Morning Lecture Recaps

Andrew Russeth spoke to the “art” in Week Seven’s theme, “The Arts and Global Understanding,” in a conversation with Chautauqua Institution Chief of Staff Matt Ewalt at Thursday’s, August 9, 10:45 a.m. morning lecture in the Amphitheater.

Former editor and founder of The New York Observer’s GalleristNY, the New York City-based art critic currently serves as co-executive editor of ARTnews. His writing has appeared in W, New York, Bijutsu Techo and Parkett, as well as on his contemporary art blog, “16 Miles of String.”

His lecture, titled “Crossing Over, Reaching Out: Collaborating Across Borders in Contemporary Art,” touched on artists, exhibitions and mediums that are participating in cross-cultural collaboration.

“If you look at the history of visual art, I think especially the history of art in the 20th century, pretty much every big change, every exciting development comes from some sort of cross-cultural guideline,” Russeth said. “… Then I think about cross-cultural collaboration, cross-cultural influence, … especially right now in contemporary art, where people are really trying to move beyond boundaries.”

Twentieth-century artist Robert Rauschenberg experimented with cross-cultural collaboration during his 1980s series, “Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange.” Russeth read a quote from Rauschenberg, which he said summed up cross-cultural collaboration:

“I feel strong in my beliefs, based on my varied and widely travelled collaborations, that a one-to-one contact through art contains potent peaceful powers and is the nonelitist way to share exotic and common information, seducing us into creative mutual understandings for the benefit of all.”

Rauschenberg traveled across the globe from 1984 and 1991, learning new crafts from local artisans.

His work culminated in a collection of collages featuring native prints, newspapers, photographs from the places he visited and, occasionally, trash he collected from those visits.

Similarly, photographer Gauri Gill of New Delhi documents rural India, including makeshift graves of various religious sects and west-central Indian artisan masks, while also collaborating with other Indian visual artists. Russeth quoted her:

“I think these are powerful voices and I feel like part of my job as a photographer is just to listen — it’s a kind of active listening.”

Aside from individual artists, exhibitions are also venturing into cross-cultural collaborations and exploration, Russeth said.

“The art world is in an interesting moment,” he said. “Predominantly, it’s been in Europe and North America, a very Eurocentric, very white place. But we’re seeing recently, because of activism, because of pressure, because of some policy changes in government, a real effort to embrace difference, to be more diverse.”

Russeth offered two established, large exhibitions as examples: “Prospect” in New Orleans and “documenta.”

“Prospect” grew out of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina as a way for art to heal, Russeth said. Artist Mark Bradford collected discarded wood from the wreckage of Katrina and created an ark, similar to the Biblical tale of Noah; Kiluanji Kia Henda photographed performers on pedestals where statutes of colonizers once stood; and Barkley L. Hendricks’ portraits of African-American subjects replaced European artists of the colonial period in the New Orleans Museum of Art.

“Art exhibitions are also thinking about ‘We need to get away from art as paintings, art as sculpture, art made by people who went to a master of fine arts program’ — it’s everything in the world,” Russeth said. “It’s anything culture created.”

The exhibition series “documenta” began in 1955 to bring multicultural art to Germany after the erection of the Berlin Wall. Since its conception, “documenta” has been displayed 14 times. Its 14th edition featured “The Parthenon of Books” by Argentinian artist Marta Minujín. The piece is a replica of the Athenian Parthenon made of 100,000 banned books at the site of the 1930s book burnings in Kassel.

Other featured works included that of Cecilia Vicuña, who utilizes traditional Chilean knot making; Rick Lowe, who refurbishes houses for community use; and Ibrahim Mahama, who covers public structures with jute-sack quilts from local venders.

“(Mahama) weaves them together in these giant tapestries, using oftentimes art students, oftentimes local people, and then drapes them in plazas or buildings,” Russeth said. “So it becomes this interweaving of cultures — the merchants who decided they were going to part with their work and people who stitched them together, and his work.”

Russeth also provided a smaller, lesser-known exhibition as an example: “The Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness,” which featured Anicka Yi’s crossover of art and science where she combined the scent of an Asian women with the scent of an ant as a critical remark on the stereotypes of Asian people.

To close, Russeth offered three examples of cross-cultural collaboration pushing into politics and real-world issues.

The first was a piece by Christoph Büchel called “The Mosque” — a repurposed decrepit church, which served as a mosque in the historic district of Venice, Italy, where there are no other mosques. The installation was eventually shut down by police, which many in the art community saw as religious censorship, Russeth said.

Russeth then discussed Sam Durant’s “Scaffold,” a sculptural, large-scale gallows in Minnesota created to highlight the mass execution of the Dakota people ordered by President Abraham Lincoln. The Dakota people protested, arguing Durant, a white man, was not equipped to tell their story; Durant apologized and gave the Dakota people the rights to the structure, which they buried.

“Consequently since then, there have been initiatives to collect more art by Native Americans, to have community leaders involved in decision-making about curating,” Russeth said. “But it is very much a work in progress. A lot of museums now are trying to take steps to really engage a diverse variety of communities.”

Finally, Olu Oguibe’s “Monument for Strangers and Refugees” is an obelisk engraved with the book of Matthew in four languages (German, English, Arabic and Turkish) which became a source of debate in Kassel, Germany — some thought it was ugly and distasteful, others thought it was welcoming, Russeth said. Eventually, public opinion favored Oguibe, and the monument stayed in Kassel’s town square.

Russeth remarked how the piece’s simplicity — a few Bible verses plastered on a plain shape — sparked engagement about topical issues and revealed deep-rooted xenophobia in Kassel.

“See as much art as possible,” he said. “When something feels uncomfortable or you don’t like it, really then spend time with it. … When you are around great art and you give it time to work on you and you listen to it, you can understand someone’s background, someone’s viewpoint in a way that few other (media) provide. Just really listen, and when you get offended, dig in.”

After the conclusion of Russeth’s lecture, Jordan Steves, director of strategic communications and community relations, opened the Q-and-A by asking how the aforementioned artists draw attention to their work.

Russeth attributed the ever-diversifying art community to the onset of social media and the ease of sharing information.

Steves turned to the audience for questions; one attendee asked about cultural appropriation in art.

“There just aren’t easy answers oftentimes,” Russeth said. “I think the best we can hope is that these conversations about cultural appropriation lead to more thoughtful art-making, lead to more thoughtful shows.”

Other attendees asked about folk art’s role in cross-cultural collaboration, and for Russeth’s thoughts on the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the demolition of activist Ai Weiwei’s studio by Chinese authorities. Steves then asked why visual arts are an effective means of dissent.

“Humans are visual people,” Russeth said. “… It shows how powerful symbols are.”

Raised in Nigeria, Sweden, Burkina Faso, Vietnam and the United States, Tayo Rockson is no tourist when it comes to communicating across cultures.

The son of a diplomat, Rockson grew up in five different countries on four different continents. His unique upbringing helped shape his life and his outlook on the world. In his lecture, he will discuss the importance of being able to communicate across cultures and embrace global identity at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, August 8, in the Amphitheater as part of Week Seven’s theme, “The Arts and Global Understanding.”

“In a week in which we explore the role of the arts in fostering global understanding, and the arts take center stage in a variety of programs, we also wanted to consider the impact of greater global understanding through culture,” said Matt Ewalt, Institution chief of staff. “Following a morning with Ambassador (Barbara) Stephenson on the role of cultural diplomacy, Tayo, himself the son of an ambassador, will speak to the benefits of cultural intelligence to business, and why our understanding across borders and cultures matters more and more to companies and organizations.”

Rockson is the founder and CEO of UYD Management — a firm that advises businesses on strategies to improve diversity, hiring, inclusivity, retention and social justice.

Growing up, Rockson was exposed to a variety of cultures, and he felt pressured to fit in. This challenge caused him to struggle with an “identity crisis,” but he credits that crisis as the driving force behind his work; he said it made him realize that his life experience allowed him to “see the world through different lenses.”

Rockson is a “third-culture kid,” meaning he was raised outside of his parents’ culture for the majority of his childhood. Growing up, Rockson said that he lost pieces of himself while trying to blend in with the majority.

“Part of being (the son of a diplomat) and a third-culture kid, you’re always in different environments, and there’s this tendency to try to fit in,” Rockson said. “A lot of the time, I tried to fit in, and I would almost lose myself. By the time I was 17, I decided not to lose myself anymore.”

When he was 22 years old, Rockson quit his job to move to New York City, and in 2014, he created “As Told By Nomads,” a podcast that features people who come from multicultural backgrounds. He and his guests discuss global identity and what it means to be a global leader.

“The podcast is what launched my career,” Rockson said. “I started to ask: ‘Why do we live in a globalized, digitalized world, (but) we still have problems that prevent us from communicating across cultures?’ ”

On his podcast, Rockson said he talks to people who have unique perspectives and will ask questions he knows his audience is curious to learn about.

A lover of learning, Rockson said he has grown through his work and wants people to experience that growth in their own lives. This desire to share stories and create change motivated him to create UYD — Use Your Difference — Management.

“I started to look at two places that we spend most of our lives — school and the workplace,” Rockson said. “There are still people that don’t know how to fully be themselves in the workplace and leaders that don’t know how to bring people together. I wanted to use my research (from the podcast) to help UYD Management.”

Through consultations, UYD offers guidance to corporations so they can expand and become more inclusive.

“I think it’s important to embrace who you are because we live in a world that likes to tell people what they can and what they can’t be,” Rockson said. “When you exist in that environment, you are inevitably going to suppress a part of yourself.”

By being able understand different perspectives, Rockson thinks people learn how to empathize, imagine different solutions and solve problems in well-rounded ways.

“Other people are going to come out of themselves,” Rockson said. “That is going to create a community that wasn’t there before.”

Two key principles that guide him through his work, Rockson said, are education and creating platforms for voices that are not often heard.

He thinks there is always more to learn and wants everyone to embrace their individuality and give a voice to those constantly tuned out by a society that is quick to judge.

“I know what it’s like to have your voice taken away from you, so just knowing that I could play a role in helping someone realize the best in themselves (makes my work worthwhile),” Rockson said.

Sarah Jaffe literally wrote the book on troublemakers — well, she wrote a book, Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt.

