Kristen Soltis Anderson steps in for Mary Matalin to join James Carville and open the 2025 Summer Assembly at Chautauqua Institution, taking the Amphitheater stage for a conversation exploring themes of transformation in our current political and media moments. They will be led in conversation by longtime friend of Chautauqua Norman Ornstein, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. Key players on the national political stage — Anderson is a widely read and highly regarded political pollster, and Carville has 40 years of experience in politics, including with the Bill Clinton campaign and administration — Anderson and Carville will consider “Forces Shaping Our Tomorrow” as they also reflect on transformative eras they’ve experienced and helped shape.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a pollster, speaker, commentator, and author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up). The founding partner of Echelon Insights, an opinion research and analytics firm that serves brands, trade associations, nonprofits, and political clients. Anderson regularly advises corporate and government leaders on polling and messaging strategy, and has become one of the foremost experts on the Millennial generation. She also leads focus groups for The New York Times’ opinion section’s “America in Focus” series.

Anderson is an on-air political contributor at CNN and previously has been a contributor to Fox News Channel and ABC News. She has appeared on programs such as “The Daily Show,” “Meet the Press” and HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.” She is also a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. Previously, Anderson hosted “The Trendline” on SiriusXM P.O.T.U.S and “The Pollsters” podcast. She has served as a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. She received her master’s degree in government from Johns Hopkins University and her bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Florida.

James Carville is America’s best-known political consultant. His long list of electoral successes evidences a knack for steering overlooked campaigns to unexpected landslide victories and for remaking political underdogs into upset winners. His winning streak began in 1986, when he managed the gubernatorial victory of Robert Casey in Pennsylvania. In 1987, Carville helped guide Wallace Wilkinson to the governor’s seat in Kentucky. Carville continued his streak with a win in New Jersey with Frank Lautenberg elected to the U.S. Senate. He managed the successful 1990 gubernatorial campaign of Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Zell Miller, and in 1991 drew national attention when he led Sen. Harris Wofford from 40 points behind in the polls to an upset landslide victory. His most prominent victory was in 1992, when he helped William Jefferson Clinton win the presidency.

In recent years, Carville has focused on campaigns in more than 23 countries around the globe. A best-selling author, Carville is also a founder, along with pollster Stanley Greenberg, of the independent, non-profit polling organization Democracy Corps. A fellow at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication, Carville co-hosts the weekly Politicon podcast “Politics War Room” with journalist Al Hunt.

Norman J. Ornstein is a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he has been studying politics, elections and the U.S. Congress for more than four decades. Along with Thomas Mann and Michael Malbin, Ornstein created “Vital Statistics on Congress” in 1980, a go-to reference guide that provides impartial data for congressional watchers, and is updated every two years. He often appears on C-SPAN, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, NPR, and “PBS NewsHour,” among other outlets. Through his family foundation named in honor of his late son Matthew, Ornstein helped spearhead the documentary “The Definition of Insanity,” about criminal justice and mental illness, which premiered at the Miami Film Festival in March 2020, aired nationally on PBS on April 14, 2020, and was the basis for a stirring 2021 Chautauqua Amphitheater conversation.

This program is made possible with generous support from Thomas B. Hagen and The Susan Hirt Hagen Lectures Fund.

Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award–winning host of “All In with Chris Hayes” on MSNBC, editor-at-large of The Nation and the author of The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. In The Sirens’ Call, Hayes argues that society is in the midst of an epoch-defining transition, in which attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. Returning to the Chautauqua Lecture Series to discuss this work, Hayes closes a week dedicated to “Themes of Transformation: Forces Shaping Our Tomorrow.”

In addition to The Sirens’ Call, Hayes is the New York Times bestselling author of A Colony in a Nation and Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy. Previously, Hayes hosted the weekend program “Up w/ Chris Hayes,” which premiered in 2011. Prior to joining MSNBC as an anchor, he had previously served as a frequent substitute host for “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” He became an MSNBC contributor in 2010 and has been with The Nation since 2007.

He is a former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. From 2008 to 2010, he was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, and from 2005 to 2006 was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times. His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in New York Times Magazine, TIME, Nation, American Prospect, New Republic, Washington Monthly, The Guardian and Chicago Reader.

Hayes graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy.

This program is made possible by The Susie Leibowitz Kuhn Endowment Fund for Chautauqua.