Week Five: July 20–27, 2024
Every summer Chautauqua Institution welcomes over 100,000 visitors, to celebrate community and prioritize personal growth. Many travel here to relax, renew and recharge on the shores of Chautauqua Lake. Join us for our historic 150 anniversary season and see for yourself why Chautauqua was, and continues to be, a cherished destination Keep scrolling to explore Week Five’s Theme: Our Greatest Challenges (That We Can Actually Do Something About).
Featured Entertainment and Events
In the Air Tonight: A Symphonic Celebration of Genesis & Phil Collins with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra
July 20
Chautauqua Lecture Series
Our Greatest Challenges (That We Can Actually Do Something About)
The challenges facing our world and our country are many in number and significant in degree, but we are not powerless. Just as there are countless concerns before us, so too are there countless ways to address them. From the top-down policies of elected leaders to grassroots community measures, some of America’s greatest problems require a “yes/and” approach of big and small actions. In this week, we will be guided by experts and nonpartisan polling to determine what our greatest challenges are, what we can agree upon, and what we can do about it.
Scholar, cultural critic and staff writer at The Atlantic Thomas Chatterton Williams opens the week’s discussions on Monday, July 22, 2024, when will survey the current American conversation on race, share how he has evolved in his conception of race and societal division, and provide his perspective on creating a space for productive conversation and bridge-building. Margaret Sullivan, the Egan Visiting Professor at Duke University, award-winning media critic and groundbreaking journalist will speak Tuesday, July 23, 2024, to evaluate the state of local journalism; offer models for re-establishing this critical community institution; and share ways that individual and community action can create solutions. On Wednesday, July 24, 2024, the Chautauqua Lecture Series and Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative welcome environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben back to the Amphitheater stage, where he’ll be joined by journalist, George Washington University administrator and Planet Forward creator Frank Sesno as they discuss work both men are doing to catalyze climate action across generations. Chico Tillmon, the executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy, will speak Thursday, July 25, 2024 to share stories of success and learning from his work with the CVI Leadership Academy, and throughout his career, to effect positive change at a systemic level. Finally, to close the week on Friday, July 26, 2024, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Timothy P. Carney will deliver a lecture based on his newest book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, arguing that the high standards set for modern American parenting are unrealistic and setting parents and kids up to fail — and that it’s time to end this failed experiment.
Confirmed Lectures
Thomas Chatterton Williams
Thomas Chatterton Williams is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a visiting professor of humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. To open a Chautauqua Lecture Series week examining “Our Greatest Challenges (That We Can Actually Do Something About),” Williams will survey the current American conversation on race, share how he has evolved in his conception of race and societal division, and provide his perspective on creating a space for productive conversation and bridge-building.
Williams was previously a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a columnist at Harper’s. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Le Monde and many other places, and has been collected in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. He has received support from New America, Yaddo, MacDowell, and The American Academy in Berlin, where he is a member of the board of trustees.
Williams’ next book, Nothing Was the Same, will be published by Knopf.
Margaret Sullivan
Margaret Sullivan is an award-winning media critic and a groundbreaking journalist who currently writes for The Guardian US. She began her career as a summer intern at her hometown paper, The Buffalo News, and rose through the ranks to become the newspaper paper’s first woman editor in chief. The longest-serving public editor at The New York Times, she was for six years the media columnist at The Washington Post. She joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series in a week on “Our Greatest Challenges (That We Can Actually Do Something About)” to evaluate the state of local journalism; offer models for re-establishing this critical community institution; and share ways that individual and community action can create solutions.
Sullivan is the author of two books — Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life and Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy, which was named 2020’s outstanding public affairs book by the Porchlight Book Awards — and hosts the podcast “American Crisis: Can Journalism Save Democracy?” Recognition for her work includes the Bart Richards Award from Penn State for her 2020 media columns; a Mirror Award from Syracuse University for her commentary on Trump impeachment coverage; and the 2017 Stephen Hamblett First Amendment Award from the New England First Amendment Coalition for her writing at The New York Times and The Washington Post.
A former member of the Pulitzer Prize board, she was elected in 2023 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sullivan was twice elected as a director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where she led the First Amendment committee. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Bill McKibben & Frank Sesno
In a week centered on “Our Greatest Challenges (That We Can Actually Do Something About),” the Chautauqua Lecture Series and Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative welcome environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben back to the Amphitheater stage, where he’ll be joined by journalist Frank Sesno as they discuss work both men are doing to catalyze climate action across generations.
Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist and founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change and has appeared in 24 languages. Currently, he serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
McKibben helped found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized protests on every continent, including Antarctica, for climate action. He played a leading role in launching the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like Keystone XL, and the fossil fuel divestment campaign. For his work, he has been awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Right Livelihood Prize (sometimes referred to as the “alternative Nobel”), among others.