The author and journalist spoke to power, money as speech and the history of dissent movements in the United States at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Friday, July 27, in the Amphitheater, wrapping up Week Five’s theme, “The Ethics of Dissent.”

Jaffe covers labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender and pop culture with work in The New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. Jaffe co-hosts Dissent magazine’s podcast, “Belabored,” and works as a columnist at The New Republic and New Labor Forum.

To open, Jaffe summed up her perspective on dissent with a quote from Irish socialist leader James Connolly:

“When her rebel sons and daughters were dead, hunted, imprisoned, hanged or exiled she would weep for them, pray for them, sigh for them, cry for them and when they were long enough out of the way, erect monuments to them. …”

When Jaffe visited Ireland in 2016, photos of Connolly were plastered everywhere despite his execution by the British for his role in the Easter Rising. His statement predicted his own future.

“When I think about dissent, and protest movements, social movements, troublemakers, which is what I wrote my book about, I think about that and the fact that we don’t often like the people who are making trouble,” Jaffe said.

The title of her book, Necessary Trouble, came to Jaffe after she interviewed U.S. Rep. John Lewis during the Dream Defenders’ 2013 occupation of Florida’s capital building after the death of Trayvon Martin. Lewis said, and Jaffe paraphrased:

“You’ve got to find a way to get in the way. You’ve got to make some good trouble — necessary trouble.”

This idea catalyzed her book, which examines social movements in America from the financial crisis of 2008 forward.

The 2008 crisis was a “rupture in the way we see the world,” Jaffe said. Decades earlier during the post-Soviet era, capitalism in the United States and around the world flourished. The threat of capitalism’s collapse proved otherwise, she said. As writer Mark Fisher put it:

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”

The recession caused bank bailouts, stimulus bills, efforts to slow “the tide of foreclosures” and attempts to keep the banks functioning. The end of capitalism was a real threat, Jaffe said, and leaders fought to keep it from crumbling.

From the crumbling of capitalism and the height of the 2008 financial crisis came a wave of protest movements. What began as a lie-in at the Chicago stock exchange that garnered national attention turned into the 2009 Tea Party protests that disrupted town halls and Senate meetings. And it worked.

In 2011, Occupy Wall Street tried to replicate this disruption.

“You had, from coast to coast in every state and most major cities, some sort of an Occupy encampment,” Jaffe said. “You had people marching on banks, on elected officials, trying to figure out how to disrupt shareholder meetings of the major banks. … It was an attempt … to actually call attention and figure out how to change the workings of American capitalism.”

Jaffe said Occupy Wall Street owed its tactics to Wisconsin’s “Rally to Save the American Dream” protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s legislation to strip public-sector workers of collective bargaining rights.

“Public-sectors workers, led by the graduate student union, didn’t like that idea,” she said. “So they took over the capitol building for three weeks. … They did what they could to disrupt the passage of this bill.”

As a journalist, Jaffe has spent much of her career reporting on unions, labor disputes and workers’ rights — most recently, the Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court case, which threatens the freedom to form unions.

According to Jaffe, the Supreme Court determined in prior cases that corporations are more powerful than unions. Hence, Jaffe argued, money equals the right to speak — and this is not limited to the union-corporate dynamic.

Jaffe referenced Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign during the 2016 election as a Democratic socialist; she stressed that a century ago, socialism was not tolerated.

“You were not supposed to say those things in this country,” she said. “The reason you’re not supposed to say those things in this country is because a lot of people in a lot of powerful positions made a lot of effort to make sure we didn’t.”

The government undertook countless efforts throughout the 20th century to contain communists and socialists in the United States. It deported and arrested communist sympathizers; executed the Palmer Raids to capture, arrest and deport anarchists; banned radical literature; and created the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to restrict labor unions. Hollywood blacklists and the McCarthyism of the 1950s were a “spectacle of things you weren’t supposed to say,” Jaffe said.

“(These events) changed the way we talked about things — to actually express the idea that inequality is a bad thing,” Jaffe said. “It became a lot harder to do when to do so got you called a communist — organizing interracial unions got you called a communist.”

The legacy of the Red Scare left America unable to think about the changing nature of national dialogue and capitalism, she said, and thus resulted in the eight richest men in the world controlling wealth equal to that held by the bottom 50 percent of the population.

McCarthyism attempted to narrow the scope of American thought. But since the 2016 election, that scope has been widened, Jaffe said. In the wake of Sanders, politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — with once-taboo socialist agendas — are beating traditional politicians at the polls. The majority of younger people identify with socialism over capitalism, Jaffe said.

More recently, protest is seeping into everyday life; organized movements like the Women’s March, March for Science and the March for Our Lives swept across the nation this past year. However, Jaffe said, a physical, powerful, unorganized dissent took shape following the enactment of the U.S. travel ban. People rushed to airports to block security lines and gates; taxi drivers went on strike, refusing to take fares at the airport; and when Uber lowered its prices because of the strike, thousands deleted the app in rebuttal as part of a power struggle, Jaffe said.

Democracy is a power struggle — it doesn’t work for everyone, Jaffe argued; people’s policy choices are rarely ratified unless they align with a politician’s agenda.

“So the way that regular people are heard, that they get their preferences enacted, is to find a way to get in the way,” she said. “… We have to disrupt the status quo. We have to actually get unruly in order to get heard at all.”

Expect more dissent, she said.

After the conclusion of Jaffe’s lecture, Dave Griffith, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, opened the Q-and-A by quoting George Orwell. Griffith paraphrased: “When they are writing, one is either sinning by commission or sinning by omission.”

Griffith then asked what is the most compelling explanation Jaffe has heard to justify “sinning by commission” versus “sinning by omission.”

“What we have seen and what we will continue to see with President Donald Trump is a lot of people saying, ‘I can’t sit still anymore. This is not OK,’” Jaffe said. “… It is the question of ‘Am I just letting stuff happen because I’m admittedly comfortable?’ … You have to decide every day where and how to act and what risks you’re going to take, … and it’s not a simple thing to say, ‘I’m going to go out and I’m going to get arrested today as protest’ — it can affect the rest of your life.”

Griffith turned to the audience for questions; one attendee asked if there is recourse after Trump throws a reporter out of a press conference.

The short answer, Jaffe said, is no.

“The Trump administration is a little more honest about kicking people out when they ask a question they don’t like as opposed to just calling on them or giving them an artfully constructed non-answer,” Jaffe said. “But to actually do real journalism anyway, you have to find out what those people don’t want you to know, rather than the things they want you to know.”

To close the lecture, an audience member asked if power, money and hierarchies always win.

“I think there are more of us than there are of them,” Jaffe said. “… I think we have to believe it is possible in order to be willing to act. … One of the things that it takes for people to decide to get up and do something is obviously anger, frustration and the need to express something, but you also have to believe you can change things.”

Factories and electrical plants surrounded Niagara Falls by the late 19th century. It took a painting, “Niagara Falls, from the American Side” by Frederic Edwin Church and the Free Niagara movement led by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to loosen industrialism’s grip on the falls.

When Suzanne Nossel visited just a few days ago during her trip to Chautauqua Institution, the footprint of the Industrial Revolution on the nation’s oldest state park was nearly obsolete.

“If (Church and Olmsted) could use a visionary masterpiece and a shoe-level movement to snatch back Niagara Falls from the clutches of industry, maybe we could use our vision and vigor to restore free speech from the forces that threaten it,” she said.

The chief executive officer of PEN America spoke to free speech and looming threats to the First Amendment at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Tuesday, July 24, in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Five’s theme, “The Ethics of Dissent.”

PEN America is the leading organization when it comes to igniting national conversations around human rights and free expression issues. PEN America consists of writers, journalists, editors, translators and readers, Nossel said, who strive to “safeguard the written word.”

Nossel read PEN’s — timely — charter: “PEN declares for a free press and opposes arbitrary censorship. … Members pledge themselves to oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood, and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.”

In her five-year tenure at PEN America, Nossel has worked on a variety of free speech issues, including censorship and internet oppression in China, constraints on civil society in Russia, free speech on college campuses and freedom of the press — but now, she is more alarmed about “how precarious our fundamental right to free speech has become” than ever.

“To protect free speech today, the First Amendment is necessary but not sufficient. … For free speech to survive and thrive in the new era, we, as citizens, need to race to defend it, even when that means rising in support of speech (from which) we personally dissent,” she said. “We need to understand new opportunities for speech, new threats to it and what it will take to safeguard discourse.”

Nossel addressed three threats to free speech: the rise of the digital age, ideological polarization, and ignorance and indifference to the First Amendment.

“In the past decade, online platforms have become a prime marketplace for our speech,” she said. “… (Social media are) also, make no mistake, markets for companies, campaigns and interests to spend millions on paid campaigns to shape where you buy, who you support and what you think. That same accessibility to openness has made social media platforms breeding grounds for hatred, harassment, manipulation and even terrorism.”

James Madison would have never predicted that while etching the First Amendment into parchment paper, Nossel said, but these platforms are not subject to the First Amendment — “our new public square isn’t actually public.”

Companies have their own community standards. It’s no longer a governmental body deciding rules and stipulations, she said.

“Everyday anonymous algorithms and individual Silicon Valley staffers in T-shirts make countless decisions about what stays and what goes — what becomes a sensation and what sinks in obscurity,” Nossel said. “Mark Zuckerberg thinks Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists are harassers, but he believes Holocaust deniers are just a little misguided.”

Twitter’s terrorists could be Facebook’s freedom riders, she said.

Like most tech CEOs, she said, Zuckerberg can enforce regulations as he pleases with minimal interference from the government because of two factors: social media platforms are international and the protections of the First Amendment do not extend outside of the United States’ borders; and menacing hate speech is protected speech.

“The utopian ideal of the internet as a beautiful, wild garden where all forms of speech can flower has become infested,” she said. “We now recognize that speech can be invasive, even poisonous, with the speech of some strangling that of others.”

The public outcries have caused companies like Facebook to grapple with “blurred boundaries” between offensive and dangerous speech on their platforms. Nossel said this is much more complicated than it seems. It matters not only what words are used, but who is using them.

“Among the most menacing forms of online content are fraudulent news and disinformation being used to skew discourse, sow divisions and even throw elections,” she said.

According to a Pew Research Center study, Americans are losing the ability to discern false from true information; 64 percent of Americans believe fabricated news stories cause confusion about basic facts of current events.

