Claremont McKenna College

Campus Call for Free Expression Participating President:

Claremont McKenna College

Hiram Chodosh, President

Campus Call for Free Expression Planned Activities

Claremont McKenna College is continuing to build upon its Open Academy, a campus community dedicated to open inquiry, free expression, viewpoint diversity, and constructive dialogue, with programming that focuses on faculty-student relationships and extends from the classroom and the larger campus community to the external communities we live and work in around the world. To advance these broader efforts, the Dean of Students office is developing co-curricular constructive dialogue training and opportunities that will be scaffolded into the four-year college experience.

About the President

Hiram Elias Chodosh is Claremont McKenna College’s fifth and current president. Widely recognized for his innovations and scholarship in higher education, comparative law, and international justice reform, Chodosh has led CMC’s efforts to broaden and deepen its singular mission to prepare students for full, productive lives and roles of responsible leadership in business, government, and the professions. 

Born in 1962 in Elizabeth, New Jersey and raised in nearby Hillside, New Jersey, President Chodosh attended and received his B.A. in history from Wesleyan University in 1985 and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990. During his time at Yale, he met his future wife, Priya Junnar, who has served as Director of CMC’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum since 2014. Following his graduation from law school, Chodosh entered law practice at the New York City headquarters of the international firm Cleary Gottlieb, where he specialized in transnational law. In 1993, he left the firm to join the faculty at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, where he became the Hostetler Professor of Law, Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center, and Associate Dean of the Faculty. In 2006, Chodosh became Dean of the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. During his tenure, he served as the Dean, the Hugh B. Brown Endowed Presidential Professor of Law, and the Senior Presidential Advisor on Global Strategy. In those capacities, he helped establish several new law school and university centers to address law and bioscience, global justice, educational innovation, and research on veterans. He also was instrumental in working with the Utah legislature and the university to build a new $62.5 million building to house the College of Law. 

In 2013, President Chodosh was elected by the Board of Trustees as president of Claremont McKenna College, officially taking office on July 1, 2013. Under his Presidential leadership, Chodosh has helped the College enhance its distinctive leadership mission in liberal arts education. Through The CMC Strategy, CMC has raised more than $200 million in new funding for scholarships (The Student Imperative); student opportunities, internships, and experiences (The Soll Center for Student Opportunity); and additional financial support (Kravis Opportunity Fund). Over the past five years of its expanded Opportunity Strategy, the College has increased the proportion of entering Pell-eligible students by over 75 percent and nearly doubled its percentage of students who are first in their family to attend college, earning recognition for its role as a higher education leader from the American Talent Initiative. 

The Campus Call for Free Expression is a commitment by a diverse group of college presidents to urgently spotlight, uplift, and re-emphasize the principles of critical inquiry and civic discourse on their campuses. The Campus Call is centered on a coordinated set of presidential and campus activities focused on free expression that collectively amplify higher education’s role in preparing young people to be the empowered citizens our democracy needs.