dynamic account of gender formation, she talked about her view that gender is a dynamic process, not a singular trait, and contrasted dynamic systems theory with standard gene-environment accounts of development.
Kris Perry and Sandy Stier were the lead plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court case Hollingsworth v. Perry, the federal challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Perry and Stier first tried to marry in 2004, when the city of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. But that marriage was revoked under court order. Four years later, shortly after California’s Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry, the Proposition 8 ballot initiative passed, changing the state constitution to limit marriage. When a legal team seeking to challenge Prop 8 approached Perry and Stier to be plaintiffs, they agreed, signing on to a case that would include a 12-day trial, making its way through district and appellate courts before finally appearing before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Elhanan Miller is the Arab affairs reporter for the Times of Israel, a Jerusalem-based Israeli news agency. He holds a master’s degree in Middle East history and Islamic Studies from Hebrew University, where he completed a thesis that compared issues of religion and state in Egypt and Israel. He is also a contributing writer and editor for Can Think, an Israeli website focusing on Israeli and Middle East politics, where he provides personal insight on current affairs in Israel and the Arab world.
Barbara Weinstein is Silver Professor of History and chair of the history department at New York University, where she teaches Brazilian and modern Latin American history. Her research has focused on Amazonian political economy, relations between industrialists and workers, intersections of race, gender, and class, and the problem of spatial inequalities. Her recent book, The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil (2015) studies the formation and impact of racialized regional identities. Weinstein was the 2007 president of the American Historical Association.
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. 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.
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.
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.
David Sedaris is a humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. A regular on NPR and in the New Yorker, he is the best-selling author of, among many other books, Me Talk Pretty One Day and When You Are Engulfed in Flames. With sardonic wit and incisive social critique, Sedaris is one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today and has become one of America’s pre-eminent humorists and a master of satire.
Irfana Majumdar is a theatre artist based in Varanasi, India. She directed a presentation of “Internationalism Performed" at the Ath, in which the performers used their own, and faraway popular stories, to explore power structures in all our lives, to express different versions of reality, and also the possibilities of change. This program was created by students of The Claremont Colleges and Professor Nita Kumar's class on Bollywood.
Laverne Cox is an Emmy-nominated actress, documentary film producer, and prominent advocate for transgender awareness and equality. Lauded for her portrayal as Sophia Burset on Netflix’s "Orange is the New Black," Cox is the first trans woman of color to have a leading role on mainstream television. She is currently producing a documentary titled Free CeCe, which focuses on CeCe McDonald, a transgender woman incarcerated in a men's prison and the larger implications of CeCe's case for the transgender community.
Athenaeum Spring 2015
William Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, contributor to ABC News, author, and chief of staff to former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle, is widely recognized as one of the nation's most insightful political analysts. Chair of CMC's Salvatori Center advisory board, Kristol offered his reflections on the current domestic political scene and prospects. "The Current Political Scene in the United States"
Paul Henderson, legal analyst, commentator, and former prosecutor, now serves as deputy chief of staff & public safety director for the city of San Francisco. As CMC's 2015 Martin Luther King commemorative speaker, Henderson addressed race and justice in America and discuss recent events and legal decisions that have attracted national notoriety and caused significant national social unrest. "A Legal Perspective on Race, Civil Rights, and Social Justice"
Richard Sander is an economist and law professor at UCLA’s School of Law. A scholar on race and higher education, his 2004 Stanford Law Review article examining law school affirmative action calls into question the benefits of affirmative action for minority law students and is one of the most widely read law review articles written. "Affirmative Action and the Dilemmas of Race in 2015"
Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, longtime contributor to Fox News, and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, frequently comments and writes about immigration and the structures of American electoral politics. He is the author of Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation's Future (2004) and The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again (2001). "American Politics 2015: Looking Forward"
Margaret Stock is an attorney and 2013 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship (“genius award”) who speaks widely on issues of immigration law and national security. With experiences serving in the U.S. Army Reserve and teaching at West Point, Stock challenges complex federal immigration laws in order to provide more humane and rational policies that will also serve American national security interests. "Exploiting the Myths, Traps, and Absurdities of Immigration Law to Benefit U.S. National Security"
Avraham (Alan) Rosen is an author and Holocaust scholar. He has taught widely in Israel and the United States, and lectures regularly at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies. His current book includes a monograph entitled, Killing Time, Saving Time: Calendars and the Holocaust. "Tracking Jewish Time in Auschwitz"
Diana Selig is the Kingsley Croul Associate Professor of History and George R. Roberts Fellow. A historian of the modern United States, she is the author of Americans All: The Cultural Gifts Movement. Her research interests include race and ethnicity, immigration, gender and women’s history, education, and social science. "Cultural Pluralism and Women's Suffrage in Twentieth Century America"
Christopher Conway is the author of the forthcoming Nineteenth-Century Latin America: A Cultural History (2015), and The Cult of Bolívar in Latin American Literature (2003), among numerous other publications. He is also a private collector of vintage Mexican comics, and is currently preparing to curate an exhibit of his large collection for the Central Library at The University of Texas at Arlington, where he chairs the Department of Modern Languages and is Associate Professor of Spanish. "Blood and Ink: A Comic Book History of Mexico"
Valorie Thomas is an associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Pomona College and the Athenaeum's Black History Month speaker for 2015. A literary and cultural studies and black studies scholar, Thomas’s work focuses on African Diaspora Vertigo; she also teaches courses on African American literature, black feminist writers and activism, African Diaspora cinema, the prison-industrial complex, and contemporary Native American/First Nations/Indigenous literature. Her book manuscript titled, "Diasporic Vertigo: Memory, Space and Charting the Future in African Diaspora Arts" will be forthcoming.
Azure Antoinette is a poet, spoken word artist, and youth and arts education advocate whose performance poetry explores the ways social media is reshaping humanity. In 2011, she founded an arts-in-education program that provides specialized workshops to motivate and educate teen girls on how spoken word, performance poetry, and social media can make an impact on the world. Azure Antoinette’s Athenaeum appearance was part of the sixth annual Women and Leadership Workshop. "Creativity, Courage, and Using Your Voice"
James Joseph is emeritus professor of the Practice of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Joseph has had a distinguished career in business, education and civil society and has served in senior executive or advisory positions to four U.S. Presidents, including appointments by President Jimmy Carter as Under Secretary of the Interior and President Bill Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. "Building and Sustaining Community in a Divided Nation: What I Learned from Nelson Mandela"
Mona Prince, assistant professor of English literature at Suez University in Egypt, is an Egyptian novelist and literary translator. A political and women’s rights activist, Prince was a presidential hopeful following the Arab Spring. Her recent book, Revolution is My Name, is her memoir, as a revolutionary woman, of the first 18 days in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2011. Prince is the recipient of a Rescue Scholar Fellowship and was a visiting professor at Pitzer and Claremont McKenna Colleges. "The Role of Women, Youth, and Intellectuals in the Arab Spring"
Kevin Allred is a feminist author, speaker, and self-proclaimed “undoer of the status quo.” Creator of the popular course “Politicizing Beyoncé” at Rutgers University, Allred explored and investigated some of the ways Beyoncé Knowles recapitulates and redeploys black feminist teachings and activism through her music and career. "Politicizing Beyonce: Black Feminist Politics and Queen Bey"
Zerlina Maxwell, political analyst and contributing writer for ESSENCE Magazine and Mic.com, discussed rape culture, its prevalence on college campuses, and the role college students can play to combat this trend. Highlighting the prevalence of rape culture in the national media, Maxwell talked about how changes in education may be the most effective way to end sexual violence including "teaching men not to rape." "From Catcalling to Sexual Assault: How We Can All Work to End Gender-Based Violence"