“Free expression is about more than just the right to speak,” Nossel said. “It’s the right to gather and harden information, to sort through competing ideas, engage with one another in search of a new truth, to persuade and be persuaded.”

Despite this growing discourse, most forms of “fake news” are protected speech, she said, and do not infringe on First Amendment rights except in instances like slander, libel and defamation.

“There are no easy answers to regulating speech online, but what is clear is we can’t leave it up to the courts — the First Amendment has very little to say about what you can post on Instagram,” Nossel said “… As citizens, when it comes to defending our discourse online, we have no one to turn to but ourselves. We need to summon our collective powers … to insist that with the great power of social media comes great responsibility.”

Nossel said the second threat to free speech is ideological polarization: The right is weaponizing the First Amendment, while the left is alienated and dismissive toward the principles of free speech.

Conservatives are using the First Amendment to curb government action for equality, she said. One threat to free speech from the right is President Donald Trump’s escalating campaign against the media — the “enemy of the American people.”

“If President Trump was shutting down newspapers or putting journalists in jail, … those tactics would blatantly violate the First Amendment. He’s too clever for that,” Nossel said. “He’s using his own First Amendment right for protected political speech to undercut the rights of the rest of us.”

According to a Quinnipiac poll, more than half of Republican voters agree with the president’s distrust of the media.

“This poses a fundamental threat to our system of self-government,” Nossel said. “It’s the job of the press to hold those in power accountable. President Trump knows that all too well; his is a deliberate strategy to neutralize criticism, shirk accountability … by insulting, denigrating, casting doubt on the messenger. And it’s working.”

Hate speech is also a threat growing from the right, Nossel said.

“Here in the U.S., hateful speech is mostly protected by the First Amendment, but until recently, it was bounded by strong taboos,” she said. “There were simply some things that were unacceptable in our discourse, not because of any laws, but because of a mainstream culture that shunned slurs, stereotypes and swastikas.”

The Trump administration has subverted those taboos, she said, giving rise to white supremacists like Richard Spencer. Spencer’s recent efforts have including speaking on college campuses to provoke a reaction from administrators and students.

Nossel said PEN America advises schools to allow white supremacists to speak alongside counterarguments.

“Through counterspeech, provost messages and Twitter campaigns, colleges can make it clear that allowing a platform for all viewpoints doesn’t amount to an endorsement,” she said. “But letting (white supremacists) appear denies them what they want more than anything else — reporting being shut down.”

This is tearing at liberals’ ideal of free speech, causing some progressives to question whether free speech is compatible with the values of equality and inclusion, Nossel said. And while counterspeech is imperative for combating hate speech, it can also silence other opinions.

This is the paradox of the college campus, she said.

“It’s a vicious cycle on the university quad,” Nossel said. “The right brings in offensive speakers to spread not just ideas, but partially to prove that they can. The left, in turn, calls to restrict speech in the interest of equality and inclusion. Such moves only feed right into the charges that speakers’ beliefs are oppressed.”

The final threat to free speech is ignorance and indifference to the First Amendment, Nossel said.

“We rely on the First Amendment every day, whether when we are opening up the morning paper, signing a petition, taking to the streets in protest,” she said. “It’s like the air we breathe, vital — (but) too often unused; we don’t celebrate it, teach it or, even it seems, remember it. The numbers paint a big picture:”

Nossel cited a survey in which 77 percent of Americans said they supported the First Amendment, but very few knew what it actually entails; 36 percent could name at least one of the five freedoms, and only one in the survey group of about 1,000 could list all five.

“As a society, we’ve long had the luxury of taking our free speech protections for granted,” she said. “To us, the First Amendment is absolute, all encompassing — as sure as the ground we walk on. … For too long, we’ve all been looking elsewhere while the fault lines have deepened under our feet.”

Nossel called for a new mobilization around the First Amendment that revolves around re-educating youth through civics classes to help them better understand free speech; defending free speech as a fundamental, American value; taking free speech into the digital era; and standing up for those who can’t do so for themselves.

America hasn’t always gotten free speech right, she said, and while democracy is veering off the course, it is now that Americans need more speech, not less.

“The writers and artists and actors PEN America supports are undaunting. … It’s the modern equivalent of those women in hats and ruffled collars who marched with the sandwich boards and said ‘save Niagara Falls.’

… Citizens are activated, electrified, empowered. That gives me and artists hope,” Nossel said. “And if those of us who passionately believe in free speech can harness that energy, we can mobilize a citizens’ movement that brings new light into this most basic human freedom.”

After the conclusion of Nossel’s lecture, Emily Morris, vice president of marketing and communications and chief brand officer, opened the Q-and-A. She asked what ethical principles drive PEN America.

Nossel said PEN tries to stay focused on its mission, not dive into politics, but still calls out threats to free speech.

Morris then turned to the audience for questions. One attendee asked what PEN America’s position is on kneeling for the national anthem.

Nossel said PEN America supports the choice to kneel during the national anthem. But, to her, the president’s open opposition to it is a new form of censorship.

“The president of the United States is heckling NFL owners to punish these players; he is trying to exact punishment for speech, maybe not directly, but by encouraging and insisting that the owners impose discipline,” she said. “That’s a government punishment for speech.”

Morris then asked if forms of expression (like applauding) during public forums were harmful to freedom of speech. She was quickly interrupted by various choruses of applause.

Nossel said she thinks forms of expression during public forums or debate can shape individuals’ ways of thinking.

What do John F. Kennedy’s assassination, J. Edgar Hoover and the AIDS epidemic have in common? They were all influenced by Russian “active measures,” Alina Polyakova said at Thursday’s, July 19, 10:45 a.m. morning lecture in the Amphitheater.

Her lecture offered a topical approach to Week Four’s theme, “Russia and the West.”

“What a fantastic week to be talking about Russia,” she said. “I don’t think it could have been timed any better by Chautauqua Institution. I started to think the Institution actually knew something that none of us knew, but I swear to you, there was not collusion.”

Polyakova is the David M. Rubenstein Fellow at Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe. She is also the author of The Dark Side of European Integration: Social Foundations and Cultural Determinants of the Rise of Radical Right Movements in Contemporary Europe and serves as a term member on Council on Foreign Relations.

During her graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, Polyakova studied far-right populism and nationalism in European countries. Her research led her to connect the dots between Italy’s right-wing Northern League, France’s National Front and Germany’s Left Party: they were all in contact with Russia.

This led her down a rabbit hole of Russian tactics, dubbed “active measures,” used to “influence the course of narratives around global events.” In the United States, these measures trace back to the 1950s.

“At that time, the KGB, the Russian intelligence services, developed a toolkit of active measures to try to undermine Western societies, discredit political leaders and also delegitimize Western values aboard,” Polyakova said.

The KGB created a subset charged with this task called “Service A,” she said.

“Service A was charged with orchestrating mostly nonviolent measures to destabilize the United States, specifically, and also to undermine U.S. public diplomacy and U.S. soft power aboard,” she said. “It would spread misinformation around the world, it would forge documents, and then it would attempt to undermine U.S. power using these techniques.”

Polyakova provided a number of colorful examples to illustrate this point; Service A tried to pin JFK’s assassination on the U.S. government, specifically that Lee Harvey Oswald was in cahoots with the CIA and FBI; it sent homophobic letters to United States newspapers claiming that J. Edgar Hoover was gay and a cross-dresser; and in the 1980s, it attempted to blame the AIDs epidemic on the United States government.

Service A escalated to more violent attacks in the 1960s when it infiltrated an activist group and set bombs off in predominantly black neighborhoods of New York City and attempted to blame the explosions on the Jewish Defense League.

“So we see this attempt to pit different parts of civilian society against each other,” Polyakova said. “And yes, in the Soviet era, the KGB also intervened in the U.S. elections.”

In 1976, Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, known for his outspoken distaste for the Soviet Union, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. The Soviet Union feared his potential success, so Service A forged FBI documents claiming Jackson was a “closeted homosexual” and sent them to journalists and media outlets. Jackson did not receive the nomination.

Active measures continued in the 1980s and 1990s, but died off after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“After (President Vladimir Putin) came into power in 2000, active measures have once again become a favorite tool of Russian influence,” Polyakova said. “That’s largely because Putin’s rise to power has been defined, in hindsight, by the merger of the Russian intelligence agencies … with the Russian state.”

The merger of the Kremlin and Russian intelligence agencies, Polyakova said, would be like if the United States merged the FBI and CIA with the executive branch — where there was no separation between “wet operations” and statehood.

“This is the situation we have in Russia today,” she said. “But I think the bigger question is if all of these activities have been ongoing for decades throughout the 20th century, all throughout the Cold War, why have we now, today, been taken by surprise by Russian meddling in U.S. elections in 2016, but also in the majority of European elections since then?”

Polyakova said advancing technology, evolving societies and new perceived threats have contributed to this “surprise.” After 9/11, the United States switched from fearing Russia to fearing global terrorism. But while the United States forgot about Russia, Russia did not forget about it, she said.

“The world today is not black and white — the world today is gray,” she said.

And with these changes, Russian active measures have adapted. Polyakova referenced the invasion of Ukraine as an example:

In 2013, then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych backed out of a deal with the EU to bring Ukraine culturally closer to the West, and accepted a deal with Russia instead. Angered by this deal, Ukrainians protested, and Yanukovych eventually fled to Russia. Russia then invaded a weakened Ukraine.

After the invasion, Russian media broadcast an interview with a woman claiming to be a Ukrainian refugee who said she watched a mother and son get beaten and crucified during a siege by Ukrainian forces to take back the Russian- controlled East.

However, as this story spread around the world, news outlets quickly picked up on discrepancies in the woman’s story — the square in which she claimed the murders happened did not exist, nor were there other eyewitnesses, and the woman appeared in other broadcasts claiming to be someone else with another outrageous story.

Despite the inevitable debunking of this ruse, Polyakova said, the story “propped up Russia’s view that Ukraine was a fascist coup.”

“These stories that had proven to be false after a certain time were not just contained to Russian- speaking space,” Polyakova said. “They were seeping into how Americans or English or German journalists were writing about what was happening in Ukraine at that time.”