McKibben writes frequently for a wide variety of publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone. In 2014, biologists honored him by naming a new species of woodland gnat — Megophthalmidia mckibbeni — in his honor.
Frank Sesno is an Emmy Award-winning journalist with more than 30 years of experience reporting from around the world. Well known as bureau chief, anchor, White House Correspondent and talk show host on CNN, he is also a nationally renowned moderator who has engaged some of the world’s leading personalities, including five U.S. Presidents and numerous other influential figures.
Currently, he serves as director of strategic initiatives at The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, where he also teaches classes on the art of the interview, journalism ethics, documentary and sustainability reporting. He was previously the school’s director for 11 years.
The School of Media and Public Affairs is also headquarters to Planet Foward, a multi-platform project Sesno created to empower new voices and lead a global conversation on the planet’s future. Engaging a diverse audience of college students from across the country, Planet Forward uses storytelling, media, and educational events to tell the stories of invention and innovation that can move our planet forward. Created in 2009, it is now the premier engagement tool for the university’s sustainability initiatives.
Chico Tillmon
Chico Tillmon is the executive director of the Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, the first CVI training program designed to elevate the leadership capacity of leaders who oversee community-based organizations, offices of violence prevention, hospital violence intervention, and other components of the CVI ecosystem working tirelessly to quell violence in vulnerable communities. He joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series during a week on “Our Greatest Challenges (That We Can Actually Do Something About)” to share stories of success and learning from his work with the CVI Leadership Academy, and throughout his career, to effect positive change at a systemic level.
Tillmon joined the University of Chicago Crime Lab after working at Heartland Alliance as executive director of READI National Center for Safer Communities, a national technical assistance provider that provides capacity building and training for cities and communities throughout the United States. Tillmon is also a violence-prevention expert who serves on the leadership team of the Black and Brown Peace Consortium, the collaborative that led the Fund Peace initiative. The former executive director of the YMCA of Metro Chicago’s Youth Safety and Violence Prevention programs, he is a leading national consultant and training and technical assistance provider on violence prevention, re-entry, and nonprofits.
System-impacted, Tillmon came home with the purpose of trying to change his community in a positive way. He works with youth, young adults, and direct service providers in marginalized areas to help them hone their professional skills and improve their work performance, and has worked over a decade in violence prevention, mental health, and re-entry. In 2021, Tillmon was recognized by President Joe Biden for his national violence prevention work and invited to the White House.
Timothy P. Carney
Timothy P. Carney is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on civil society, family, localism, religion in America, economic competition, and electoral politics. He is concurrently a senior columnist at the Washington Examiner. Carney will close the Chautauqua Lecture Series’ survey of “Our Greatest Challenges (That We Can Actually Do Something About)” with a lecture based on his newest book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, published in March 2024. In Family Unfriendly, Carney argues the high standards set for modern American parenting are unrealistic and setting parents and kids up to fail — and that it’s time to end this failed experiment.
Carney is also the author of Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse, which was a Washington Post bestseller; Obamanomics; and The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, which was awarded the 2008 Culture of Enterprise award by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
In addition to his Washington Examiner columns, Carney has been published widely, including in The Atlantic, National Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. His television appearances include CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and “The PBS NewsHour.” Carney has a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s College in Annapolis.
Interfaith Lecture Series
Spiritual Grounding for Social Change
Religious faith has energized movements for social change and human thriving across time. We will unpack the historic connection between faith and social action and consider the future of faith-based movements for social change. Spiritual nourishment for the work of care, advocacy, and justice is relevant not only to those who already understand their own work in religious terms, but also for anyone who might be hungry for a way to sustain the hard work of activism across a lifetime. We will hear from a diverse group of scholars, practitioners and leaders reflecting on the many ways that spirituality and religious practice can strengthen and support change agents in our complex world.
Confirmed Lectures
Najeeba Syeed
Najeeba Syeed is the inaugural El-Hibri endowed chair and executive director of Interfaith at Augsburg. She has been a professor, expert practitioner, and public speaker for the last two decades in the fields of conflict resolution, interfaith studies, mediation, education, deliberative democracy, social, gender and racial equity.
From 2010-2020, she was an Associate Professor of Interreligious Education at Claremont School of Theology. Under her leadership, the two conflict resolution centers she led received the Jon Anson Ford Award for reducing violence in schools and in interracial gang conflict and was named Southern California Mediation Association’s “Peacemaker of the Year” in 2007. She has chaired national conferences on Muslim and Interfaith Peacebuilding, served as a mediator in many cases, started restorative justice mediation programs in many institutions including University of Southern California and several middle and high schools. Her track record as a peacemaker and critical peace researcher has made her a sought-out advisor and she has served as an on the ground peace interventionist in conflicts around the globe. Syeed’s peace and justice work has been the subject of news reports and documentaries.