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is the Wasserman Dean & Distinguished Professor of Education at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences. A renowned administrator and prolific award-winning writer, his research primarily focuses on conceptual and empirical problems in the areas of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology with an emphasis on mass migration, globalization, and education. In 2012, he founded the Institute for Immigrant Children, Youth, and Families at UCLA, which he co-directs. "Globalization, Mass Migration and Inequality: Further Thoughts on Education in the Age of Vertigo"
Noah Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School where he teaches constitutional and international law. An expert on Islamic philosophy and law, he is the author of The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (2008)and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (2004), among others. In 2003, he served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law. "The Geopolitics of the Middle East: Challenges, Risks, and Prospects"
Jeff Hobbs is the author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League (2014). Based on Hobbs’s college roommate and friend, it is a heartfelt and riveting biography of the short life of a talented and charismatic young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University, where he majors in molecular biophysics and biochemistry only to succumb to the dangers of the streets—and of one’s own nature—when he returns home after graduation. "The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League"
Robert Ford is Senior Fellow at The Middle East Institute. A retired Foreign Service officer, he served as U.S. ambassador to Syria (2010-2014) and to Algeria (2006-2008). Shortly after the outbreak of Syria's civil war, Ford traveled to the city of Hama in a show of solidarity with Syrians protesting the rule of Bashar Al Assad. He subsequently worked closely with Syrian opposition forces and was instrumental in bringing them to the Geneva peace talks. "An Evening with Ambassador Robert Ford"
Renowned Indian music artists Paul Livingstone, Vineet Vyas, and Pandit (‘Maestro’) Kanhaiya Lal Mishra played solo and together on sitar, tabla, and sarangi a selection of Hindustani ragas and talas (melodic and rhythmic pieces). In this intimate, traditional concert, rasa — flavor — of the experience was created by musical improvisation within very disciplined structures. "An Evening of Indian Classical Music"
Diana Linden, art historian, is the author of The New Deal Murals of Ben Shahn: Jewish Identity in the American Scene (Wayne State University Press, 2015). Linden situated Shahn’s New Deal mural production within the context of broad themes in American history, including American-Jewish history. "Red, White, and Jew: The New Deal Murals of Ben Shahn"
Nimmi Gowrinathan is a visiting professor at the Colin Powell School at City College New Year. She is the director of the Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative, funded by the Novo Foundation. She was formerly a humanitarian director at Operation USA, a policy analyst and human rights researcher for the International Crisis Group and the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, and the United Nations gender expert on Afghanistan. She is the creator of www.deviarchy.com. "Understanding The Female Fighter: Extreme Marginalization"
Zachariah Mampilly is director of the Program in Africana Studies and associate professor of Political Science and International Studies at Vassar College. He is the author of Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War, and with Adam Branch, Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change. He has published numerous articles and essays on African and South Asian politics and culture. In 2012/13, he was a Fulbright Visiting Faculty member at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. "Africa Uprising! Popular Protest and Political Change"
Arn Chorn-Pond, founder of Cambodian Living Arts, is a Cambodian-American refugee and the subject of the critically acclaimed book, Never Fall Down. Born into a family of performers and musicians, Chorn-Pond escaped death in a Khmer Rouge work camp by playing his flute for the camp’s guards. He is an internationally recognized human rights leader, speaker, and trainer and currently resides in Cambodia, where he continues to be chief advocate of Cambodian Living Arts "Child of War, Man of Peace"
Ruth Weisberg, artist, professor of fine arts, former dean at the Roski School of Art and Design at USC, is the director of the USC Initiative for Israeli Arts and Humanities. Weisberg’s work is included in 60 major museums, among them the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney, the National Gallery and the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s 50th Anniversary Award (2011), and the Southern Graphic Council International’s Printmaker Emeritus Award (2015). "Contemporary Trends in Israeli Art"