Polyakova fast-forwarded to another case that illustrates how Russia’s active measures have evolved for the 21st century:

In 2016, a 13-year-old Russian-German girl went missing. After she didn’t come home from school that day, her parents called the German police. Russian journalists quickly picked up on the story; Russia’s main channel began broadcasting that the girl was kidnapped and raped by Syrian refugees.

Eventually, the German police found the girl, who had not been kidnapped and had spent the night at her boyfriend’s house.

“What we saw in this case was evidence, really for the first time in a Western European country, of how several different elements of Russian influence work together in an orchestrated way,” Polyakova said. “First, a journalist from a Russian television station picked up the case and brought it to the main news in Russia.”

Then, Russian-operated stations broadcast the case to its affiliate stations in Germany, and the story caught fire on social media through right-wing Nazi groups pushing their anti-immigration agenda; Russian and German syndicates covered demonstrations forming across Germany.

“Lastly, the cherry on top was that the Russian foreign minister himself, Sergey Lavrov, made public comments about his concerns about the ability of the German police and legal system to take such cases seriously because of political correctness and to protect Russians abroad,” she said.

This led Polyakova to the most contemporary example of Russian active measures — the alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

“We know from congressional testimony by Facebook and other social media companies that the Russian government set up false Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts and Instagram accounts,” she said, “that the Russian government funded what it called ‘The Internet Research Agency’ in St. Petersburg, also known as ‘The Troll Farm.’ ”

“The Troll Farm” followed similar strategies conducted by Service A of the KGB, “once carried out in real life, but now in the digital domain,” Polyakova said. It set out to spread anger around “hot-button issues,” like race, immigration and gun rights. It pitted groups against each other, operating fake Black Lives Matter accounts while simultaneously fueling nationalistic movements.

“So the U.S. has been the latest experiment in Russia’s bigger test of these new digital disinformation toolkits,” she said. “And what we’ve seen emerge is this new ecosystem of disinformation, which unlike its predecessor, the Cold War, is much more cost-effective with lots of room for error. Its ambiguity is a great asset.”

The tools in Russia’s toolkit are toying with humans’ natural indulgence in “guilty pleasures,” Polyakova said.

“We as individuals, as human beings, cannot look away from trainwrecks — we like looking at information that’s illicit, that’s dirty, maybe a little sexy, that we’re not supposed to be looking at,” she said “And this is exactly what these tools are playing with.”

Recent hammers, screwdrivers and hacksaws in the Kremlin’s toolkit have been cyberattacks.

Russia struck Ukraine with a “ransomware” attack — an attack that threatens to delete data if a monetary amount is not surrendered to the perpetrator. Similar malware has been detected in critical United States infrastructures, according to Polyakova, including nuclear power plants, water treatment facilities and electrical grids.

“Think about what might happen if on election day there is a massive blackout — you don’t need to go that far,” she said. “Think what would happen if on election day, a couple hundred people show up to vote, and their names aren’t in the registry because those logs have been deleted. What will that mean, not really for the results of the election, but for the trust in the electoral process?”

But cyberattacks aren’t the only Russian active measure the United States should be wary of, Polyakova said.

Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning can create increasingly humanlike bots and imitate celebrities, even presidents, which Polyakova demonstrated with a video of a photorealistic artificial intelligence representation of former President Barack Obama that can be programmed to say anything.

Putin has said that whoever rules AI “will become the ruler of the world.” However, Polyakova does not think that will be Russia; instead, she thinks China will become a leader because of the immense data it collects on its people, which is crucial to the success of AI.

Putin is charged with rebuilding Russia as a superpower, per his social contract with the Russian people. They gave up their political rights and prosperity, but Russia will once again become a global player, whether it be through AI or through the annexation of Crimea, Polyakova said.

“In a way, what Russia is trying to do, what the Kremlin is trying to do, what Putin is trying to do, is balance out what is a very weak hand in the global economy, in the global geopolitical environment Russia has, by investing in these nonkinetic, asymmetric tools of influence,” she said. “They cannot compete in a real way with the United States or Europe on the economic front. …

“So chaos is cheap and Russia is very poor.”

After the conclusion of Polyakova’s lecture and a roaring applause from the audience, Dave Griffith, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, opened the Q-and-A by asking how technology, specifically technology used for fakery, will affect education.

“Already I think AI and machine learning are the most popular majors at MIT and CalTech,” Polyakova said. “So students, young people, understand this is the future and they want to have success in the skills they’ll have to have. This is happening less so in Europe; I think the United States will continue to lead in the tech center for those reasons.”

Polyakova also stressed the importance of civic education to better equip young people to navigate disinformation and “fake news.”

Griffith then asked a question from Twitter: Does the United States engage in active measures?

“The United States has made some terrible mistakes in its foreign policy — there’s no question about that — but we have a very different system here,” Polyakova said “… It’s because we have our democratic process here, wherethe independent media acts as a check on our government, where people are free to demonstrate or protest when they don’t agree with government actions … and eventually the government is held accountable.”

To close the morning, Griffith asked, “What gives you hope?”

“I actually have a lot of hope in younger people, not because I think young people are innately democratically minded … but because I think these young people grew up embedded in this new ambiguous digital environment and they are very skeptical,” Polyakova said “… But this is not a 20-minute problem, this is a 20-year problem that faces us. … I am hopeful, but what I like to do is sound the alarm.”

President Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin in 1999, leaving a vacant office and a hungry Vladimir Putin. After his landslide victory for the presidency, Putin, determined to show a unified, powerful Russia, set out to travel all of the country’s 11 time zones on New Year’s Eve — a Russian Santa Claus, as Nina Khrushcheva described it.

Putin’s plan proved flawed, and he never delivered his intended hourly speeches through his vast country. Khrushcheva, however, picked up where he left off; her journey inspired her upcoming book In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones, and her 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Wednesday, July 18, in the Amphitheater.

Khrushcheva is a professor of international affairs at The New School in New York City, a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an author, as well; her second book, The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey Into the Gulag of the Russian Mind, documents the history of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, her biological great-grandfather and adoptive grandfather, and his oldest son, Leonid.

She opened her lecture with technical difficulties — the projector malfunctioned, causing Khrushcheva to gesture to a blank screen behind her. She referred to the ordeal as another hacking attempt by Putin, making light of the situation. After a few moments, the display reappeared, and she recommenced her Week Four lecture on “Russia and the West.”

“This week’s topic, as we have mentioned a couple of times already, couldn’t have come at a better time,” she said, “even if the man of the hour, Vladimir Putin himself, would have arranged it.”

It can be difficult for the United States and Russia to view each other beyond the context of recent developments in Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election, or the countries’ shared bleak, war-torn history, Khrushcheva said. For the United States, Putin is no more than a “villain,” she said, but in Russia — despite political and social corruption throughout his presidency — he has repaired infrastructure, and his people are rallying behind him.

“It has been over a quarter- century since the collapse of communism in 1991, but the U.S. has never quite stopped seeing it as a Cold War foe, and Russia itself often, and sometimes, prefers to be feared and not loved,” she said.

Her journey across Russia’s federal districts led her to dissect the attitudes of Russians, attempting to soften their perceived rugged behavior. She traveled from the far west, to a town bordering Eastern Europe, to the far east, on the border of Russia and Japan. While in the east, she stopped to “proudly wave at Sarah Palin,” she joked.

During this time, she observed three things about the country: Russia is “inherently incoherent;” it is defined by its past while longing for the future; and it is “homogeneous” despite its size and diverse regions and cultures.

Khrushcheva said U.S. foreign policy “should remember that Russia is not linear,” meaning that Russia holds tight to its narrative, rarely straying from its origins. She provided an example: an image (on a now working projector) of an emporium selling a portrait of Putin alongside the Russian Empire’s coat of arms — the double-headed eagle.

The double-headed eagle is a prominent and important symbol in Russia, she said. Originating in the Byzantine Empire in the 1450s, the image has since become standard for the Russian coat of arms throughout centuries. For Khrushcheva, the double-headed eagle represents the “split personality” of Russia.

Aside from Byzantine, Christian antiquity, Putin’s Russia has also preserved pieces from its communist past; a hammer and sickle sculpture sits outside a Joseph Stalin-era detention camp.

“That’s how Russia sees itself — all the way back in history,” she said.

Khrushcheva said Putin keeps these relics as “signs of great power.” She compared this to the preservation of Confederate flags and military statues in the American south.

In Russia, Putin has erected and maintained over 7,000 statues of Russian leaders, saints and inventors, including Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Ivan III, better known as Ivan the Great.

While traveling, Khrushcheva stumbled upon a statue isolated in the center of a roundabout. The statue, despite having stairs leading up to it, is inaccessible by car and dangerous to approach by foot. Skateboarders, however, are able to make it to the island.

Khrushcheva followed a group of skateboarders to the statue, and eventually to a coffee shop appropriately named “New York Coffee.” As a New Yorker herself, she felt compelled to go in. On the menu was a drink ominously named “Trump.”

“I ordered the drink. I thought, ‘I want to know what a Trump drink is’ — it had this disgusting orange syrup on top of it,” she said over a roar of laughter. “It (had) little to do with coffee, as little as Trump has to do with (the) presidency. I asked the waitress if (the drink) was in awe or in mockery (of Trump). She said it was whatever you want. That’s that split personality.”

Khrushcheva turned back to the statues and what they mean to both men in both countries. She compared Trump’s towers to Putin’s statues. For Putin, “these statues essentially … are monuments to Putin himself.”

He commissions statues of strong leaders he strives to mirror, saints to show “God is on Russia’s side” and military giants to demonstrate Russia’s power. Trump built Trump Tower to show off his wealth and power and, Khrushcheva said, as free advertising.

Putin’s demonstration of his state’s military power through monuments, specifically that of Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47, is evident of Putin’s paranoia of an international conspiracy against Russia, she said, its readiness for war, and Putin’s belief that he is “the protector of the motherland.”

“Russia celebrates the fact that it is culturally at war,” Khrushcheva said.

Khrushcheva continued to her last point: that Russia is a homogenous country despite economic, religious and geographic diversity.

“It is not a civilization, as Russians often say about themselves, but it is certainly a universe — it is a fortress of its own greatness,” she said.

On the screen flashed an image of Crimea and Vladivostok, a cosmopolitan city on the opposite side of Russia about 500 miles from Japan. The difference between the two is vast; however, Russia holds a firm grasp on Crimea as the key to its unified identity.