She is a 1995 graduate of Guilford College where she received the Oexmann Fellowship for community-based mediation and was awarded the 2012 Young Alumni Achievement Award. She is a 2000 graduate of Indiana University Maurer School of Law where she was a teaching fellow in mediation and ran the university’s mediation program. In 2021, she was awarded the Litterarum Humanarum Doctor (Doctor of Humane Letters) from Starr King School for the Ministry.
Sohrab Ahmari
Sohrab Ahmari is a founder and editor of Compact and a contributing writer for The New Statesman. Previously, he spent nearly a decade at News Corp., as op-ed editor of the New York Post and as a columnist and editor with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in New York and London. In addition to those publications, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Spectator, Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Literary Supplement, Commentary, Dissent, and The American Conservative, for which he is a contributing editor. His books include The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos (2021) and Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It (2023), both published by Penguin Random House.
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Sharon Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, a leading-edge Jewish community based in Los Angeles, and a leading voice in reanimating religious life in America, working to develop a spiritual roadmap for a soulful, justice-driven, multi-faith ethos in Los Angeles and around the country. Brous cofounded IKAR in 2004 to reinvigorate Jewish practice and inspire people of faith to reclaim a moral and prophetic voice. IKAR quickly became one of the fastest growing and most influential Jewish congregations in the country and is credited with sparking a rethinking of religious life in a time of unprecedented disaffection and declining affiliation.
Brous’s 2016 TED talk, “Reclaiming Religion,” has been viewed by more than 1.4 million people and translated into 23 languages. In 2013, she blessed President Obama and Vice President Biden at the Inaugural National Prayer Service and returned in 2021 to bless President Biden and Vice President Harris, and then to lead the White House Passover Seder that spring. Brous spoke at the Women’s March in Washington, DC in 2017 and at the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice the following year. She was named #1 on the Newsweek/The Daily Beast list of the most influential Rabbis in America.
Brous is in the inaugural cohort of Auburn Seminary‘s Senior Fellows program, which unites top faith leaders working on the frontlines for justice. She also sits on the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute-North America and REBOOT and serves on the International Council of the New Israel Fund, the national steering committee for the Poor People’s Campaign, and the advisory board of Dayenu, a Jewish Call to Climate Justice. She is a graduate of Columbia University, was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.
July 25 @ 2:00 pm Week Five (July 20–27)
The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi
Hall of Philosophy | CHQ Assembly
The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi
The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi is an innovative thinker, philosopher, educator, and a polymath monk dedicated to promoting ethical imagination and empathy-based learning. He is President & CEO of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Venerable Tenzin’s unusual background encompasses entering a Buddhist monastery at the age of ten and receiving graduate education at Harvard University with degrees ranging from Philosophy to Physics to International Relations. He is a Tribeca Disruptive Fellow and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Venerable Tenzin serves on the boards of a number of academic, humanitarian, and religious organizations. He is also the recipient of several recognitions and awards and received Harvard’s Distinguished Alumni Honors for his visionary contributions to humanity.
Kaitlin B. Curtice
Kaitlin B. Curtice is an award-winning author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation, Kaitlin writes on the intersections of spirituality and identity and how that shifts throughout our lives. She also speaks on these topics to diverse audiences who are interested in truth-telling and healing. As an inter-spiritual advocate, Kaitlin participates in conversations on topics such as colonialism in faith communities, and she has spoken at many conferences on the importance of inter-faith relationships. Besides her books, Kaitlin has written online for Sojourners, Religion News Service, Apartment Therapy, On Being, SELF Magazine, and more. Her work has been featured on CBS and in USA Today. She also writes at The Liminality Journal. Kaitlin lives in Philadelphia with her family.
Weekly Chaplain
Announcement coming soon!
Explore Performing and Visual Arts
The arts can sometimes bridge differences and illuminate perspectives as no other method can. Artistic expressions at Chautauqua — including professional and pre-professional offerings in classical and contemporary music, theater, opera, dance, visual arts and literary arts — aim to inspire, educate, entertain and engage a diverse and growing audience.
Places to Stay
If you love the events you see in Week Five, ensure you have accommodations. Space on the ground is limited, and accommodations go fast find reservations at the Hotel or Private Accommodations.
Dining & Shopping
Make your Chautauqua experience memorable! Share a delicious meal at one of our many restaurants. Or take piece of Chautauqua home with you from our unique shops.