The Art of Gathering: Priya Junnar on Building Community at CMC's Athenaeum

For 13 years, Priya Junnar has led the intellectual heart of Claremont McKenna College as the fifth director of the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum — one of higher education's most distinctive speaker series, where students, faculty, staff, and a spectrum of luminaries gather around a dinner table to wrestle with the essential ideas of our time. In this episode, host Natalie Chen ’26 sits down with Priya — CMC's First Lady and outgoing Ath director — to explore what it takes to curate nearly four nights a week of intellectually rigorous programming, how she learned to read a community's hunger for ideas, and why sharing a meal together still matters in an age of screens and algorithmic echo chambers. They also talk about Priya's philosophy of serendipity in leadership, her passion for historical fiction and podcasts, the Beyoncé suggestion that became a Rutgers scholar guest speaker, the legendary CMC campus dog Theo, and what she's carrying with her into the next chapter.Learn more about Priya and the Athenaeum:https://www.cmc.edu/magazine/fall-2025/end-of-an-erahttps://www.cmc.edu/athenaeum