Russia claims Crimea to be its rightful territory because it was the location of the baptism of Vladimir I. Vladimir I was the grand prince of Kiev and is known as a prominent political figure in ancient Russia.

Khrushcheva read a sign painted on the side of a Vladivostok highway that was more telling: “The island — the Crimea island — is Russian, and Crimea is of Russian origins.”

“Just imagine,” she said, “a world apart, all of those time zones apart — you still have Crimea (completing) that fortress of greatness.”

For Khrushcheva, however, what makes Russia great is not the statues, the symbols, its power or its territories — it is the resilience of its people, which she said was evident when Russia hosted the World Cup earlier this month.

She began and ended her lecture with the World Cup, displaying photos of crowds gathered on the streets of Moscow and “alpha-male” Putin standing under an umbrella while other diplomats, including French President Emmanuel Macron, stood in the rain. According to Khrushcheva, Putin’s popularity has gone down since the World Cup because Russia’s people realized they don’t need the Kremlin or annexation to be great.

“During the World Cup, Russia didn’t launch any missiles, it didn’t take any territories, it didn’t stun the world with any new military initiatives, it didn’t show any new maps with potentially Florida,” she said. “Russia just followed the global rules for an international event and thus appeared for the world as a ‘regular country’ … and not a besieged fortress. This newly discovered globalism may prove challenging to Putin’s next years in power.”

After the conclusion of Khrushcheva’s lecture, Geof Follansbee, chief executive officer of the Chautauqua Foundation and Chautauqua Institution’s vice president of development, opened the Q-and-A.

He asked how this new “globalism” in Russia compared to the introduction of democracy after the Cold War.

“When Russia lost the Cold War, America was not a gracious winner. I’m really sorry, I hate to tell you that,” Khrushcheva said. “And so Americans came in and started telling Russians what to do and how to be. … At the time, Russians were willing to accept this teaching and lecturing, but one of the great appeals for Putin is that he said, ‘We’re not going to do it. Who are you to tell us what to do?’ … The Russians have had enough time since the Soviet time to grow into this democratization.”

Follansbee then opened the floor to questions from the audience. One attendee asked what Khrushcheva thought Putin’s biggest foreign policy mistake has been since his presidency began and what the Russian people think of his policies.

“Foreign policy is generally viewed favorably,” she said. “I think his mistake probably was the meddling (in the 2016 election). I don’t know if he would do it the same way this time around because he was warned that he would not be able to hide the Russian hand.”

To close the program, Follansbee asked if Khrushcheva if she could share some childhood memories of Nikita Khrushchev.

“It is wonderful to see Chautauqua and the beautiful nature and … I feel that, with sadness, it is wasted on me because when I was growing up, Khrushchev … was a great farmer. … And our chores would be to collect strawberries or do farming chores, and I think I started hating nature so much after that because I wanted to play,” she said. “And so now when I see a tree, I usually cross the street.”

In each generation there is a moment when Americans must stand and act — for Sen. Chris Coons, now is that moment.

“We have a fight on our hands,” he said to a filled Amphitheater at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Monday, July 16, drawing back the Iron Curtain for Chautauqua Institution’s Week Four theme, “Russia and the West.” This was Coons’ first visit to Chautauqua.

Coons said he knew he was in “a place where people listen to one another.” In other words, a place “utterly different from the United States Senate.”

Coons knows the Senate floor all too well; he was elected in 2010 as Delaware’s Democratic junior senator. He sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as the Appropriations, Judiciary, Small Business and Entrepreneurship and Ethics committees.

His appearance came at a critical time in the United States’ relationship with Russia; Coons’ lecture overlapped with President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, and days after the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers.

“I take no joy in delivering this message,” he said. “It is deeply discouraging to have to say anything that speaks ill of our president when he is outside our nation on foreign soil, but the timing of this speech and the timing of that summit were set, perhaps by providence or accident, and I think this is a time that calls for us to speak clearly about where we are (in our relationship with Russia).”

He opened his lecture, and the week, with a “stark warning.”

“The current Russian government under Vladimir Putin is a persistent danger to our democracy, to our European allies, to democracy globally,” he said. “At a time when overseas, China and North Korea, Iran and terrorism command our attention, we ignore Russia at our peril. … Only a clear eye can truly find bipartisan strategy to confront Putin’s Russia and contain it to prevent it from further damaging our society.”

Despite its looming threat, Russia is a cultural powerhouse with a rich and vast history that should be appreciated and better understood, Coons said.

“Russia is not some recent artificial, geopolitical creation, but a proud nation with a history that stretches back a millenium. … Its writers, its composers, its scientists have influenced the course of global culture, European history for centuries,” he said. “In a place like Chautauqua, where you celebrate literature, movies, music, dance, it’s worth taking a moment to consider how much Russian has contributed to human civilization.”

But its cultural renaissance cannot mask the “dark side” of Soviet Union-era labor camps, devastating famines caused by Joseph Stalin’s misuse of power and, more recently, Putin’s interference with the 2016 U.S. election, he said.

In 1993, Coons visited post-Cold War Russia, where he met with entrepreneurs “hoping to channel innovation and creativity to bring prosperity to their country and families.” The 1990s brought great political and economic instability to Russia, marked by food shortages and job loss. The hopes of its people failed to materialize, Coons said.

At the center of this mass insecurity was former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who fought tirelessly to demolish the Russian parliament; his efforts laid the foundation for Putin’s reign.

“The sufferings of post-Cold War Russia represent a lost opportunity,” Coons said. “Economic dislocation, widespread political corruption and Yeltsin’s consolidation of power tarnished democracy and capitalism in the eyes of many Russians and prevented their nation from fully joining and benefiting from the U.S.-led international rule-based system.”

Coons experienced the country’s “sense of lost glory” during his visit, which he said facilitated Putin’s ascension to power. Putin’s promise of “law, order and a return to prestige” restored the public’s faith in their country.

Since then, Putin has declared the fall of the Soviet Union — not the Holocaust or the World Wars — as the “greatest catastrophe of the 20th century.”

With the conclusion of the Cold War came the rise of the 16-nation alliance, NATO. Since its conception, NATO has expanded to include 29 members.

“The idea was that … Russia, having lost the Cold War, would have an incentive to join the international community, perhaps even partner with NATO in the multilateral institutions we helped build following secular order,” Coons said. “The idea was that the West, led by the United States, would offer Russia real diplomatic incentives.”

At the time, U.S. foreign policy makers thought that Russia and dozens of former Soviet regimes would slowly transition to democracies with minimal support. While most former Soviet states have done so, Coons said Russia has rejected the “overtures of the West.”

“While Putin believes the United States hasn’t honored its post-Cold War pledges, Russia, too, has broken its promises,” Coons said.

The 1994 Budapest Memorandum agreed that, in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons, the newly independent Ukraine would be safe from Russian invasion. Coons said Putin abandoned that pledge in 2014 when Russia forcely invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

At the time of Coons’ 1993 trip to Russia, almost identical numbers of Democrats and Republicans reported that Russia was the United States’ greatest threat, he said. Since then, the disparity at home has grown — the percent of Democrats who believe that statement is double that of Republicans (40 percent to 20 percent, respectively). He said in the last two years, the number of Republicans who view Putin favorably has doubled, while the number of Democrats that view Putin unfavorably has risen 20 percent between 2015 and 2017.

“For those that grew up in the post-Cold War period — where school children no longer have to participate in air raid drills (or) the sense of the United States as the free world because there is a world behind the Iron Curtain — we have attitudes much less uniform, much more reflective of our attitudes of President Trump,” Coons said.

Trump is a polarizing force — with the widespread distrust of media and the echo chambers of “fake news,” Coons encouraged the audience to read the January 2017 declassified report on “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.”

This report, according to Coons, has been endorsed by senior cabinet officials, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

“Republicans in the Senate, Democrats in the Senate, Republican senior leaders of the Trump administration have a uniform view of what is upwind. There is just one figure missing,” Coons said: Trump has refused to accept these findings.

Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. election is not the end of its cyberattacks. The Intelligence Community assessment concluded that Russia may replicate its U.S. attack on European elections. Some European countries have already taken measures to ensure this does not happen, Coons said.

“Putin will only stop when we stop him,” he said over thunderous applause.

Coons said Congress can play a role in stopping Putin. He offered four suggestions; the first that the U.S. and European Union maintain sanctions on Russia.

Last summer, the Senate passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act 98-2, which is an array of mantorary sanctions to hold Russia accountable for its malicious actions, Coons said. Trump signed it into law, but has yet to impose those sanctions.

“Putin will only cease these actions when you impose costs on him and others for Russia’s misbehaviors,” Coons said. “The administration should fully utilize the tools Congress has given them to punish Russia.”

The second suggestion is that the U.S. must hold a “strong military posture” in Europe. Russia’s actions in Georgia and Ukraine demonstrate the need for American troops in Europe to ensure stability in the continent and among NATO allies, he said.

“An important part of our policy has to be convincing our NATO allies to invest more in our common defense — President Trump is right on this issue,” Coons said. “I may wish that he went about making demands of our allies in a different way, maybe a more private way, but he is absolutely right.”

Coons is referring to the president’s July 9 tweets:

“The United States is spending far more on NATO than any other Country. This is not fair, nor is it acceptable. While these countries have been increasing their contributions since I took office, they must do much more. Germany is at 1%, the U.S. is at 4%, and NATO benefits Europe far more than it does the U.S. By some accounts, the U.S. is paying for 90% of NATO, with many countries nowhere close to their 2% commitment …”

Coons acknowledged Trump’s success in encouraging allies to raise NATO’s budget, as well as increasing troops, but he chastised Trump for not fully recognizing the increases that have been made, and the 1,044 non-American troops fighting with the U.S. in Afghanistan.

“And while it is right to press our allies to invest more in their security and our common defense, it is wrong to mistake them as free-loading on our generosity,” he said.

His third suggestion requires Congress to hold social media corporations responsible for accounts run by Russian “bots.”

“We invented Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and Snapchat and all this stuff, and yet we allow it, with virtually no accountability whatsoever, to be used as a tool to mislead and undermine our own citizens as they vote,” Coons said.

Coons described his interaction with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. Coons asked why the company did not flag “a paid political advertisement, bought in Moscow and paid for in rubles.” Zuckerberg responded, “Senator we didn’t know those details.”

