Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

David Armitage is a prize-winning writer and teacher who has a worldwide reputation for his historical work. He is currently the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University and an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. 

Armitage has written extensively about the histories of Britain, the British Empire, and the United States, with a particular focus on the international and global trajectory of political ideas. His nineteen books as author or editor include The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), Foundations of Modern International Thought (2014), Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (2017) and, most relevant to the Athenaeum lecture, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007). He is currently working on a study of opera and international law.

Professor Armitage is the inaugural speaker for the Class of 1974 Speaker Series.

Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor, and in 2025 he was named the 25th Poet Laureate of the United States. 

He is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Into the Hush (2025) and The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (2025); The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021); Sight Lines (2019), for which he won the National Book Award; Compass Rose (2014); The Ginkgo Light (2009); Quipu (2005); The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998 (1998); and Archipelago (1995). He also authored Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry (forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press, 2026), The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry (2024), and edited Chinese Writers on Writing (2010). 

His poetry has been translated into fifteen languages, including Chinese, Dutch, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Sze received the 2025 Bollingen Prize for lifetime achievement in American poetry, the 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, 2024 National Book Foundation Science + Literature award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Jackson Poetry Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. A chancellor emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the 2023–2024 Mohr Visiting Poet at Stanford University. 

Professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Sze was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, where he lives with his wife, the poet Carol Moldaw.

Mr. Sze's Athenaeum reading is co-sponsored by the department of literature, the Salvatori Center, and the President's Leadership Funds.  

Sona Tatoyan is a Syrian-Armenian-American actor, writer, producer, fifth-generation storyteller, and the founder of Hakawati, a cultural organization exploring how narrative can transform trauma, perception, and civic imagination. Born to Syrian-Armenian immigrants and raised between the U.S. and Aleppo, her life changed in 2019 when she discovered a trunk of 180 hand-painted Karagöz shadow puppets created and carried through genocide by her great-great-grandfather, a hakawati (oral storyteller). The puppets—survivor objects and cross-cultural witnesses—collapsed lineage, history, and purpose, revealing a central insight that guides her work: that how we meet a story determines whether it calcifies into trauma or becomes a source of understanding and repair.

Tatoyan’s career spans theater, film, immersive media, and thought leadership. She has originated roles at Yale Repertory Theatre, The Goodman Theatre, and A.C.T., and her screenwriting work has been supported by the Sundance Institute and the Dubai Film Connection. Her signature theatrical work, AZAD (the rabbit & the wolf) premiered in 2025 to extraordinary acclaim and hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “wondrous” and “shattering.”

A 2024–26 Georgetown Global Politics and Performance Lab Fellow, Tatoyan draws on a decade-long Vipassana meditation practice and a reframing of The 1001 Nights as a universal healing blueprint. Her work has been presented at Harvard, MIT, UCLA, the Brandenburg Gate Foundation, and beyond. Operating between Aleppo, Yerevan, and Los Angeles, she leads Hakawati as a lineage-rooted, globally resonant inquiry into how narrative can counter polarization and restore our capacity to see one another clearly.

Ms. Tatoyan’s Athenaeum program is the 2025-26 Mgrublian Annual Lecture on Armenian Studies and is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College. 

Vinod (Vinnie) Aggarwal P'12 is Distinguished Professor and holds the Alann P. Bedford Endowed Chair in in the Travers Department of Political Science; Affiliated Professor at the Haas School of Business; Director of the Berkeley Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center (BASC); and Fellow in the Public Law and Policy Center at Berkeley Law School, all at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Business and Politics. He is the former Chair of the U.S. Consortium of APEC Study Centers. From 1991-1994, he was Chair of the Political Economy of Industrial Societies Program at UC Berkeley.

He has held fellowships from the Brookings Institution, Rockefeller Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, East-West Center, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and was a Japan Foundation Abe Fellow. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, the University of Geneva’s IOMBA program, INSEAD, Yonsei University, NTU Singapore, Bocconi University, Chung-Ang University, and the University of Hawaii. He is also an elected lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Aggarwal consults regularly with multinational corporations on strategy, trade policy, and international negotiations, and he has been a consultant to the Mexican government, Malaysian government, the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Defense Department, U.S. State Department, World Trade Organization, OECD, the Group of Thirty, FAO, IFAD, the International Labor Organization, ASEAN, and the World Bank. In 1990, he was Special Adviser on Trade Negotiations to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and has worked with the APEC Eminent Persons Group. In 1997, he won the Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at the Haas School of Business for PhD teaching; in 2003 he was first runner up for the Cheit Award for MBA teaching and won first place for the MBA program in 2005.

His authored books include Liberal Protectionism, International Debt Threat, Debt Games, Le Renseignement Stratégique d'Entreprise, Une Nouvelle Approche des Phénomènes Sociaux, and he has edited or co-edited Institutional Designs for a Complex World, Asia-Pacific Crossroads, Winning in Asia: European Style, Winning in Asia: Japanese Style, Winning in Asia: U.S. Style, Sovereign Debt Management, European Union Trade Strategies, The Strategic Dynamics of Latin American Trade, Bilateral Trade Agreements in the Asia Pacific, Asia’s New Institutional Architecture, Northeast Asia: Ripe for Integration?, Trade Policy in the Asia-Pacific, Responding to a Resurgent Russia, Linking Trade and Security, Responding to China's Rise, and Great Power Competition and Middle Power Strategies. His most recent books are the Oxford Handbook of Geoeconomics and Economic Statecraft, eds., Oxford 2025 (with Tai Ming Cheung); and Governing Growth: Industrial Policy from Hamilton to Trump, Oxford, in press (with Marco Di Tommaso). He has also published eight special journal issues and 140 articles and book chapters. His current research examines industrial policy and the political economy of high technology new economic statecraft. 

Aggarwal received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Born in Seattle, Washington, he speaks five languages.

Professor Aggarwal’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind is an international figure in architecture and urban design. Informed by a deep commitment to music, philosophy, and literature, Libeskind aims to create architecture that is resonant, original, and sustainable.

Libeskind established his architectural studio, Studio Libeskind, in Berlin, Germany, in 1989 after winning the competition to build the Jewish Museum in Berlin. In February 2003, Studio Libeskind moved its headquarters from Berlin to New York City to oversee the master plan for the World Trade Center redevelopment, which is being realized in Lower Manhattan.

Libeskind’s practice is involved in designing and realizing a diverse array of urban, cultural, and commercial projects around the globe. The Studio has completed buildings that range from museums and concert halls to convention centers, university buildings, hotels, shopping centers, and residential towers. As Principal Design Architect for Studio Libeskind, Libeskind speaks widely on the art of architecture in universities and professional summits. His architecture and ideas have been the subject of many articles and exhibitions, influencing the field of architecture and the development of cities and culture.

Libeskind has won dozens of awards for his work including the Goethe Medal, the Hiroshima Peace Prize, the Dresden Peace Prize, and the European Union Prize for Civil Rights.

Mr. Libeskind's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the President's Office and the President's Leadership Fund.

Photo credit: Stefan Ruiz

(Special Note: This event had originally been scheduled for Wednesday, November 5, 2025. We are honoring the head table sign-ups from that original date. Students who had secured a head table spot (or were waitlisted for the head table) will have the right of first refusal for the head table. If you had a confirmed spot at the head table, we are aware of who you are and we will contact you directly in early April.)