“Are you kidding me?” Coons said over a roar of laughter. “You know whether I’ve met my daily step goal.”

Coons also stressed the importance of free, independent journalism in the United States and worldwide.

“We ourselves, as citizens, have to do a better job of discerning real news from ‘fake news’ and educating our families and social circles about the difference,” he said.

Finally, he pushed the need for the U.S. to defend human rights — “Do you remember when that was the first principle of our foreign policy?” Coons asked.

In February, Coons joined Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in an effort to rename the street in front of the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., after Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov was a Russian physicist, liberal politician and outspoken critic of Putin until 2015, when he was assassinated.

“I took this action with Sen. Rubio to give a voice to someone Putin tried to silence,” Coons said, “and it is my hope that someday, Russian diplomats that travel in and out of their embassy in Washington, representing a future Russian government, will be proud to walk alongside a street named for Boris Nemtsov.”

Coons said the relationship between Russia and the West, while fraught with division, has the potential to be one of collaboration.

“During the Cold War, we were prepared to go to war at a moment’s notice, and nearly did on several occasions ” he said. “Yet at the same time we negotiated cultural, scientific and nuclear agreements with that enemy with who we were prepared to fight at moment’s notice — the Soviet Union. We found the areas of real and deep and meaningful cooperation, despite the tension between us. There is no reason why we cannot do the same today.”

Coons said the United States needs Russia’s collaboration in combating global warming, conflict in North Korea and Iran, and international terrorism.

“Yet if we fail to recognize the reality of strategic confrontation under Putin, if we abandon our willingness to fight for our values, we will never achieve lasting cooperation based on anything other than a Russian tactical effort to gain short-term advantage over us,” he said. “… Our democratic world is at greater risk today than at any other time in my life, and I am certain it is worth fighting for.”

After the conclusion of Coons’ lecture, Institution President Michael E. Hill opened the Q-and-A with Putin’s statement from the Helsinki summit about the alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

“The Russian state has never interfered and is not going to interfere into internal American affairs including election processes,” Hill read over gasps from the audience.

Hill summarized Putin’s suggestion that Russia and the U.S. examine any issues together in a “joint working group on cybersecurity.”

As the laughs and shock died down from the crowd, Hill asked if there is a pathway of joint engagement between the United States and Russia.

“I think it is possible, if we are strong and determined and clear-eyed in joining with our allies, to say on these key issues — sanctions for invading and occupying Crimea, interference in our election — we will oppose (Russia),” Coons said. “But if (Russia is) willing to step back from those actions and honor (its) commitments … we are willing to then work with (Russia).”

Hill turned to the audience for questions. One attendee asked if there will ever be a liberal democracy in Russia.

“Given the sophistication and complexity of (Russia’s) culture, given the determination of its journalists and its human rights activists and given the possibilities of the human spirit — which Chautauqua is all about celebrating — I can believe in the dream of a democratic Russia,” Coons said. “I am not optimistic about its achievement in the short-term.”

Finally, to close the lecture, an attendee asked to how to keep high ideals and moral standards in a democracy at a time when it seems like they are lacking.

“Know who you are, know your history,” Coons said.

Laraine Newman knows play is an art.

The original “Saturday Night Live” cast member spoke to “basically how improv and humor can save the world” (and she was not kidding) at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Friday, July 13, in the Amphitheater as the punchline of Week Three’s theme, “The Art of Play.”

“Eve Arden, Madeline Kahn and Richard Pryor were my first major influences,” Newman said. “They led me into my life of comedy, they led me into understanding ‘The Art of Play.’ ”

Her comedy career began as a young girl in a toy store. Sweet and innocent, Newman said she would walk aimlessly through the rows of toys and then, in a flash, she would stuff rubber animal erasers down her underpants and run out of the store. Her scam worked — until she brought an unseasoned thief along.

The accomplice got caught by a salesperson. Newman, in a fit of panic, used her improvisational skills.

“We got those over at Newberry’s and if you don’t believe me, you can come with us over there and ask them,” she said.

The salesperson let them go.

“You might be saying to yourself, ‘Well that’s not improv, that’s just lying,’ ” she said over a burst of laughter. “And you’d be right, but it’s the lie of a 9-year-old pretty much feeling like she is fighting for her life. So the way I guess you say it is, ‘survival itself is an improvisation.’ ”

Newman explained the guiding principle of improv: to say “yes, and,” to any — and every — thing. This means that every response should be an affirmation, not a “no, and” or a “yes, but,” which Newman said is the same as a “no.”

“Yes, and” is not exclusive to improv; giving positive affirmations should extend into everyday life, Newman said, including for those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Newman described her friend and fellow comedy writer, whose mother suffered from early onset Alzheimer’s.

Her friend began giving positive responses to her mother’s complaints that someone was in her house, with questions like, “Why do you think someone is there, what do they want?” rather than, “No one is in your house, Mom.” Both her and her mother’s frustrations rapidly decreased.

“Of course, it was always possible that she was actually being robbed, but that’s the risk with improv,” Newman said over an epic roar of laughter.

Improv can also be a problem solver and character builder, which she illustrated through an anecdote about being locked in a room in New Orleans with fellow “SNL” Not Ready For Prime Time Player Gilda Radner.

Too scared to leave for fear of being mobbed, the two sat in an empty room for hours waiting for a cue from the “SNL” crew that it was time to leave. Hungry, bored and cold, Radner fashioned a puppet out of the only other thing in the room — a trash can with a foot pedal.

“I remember saying something like, ‘Man, I am hungry,’ ” Newman said.

In response, Radner said, in a half-Italian, half-Oscar the Grouch accent, “I might have something for you to eat. I think I have some peanuts — oh no, sorry, there is something disgusting all over them.”

“Man, I’ve got to pee,” Newman said.

“Don’t look at me,” Radner (as the trash can puppet) said.

This banter continued throughout the day.

“It really made the four hours go by faster,” Newman said, reflecting on that fiasco. “We made the best of the fact that we were cold, bored, thirsty, hungry and had to pee.”

Later on in her career at “SNL,” Radner and Newman took part in a presentation at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. That day, Newman was ill and took medication for her symptoms. Midway through the rehearsal of their speech, Newman’s jaw clenched and her tongue dropped to the bottom of her mouth from an allergic reaction to the medication.

They scrambled to come up with a routine, eventually landing on an act where Radner did all the talking and Newman accompanied her with sound effects. Newman’s noises ranged from a possessed chicken to a crying baby to a dog whose paw had just been crushed.

Newman, unexpectedly, demonstrated the shrieking dog for the audience. The high-pitched, ear-shattering noise threw the Amp into a frenzy of admiring “oohs” and painful “ahhs.”

“These moments with Gilda felt so dire, but thank god for her,” she said. “And thank god for our improv training, that fellowship that we both belonged to. The experience of imaginative play can transport us to a reality of our own making, and sometimes that reality we create can help us manage our fear.”

Play to manage fear translates into two fascinations of the early 20th century: haunted houses and horror movies, in which simulated horror gives people a feeling of invincibility.

“There are so many scary things in this life that we cannot control — economic failure, terrorism, a host of other things I don’t know if I should mention because I don’t know who I will offend, but you know what I mean,” Newman rattled off.

Haunted houses and scary movies aside, there are other ways for adults to enjoy play, she said, like cosplay or Dungeons & Dragons — “How great is it that dress up is no longer the exclusive domain of children?” But more universal than that, play is found in just playing with children.

“I think that we can all agree and recognize that there is something so intimate about shared, fun experiences that involve listening, cooperation and laughter,” she said. “It’s a special kind of bonding that shows (children) what relationships can be like out in the world.”

Play appeared in Newman’s parenting through party planning, creating and embodying the personality of their family dog and, of course, improv. Newman stressed the distinction between stand-up, improvisational and sketch comedy.

“A lot of people assume that if you have a comedy background, you’ve done stand up,” she said, violently shaking her head and pulling her arms tight against her chest. “No. God, no. … It’s an entirely different animal.”

Newman admitted she was “never a good improviser,” but when in character, like an angry Jewish poet, a flight attendant, an eccentric chef or a British groupie, she was “free.”

“When I first performed (my characters) and the audience responded, I felt like crying,” Newman said. “I mean the idea that what I saw — what other people saw — (meant) I wasn’t so alone in my perspective. I hope this doesn’t sound too overblown, but it really did feel like a Communion.”

Those characters helped create some of “SNL’s” iconic sketches. At Lorne Michaels’ loft in New York City, the cast of “SNL,” in the beginning stages of the show, met to improvise. Prompted by the phrase “alien family,” Newman, Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin took a trip to Easter Island using a kooky voice Newman created, and “Coneheads” was born.

“Some of the greatest improvisers I’ve ever seen seem to have an open channel to their unconscious,” she said. “Their unconscious is pretty damn funny.”

And before anyone fears ridicule or humiliation for trying something new, whether it be a hairstyle or improv, Newman had a reminder: “We’re all going to die.”

“How (can play, improvisation and humor) be a bridge for communication and empathy?” she said. “How it can evolve fellowship and community? … Every time you make someone laugh, follow someone’s lead, even if it’s a stranger, … every time we accept a child’s reality, we are giving love and affirmation. And how can that not make for a better world? Now go out and play.”

After the conclusion of Newman’s lecture, Chief of Staff Matt Ewalt opened the Q-and-A with the daily reminder:

“As we enter into our Q-and-A, I know a few of you have to leave for other programs, please be as respectful as possible —”

“Yeah, I’m not taking it personally at all,” Newman said as she sarcastically cried into her hands.

After Ewalt and the crowd had a good laugh, he asked Newman if the relationship between people onstage and people in the audience is important in improv comedy.

“(The audience is) really appreciative and they know how hard it is, so if you’re even slightly funny, they really appreciate it,” she said. “And also you’re working off of their suggestions, so they’re kind of invested in your success. But I do think that they are very different from a stand-up audience because the nature of stand-up is so different, and improv really does involve the audience.”

Ewalt continued the Q-and-A by asking that while previous lecturers established that there is a play deficit among children, is there a play deficit among adults?

“I think that there is something considered slightly shameful if we behave in a way that isn’t expected of adults,” Newman said. “More and more now, actually, our culture is supporting (play) as in things like cosplay. … So I guess it has changed somewhat to where people are really given the permission to play more.”

The audience was then given a chance to ask questions; one attendee asked what type of comedy works in the country’s polarized political climate.

“Irony. … I mean, to do comedy, you have to have critical thought, you have to be a reflective person. You have to be able to see the irony of things and be very sensitive to things, and I think that’s kind of more conducive to liberals,” Newman said, cringing and incrementally lowering her voice.

To close Week Three, Ewalt asked if Newman had any tips for someone looking to break into comedy.

“Listen to everybody so that you start where they leave off, so that you’re not a derivative of anybody that’s come before because originality is absolutely key,” she said. “Also, read — read, read, read.”

ABIGAIL DOLLINS / PHOTO EDITOR

Laraine Newman, an original cast member of “Saturday Night Live” and founding member of improv group The Groundlings, discusses the emotional benefits of improv, play and humor on Friday in the Amphitheater

During his lecture, psychologist Peter Gray promised it would be “the least happy talk about play you’ve ever heard” — and he delivered.

Gray spoke to the inherent need for, and the decline of, play among children at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Wednesday, July 11, in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Three’s theme, “The Art of Play.”

“The absence of play is depression,” Gray said, a point he argued extensively in his book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant and Better Students for Life.

As an evolutionary psychologist by trade and a research professor of psychology at Boston College, Gray has focused throughout his career on the “curiosity, playfulness, sociability and willfulness” of children at a biological and social level.

Natural selection shapes the play of animals and humans alike, Gray said. Predatory animals play by chasing and pouncing to learn to hunt; preyed-upon animals play by running and dodging to learn to avoid being hunted.

“From a biological perspective … play is nature’s way of ensuring that young mammals practice the kinds of skills that they need to develop to live and thrive as their species in the environment in which they are growing up,” he said.

However, running, chasing, pouncing and dodging may not be “play” for Gray. He has a four-point criteria for what constitutes play: play is self-directed and self-chosen; play is intrinsically motivated; play is guided by rules; and play includes an imaginary element.

For play to be self-chosen, children cannot be directed to play by teachers, parents or superiors. Although games in school can be instructive and educational, it is not “play,” he said.

“(Play is) how (children) learn to make choices,” he said. “It’s how they learn to direct their own activities, and when we take that away from children by creating the activity for them, directing the activity for them, we are taking away the opportunity for them to learn how to create and direct their own activities, solve their own problems.”

The lack of these learned abilities can translate into adulthood. Children who play in risky ways and try new, sometimes dangerous, forms of play are better equipped to handle the challenges adult life might throw at them, Gray said.

“All of us are going to face real risks in our lives, and it’s a good idea to practice with risks in relativity controlled conditions of play, so that the first time you are in true danger … you can keep your head together and not have a panic attack,” he said. “So that little girl that climbs the tree too high, what is she doing? She is developing courage.”

For play to be intrinsically motivated, Gray said it must be self-chosen and must “discover and follow passions.” While play is an act of passion, it must also be guided by rules — rules established, chosen and accepted by children. Finally, play must have an imaginary element.

Imagination is the only thing that separates humans from animals, Gray said.

“In some sense, in play you are always stepping outside of the real world into a fantasy land, into an imaginary world,” he said. “Even in a game like chess, it is an imaginary world where bishops only move on the diagonal — unlike the real world, where they can go wherever they want.”

Despite the abundance of opportunities for play, over the last six decades Gray has seen a nationwide loss of play — an epidemic he called a “national tragedy.”

“There has been a continuous, gradual, but overall huge decline in children’s freedom and opportunity to play,” he said. “There is no comparison between the freedom that children had in the 1950s and the lack of freedom that children have today.”

Gray reflected on his own childhood in the 1950s:

He was able to play outside, without supervision, throughout the day with other children in the neighborhood; he described having two hours of recess a day and not having homework in elementary school.

“We never carried books or worksheets back home. We did in school what school was, at home we played with our families,” he said. “Our parents were not supposed to be assistant teachers. They were not there monitoring your homework; for the most part they didn’t know how we were doing in school. They didn’t want to know, and we didn’t want them to know.”

Gray said he had two educations growing up: traditional schooling and a “hunter- gatherer” education (the hunter-gatherer education was more valuable). In “hunter-gatherer” cultures, children are encouraged to play, especially at critical ages when most western cultures are pushing the importance of school on their young.

“Today, if you go out in almost every neighborhood in America, if you find children outdoors at all, they’re likely to be on some kind of a manicured field, wearing uniforms, being directed by adults — that’s not play,” he said, stressing that social lessons taught by unorganized, free play are more important than the technique of a sport.

Gary attributes the decline of play to three reasons: the spread of fear, increased pressure on children and a “schoolish” cultural outlook.

According to Gray, “the world actually is not more dangerous than it was decades ago,” and crime rates are steadily declining. But people are still fearful of traffic accidents, and yet in places with minimal traffic, children are still denied play. People are fearful of child predators, yet they fail to acknowledge the rarity of the crime, Gray said.

“We are so afraid that we deprive our children of what they most need — the opportunity to get away from us and play with other kids,” he said.

Students have been reduced to numbers and admissions — parents think about college applications while the child is still in the womb, Gray joked. School and extracurricular activities absorb children’s time because people fear that without structure, children won’t succeed.

“We have in our society, by and large, what I refer to as a ‘schoolish’ view of child development,” Gray said. “That’s the view that children develop best when directed by adults, and that children’s own activities are a waste of time. … We want to control them.”

And the desire to control children has dire consequences. In the last 60 years, Gray said rates of major depressive disorder have increased eightfold; anxiety disorder rates have risen between five and eightfold.

“Should we be surprised by that?” he said. “We have put children into what I think even we adults would regard for us as anxiety-provoking divides where you’re constantly being monitored, you’re constantly being evaluated, you’re constantly being judged, you’re constantly being compared with your peers.”

Gray asked: What is society doing to this next generation that is making them the most stressed demographic in the country?

“I’m calling it ‘play deficit disorder,’ ” he said. “And the only cure is play.”

After the conclusion of Gray’s lecture, Dave Griffith, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, opened the Q-and-A. He asked if there was a correlation between the decline in play and the rise in obsession with higher education.

“If we were seriously concerned about education, you would think about what are the things really, really important in our culture,” Gray said. “And I think what we would conclude is that things that are really, really important to learn, like being creative, like being self-directed, like understanding who you are, like being able to control your emotions, … none of these things are part of our education. These are things you learn in play.”

Griffith then turned to the audience for questions; one attendee asked if Gray’s research revealed gender difference in play.

Gray said that through ages 8 to 11, children self-segregate their play — boys playing with boys and girls playing with girls, something absent in younger children. However, Gary believes in the importance of letting children play with whoever they want.

To close, an audience member asked if video games were a form of play. Gray referred back to his four characteristics of play. He argued that video games fit each of those criteria and therefore are a form of play. However, he did stress giving children time outside as well.

“We have created a world where it’s not much fun for (children) to go outdoors,” he said. “There’s not much opportunity for them to find and play with other kids. Kids more than anything else want to play with other kids … and if there are other kids playing outdoors, they will go out and play, and they will balance that with their video games. … My feeling is that we just have to trust kids.”

A month after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Amy Chua read a passage from her first book World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability to an international business transaction class at Yale Law School.

“In developing countries, under certain conditions, demagogic politicians with no political experience can sweep to power in elections, to the horror of the elites, riding a wave of racially tinged populism,” she read.

She looked up to her class of now-stunned law students.

“Professor Chua, that sounds a lot like you are describing the United States,” one student said over the dead stares of her classmates.

It wasn’t about the U.S. — it was about former Venezuelan President and dictator Hugo Chávez.

That interaction inspired Chua’s fifth book, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, which argues that tribalism is widening the political divide in the U.S. She articulated her point at the 10:45 a.m. morning, Friday, July 6, lecture to close Week Two and the theme “American Identity.”

Chua is an author and professor of law. She was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2011, one of Atlantic Monthly’s Brave Thinkers and one of Foreign Policy’s 2011 Global Thinkers. This was Chua’s second visit to Chautauqua Institution; her first visit she documented thoroughly in her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, when her daughter auditioned on (and later quit) the violin.

While humans are tribal animals like their primate relatives, they are not just “a little” tribal — they are extremely tribal, according to Chua. This is not only evident in politics, and isn’t necessarily always negative; humans exhibit positive, tribalistic behaviors in families, friend groups and sports.

“We all know that America is in the grips of political tribalism,” Chua said. “We lament and we condemn this tribalism, even as we can’t help voraciously engage in it.”

Tribalism turns problematic when people begin seeing other tribes as inherently “bad,” which Chua said is apparent in the “bitterly divided” state of the nation.

“At this moment, we can’t get anything done, and we can’t even talk to each other,” she said. “We are at a point where many Americans see people (who) voted for the other side not just as the people that they disagree with and want to debate with, but rather as immoral, evil and ‘un-American,’ which is a dangerous state of affairs.”

Chau contributes this behavior to two factors; the first, the massive demographic shift from the waves of immigration since the 1970s.

“For the first time in history, whites are on the verge of losing their majority,” she said.

And it’s not just white people who feel threatened — every group feels threatened. Women feel threatened by Trump’s presidency, men feel threatened by the #MeToo movement and Christians feel threatened by the changing culture, she said.

This is not a generational issue either, according to Chua. Across college campuses, including her own predominantly liberal Yale, “group blindness,” or failing to acknowledge a group’s oppression, is “the ultimate sin.” Chua said it was “transcendent” for white women to wear a headscarf or a kimono when she was a student, but now it would be seen as a micro- aggression.

“If you champion group blindness, you will be seen as erasing the very specific experiences of oppression of minority groups,” she said. “So I see a lot more self-segregation (among) the different student groups.”

This leads to a hardening of party lines, which prevents conversation across said lines.

The second factor Chua addressed — market-dominant minorities — works simultaneously with racial and cultural changes.

Market-dominant minorities is a term Chua coined in her first book, World on Fire. It describes a minority that controls the majority of wealth in a country. For example, Indonesia’s Chinese ethnic minority makes up 3 percent of the population but controls 70 percent of the nation’s wealth. For these countries, the introduction of a democracy can be destabilizing.

“Americans tend to romanticize democracy,” she said. “We think that elections are the answer to everything. And I think we are now getting the taste of our own medicine. … Under certain conditions, especially when inequality traps certain deep, pre-existing ethnic or religious divisions, … democracy does not improve, but actually catalyzes, group conflict.”

Chua predicted this would happen in Iraq. Prior to the U.S. invasion, Iraq had a market- dominant minority — the Sunni. The Sunni comprised 15 percent of Iraq’s population, controlled its markets and victimized the majority Shia and Kurds population.

“What do you think the majority is going to do when you give them the vote?” she said. “I predicted that Iraq’s long-oppressed 60 percent Shia majority would likely use their new-found power as revenge against their former overlords.”

That’s exactly what happened, she said.

“Once in power, the Shia immediately began excluding and persecuting and executing Sunnis,” Chua said. “The Sunni minority instantly realized this democracy thing isn’t working, so they began joining the insurgency: al-Qaida and ISIS.”

This theory is not limited to developing countries. A new market-dominant minority is rising in the U.S., dubbed “coastal elites,” according to Chua.

“Something has changed,” she said. “Class or education has split America’s white majority. Indeed, today there is so little interaction and intermarriage between these two groups of whites in America — between coastal, urban, more educated whites and whites in the heartland, the South, more working- class whites. Today, the division between these two groups of whites is so deep that it practically constitutes what social sciences would call an ethnic divide.”

The “coastal elite” class includes Wall Street executives and Silicon Valley moguls, according to Chua, who share the same “cosmopolitan” lifestyle and progressive ideals.

This new economic superpower, and the changing demographics of the U.S., is causing the riff between tribes, but Chua said she has hope.

“(America’s) strong overarching American identity, coupled with its ability to accommodate individual subgroup cultures, make it a ‘super- group,’ ” she said.

The United States’ unique birthright citizenship policy makes “(it) the model for overcoming tribalism,” but Chua offered some additional suggestions.

Her first suggestion was that Americans need to be more protective of their country’s “uniqueness.” Democrats should be more aware of the harm of the “scorched-earth” approach to American identity.

“There’s a world of difference in saying ‘America has repeatedly and shamefully failed to live up to its open ideals and must do better,’ ” she said. “There’s a huge difference between saying that and saying that ‘the principles that we are supposedly founded on are all fraud, all lies.’ ”

Republicans need to remember that “real patriotism is more than just waving a flag or singing the anthem very loudly,” Chua said.

“The kind of overarching national identity that a super-group requires, capable of binding Americans together, all that balance cannot exist unless every person in the society has reason to love the country, has reason to be proud of the country,” she said.

Americans also have to start viewing one another as human again, “(looking) beyond those echo chambers” and bridging the gap between the coast and the heartland “to start reaching across divides.”

“America is an aspirational nation; our ideals have always far exceeded reality,” Chua said. “The American dream is a promise of freedom and hope. That is also a call on all of us to make true the myths we tell ourselves about what we tell ourselves America has always been.”

After she concluded her lecture with Langston Hughes’ poem “Let America be America Again,” Geof Follansbee, chief executive officer of the Chautauqua Foundation and Chautauqua Institution’s vice president of development, opened the Q-and-A. He asked what is “threatening” majorities.

“I think that there is a real fear that the country is changing and that it won’t be the country that it was,” Chua said. “I am an optimist because we have encountered this before. We’ve seen nativists, anti-immigrant and xenophobia waves happen before. Every other time we have overcome it.”

When asked what her ideal 2020 presidential candidate would be like, she said a candidate with strong leadership skills, who speaks authentically — without being “canned”— and who can reach the other side of the political divide.

To close that divide, Chua said the nation should focus on restoring one of its core values.

“I think that restoring upward mobility in this country should be viewed as a national emergency,” she said.

Who are the “we” in “we the people?”

Jelani Cobb, staff writer for The New Yorker, took a hard look at what “we the people” has meant throughout history at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Tuesday, July 3 in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Two’s discussion of “American Identity.”

During Cobb’s tenure at The New Yorker, he has written extensively about race in America. His articles, including “The Anger in Ferguson,” “Murders in Charleston,” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Reparations,” tackle injustice, the police and race.

He is the 2015 recipient of the Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism, the 2017 recipient of the Walter Bernstein Award from the Writers Guild of America East for his PBS Frontline series “Policing the Police,” and a Fulbright fellow.

This was his first visit to Chautauqua Institution.

“This is an immense country — sprawling — and if we were to ask ‘what America is,’ we could give any variety of answers,” Cobb said. “We could say that it is a nation-state, in North America — the North American continent — that covers 3.8 million square miles. That it has a population of 325 million people…”

Cobb rattled off facts about the U.S., from religious makeup to racial breakdown. He told the audience “a lot about the United States,” but not “who we are.”

“ ‘Who we are’ is a much broader, philosophical question,” he said. “It is best understood by our responses in times of difficulty. It is what we do in our most mundane moments. It is what we hold onto in our most cherished values.”

The question of who are “we the people,” Cobb said, is central to decades of unresolved conflict — he called it “the fundamental divide” — because for most of the nation’s history, “we” has been exclusive to white people.

“The first-person plural ‘we,’ we’ve never sufficiently understood and defined who was included in that word,” he said. “And as a consequence, we had a dynamic in American history of an expanding concept of ‘we’ and a contracting and fearful idea of who ‘we’ should be.”

This dynamic constantly replays itself, like a “Freudian nightmare, (recurring and recurring) until the underlying conflict is resolved,” he said.

Cobb referenced the Declaration of Independence — and its inherent hypocrisy.

In the original declaration, Thomas Jefferson drafted arguments for separating from England. One of the grievances stressed that the British were guilty of thrusting slaves on the American colonies, and if the slaves revolted, it would be at the expense of Americans, not the British, according to Cobb.

“This is as stinging a rebuke of the institution of slavery that we see from Jefferson’s pen,” he said.

That clause did not make it into the final draft, weaving oppression into the nation’s founding document.

“It is essentially copy-editing black freedom out of the original document. We begin with this disparity and distinction in the capacity in the word ‘we’ to not include all human beings of this country,” Cobb said.

Moving through history, this “disparity” pitted the young republic against itself, erupting in the Civil War — a war fundamentally rooted in the question of “who we are,” Cobb said.

Cobb, who lived in Georgia for a number of years, said “people will tell you ‘the Civil War was fought for a number of exotic reasons.’ ”

“It’s widely accepted that slavery was the active ingredient, which is to say it was not the only cause, but it was the cause which without it, we would not have war,” he said. “It was the intractable element in this, and this issue of slavery would prove more fundamentally as a question of identity.

“Could the people who imagined a republic where there had been none imagine an interracial republic where there was not one?”

States used slavery as a bargaining chip: California could join the Union if southern states could enact tighter fugitive slave laws. From these “compromises” arose a government bureau dedicated to capturing and returning fugitive slaves and attempts to impose a constitutional amendment to prohibit the abolition of slavery, according to Cobb.

None of this resolved the question of “who we are.”

“It’s like a tire that has been patched and patched and patched, and sooner or later the tire is going to fall apart,” he said.

Cobb recalled seeing a statue of Abraham Lincoln on the drive to the Institution. Most people remember Lincoln as “the Great Emancipator,” but Cobb said people admire him for the wrong reasons.

According to Cobb, Lincoln spoke openly about “(consigning) the Negro race to a position of inferiority.” It wasn’t until his party pushed for the abolition of slavery and the Union was victorious at the Battle of Antietam that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Cobb noted that the proclamation only freed slaves in states that had seceded from the Union, and a constitutional amendment was needed to truly end slavery (only for those who had not been convicted of a crime).

“This is back to this expansion and contraction of ‘who is we?’ ” he said.

The rise of the Klu Klux Klan in the late 19th and early 20th century and the sharp increase of immigration laws were also bound in this question of “Who are we?”

Cobb jumped forward to contemporary history.

“In 2007, there were exactly four people in the United States who thought the country was ready to elect a black president, and they all lived in the same address on the south side of Chicago,” Cobb said over a roar of laughter. “But this happened, and it was an amazing thing to witness.”

He said regardless of political views or opinions, Barack Obama’s election to the highest office was a “novel development in American politics.”

However, the election of the first African-American president did not deter the “fundamental divide” from tearing at the social fabric of this new era.

A 2010 and 2011 opinion poll showed a small sliver of white people thought the most disadvantaged group in the country was themselves — despite making up 61 percent of the country and holding 91 percent of political offices, according to Cobb.

“We have yet to triumph over the most narrow sense — the most zero-sum understanding of who we are. We have yet to permanently inscribe a concept of democracy that sees itself as enriched with the presence and success of others. … This can be a difficult thing to grapple with,” he said.

But Cobb has hope. He shared an anecdote about a flight from Atlanta to New York City he took shortly after 9/11. A tall man with olive skin and a long beard boarded the plane wearing a tunic and baggy pants; he sat a row behind Cobb.

Cobb looked over his shoulder and asked the man where he was from; the plane fell silent.

The man turned and, in a rebuttal, asked Cobb where he was from. Cobb responded: “I’m from Queens, and I’m asking because I think you’re also from Queens, and if you are who I think you are, we were in the same breakdance crew in high school.”

“Everybody around us exhaled — he’s a breakdancer, he’s not going to kill us,” Cobb said over the audience’s laughter. “I’m now the large black man that made the white people around me feel more comfortable.”

This experience taught Cobb that it is possible for the country to see beyond its narrow view of itself and widely adopt openness and acceptance.

“In short, it is possible for democracy to exist in this land — it does not quite at this moment,” he said. “This struggle we have inherited from generations past, but I have no doubt that as people of conscience and diligence, it will. It will one day.”

After a thunderous standing ovation, Chief of Staff Matt Ewalt opened the Q-and-A by asking if Cobb finds confidence in the younger generation’s ability to further advance inclusivity.

“We do in instances find that young people are more open-minded about questions and being less mired by the decrepit thinking of older generations, and I think that’s hopeful,” Cobb said. “But I also think that we can’t kind of think that we are on auto-pilot, that these issues will resolve themselves.”

One attendee asked Cobb’s thoughts on whether Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel for the national anthem is a response to social injustices, or a lack of patriotism.

Cobb, who is close friends with Kaepernick, said that people mistake his decision as “unpatriotic” to gloss over the actual issues at hand, like police brutality.

“Patriotism is supposed to include dissent,” Cobb said.