Morning Lecture Recaps

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

When Meredith D. Clark was growing up, she wondered why newspaper photos of Black people always looked off. 

“I could never quite figure out why the newspaper couldn’t print more flattering photos of people who looked like me,” Clark said. “But then I began to work in the field.”

She later learned that it was because the industry used “Shirley Cards,” photos of white women that are routinely referenced to calibrate light, shadows and skin tones.

“Which means if you are darker, even if you are more pale, the camera doesn’t quite see you as you are seen. It doesn’t quite pick up on the intricacies of your appearance. Similarly, news media is calibrated this way,” said Clark, who previously was an assistant professor in media studies at the University of Virginia and was recently named associate professor at Northeastern University’s College of Art, Media and Design.  

A recent opinion piece by Brent Staples of The New York Times, titled “How The White Press Wrote Off Black America,” delves into how newsrooms have historically had primarily white, well-off reporters who targeted white, wealthy audiences. This lack of diversity caused wide gaps in coverage, such as a correction that ran on the front page of Clark’s own hometown newspaper when she had recently graduated college. 

It read: “It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.”

“It was in this moment that I began to understand exactly why our preacher called the Herald-Leader the ‘Herald Misleader,’ and why my parents refused to subscribe,” Clark said.

She said journalism schools, which were also founded by white, land-owning men, always teach the importance of objectivity.

“How objective could it be, leaving out entire swaths of the American populace?” Clark said.

And she said this wasn’t just a journalism problem: Everyone has a role to play.

As well as being a professor, Clark is the author of DRAG THEM: A Brief Etymology of Cancel Culture. At 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 13 in the Amphitheater as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series, Clark explored the importance of reparative journalism, the role that Black women play in the movement, and ways society can move forward. The lecture, titled “The Time is Now,” was the second presentation of Week Three’s theme of “Trust, Society and Democracy.”

Visionary, not reactionary, and grounded in the history of the ignored

Clark said she was radicalized on Jan. 6, 2021, when she saw the U.S. Capitol riots on TV. 

“Jan. 6, for an American, was one of the most difficult days of my life,” Clark said, “because it was the day that I learned that the principles that I had been taught my entire life could be for sale — that they were available for purchase to the highest bidder.”

And the highest bidder wasn’t the president or the rioters, Clark said. It was the news media.

“The news media … is subject to a cycle of 24 hours a day, seven days a week, making sure that there is something on the television, on our screens, in our newspapers that will keep us angry, afraid and on edge,” Clark said. “It took a while to recover from this hurt.”

What is needed and has been needed for a long time, she said, is reparative journalism: reporting that not only acknowledges the mistakes of the past, but actively repairs the gaps in coverage and treatment of underrepresented communities. She identified six key traits that journalism needs to strive for: It needs to be visionary, not reactionary; grounded in the history of the ignored; critically intentional, and comprehensive. It needs to find alternative funding and, what she said is usually the most controversial point, redistribute power.

In terms of the first two, Clark said journalists need to approach stories from a bottom-up mindset, interviewing those most affected first. She said that, currently, the trend in news media is to interview people in charge, and then slowly, if at all, move down the ladder of power.

“How do you begin to see the world differently when you look from underneath?” Clark said.

Journalism also needs to move away from reacting and waiting for events to happen, Clark said, and move toward actively seeking stories. 

“We know that there is plenty of uncovered news and information that the world needs to know,” Clark said. “That’s why we celebrate unknown stories and unknown histories when they come to light.”

Though there has been more of a push in recent years for more diverse newsrooms, people in power have known about this problem for decades. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a review of the dividing society in America. This report, called the Kerner Commission, found that “Our Nation is moving toward two separate societies, one white and one Black, separate and unequal.”

Clark said that the report also put much of the blame on the growing divide on the news media, not because it was sensationalizing or fear-mongering, but because “the news media simply did not have the depth of understanding that it needed to communicate to different sectors of society, what it was like to live outside of privilege.”

Critically intentional and alternative funding

Black women, Clark said, are at the center of the push toward reparative news and being critically intentional in order to better represent every part of society.

She defined many key features of Black feminism. Black feminists have historically been a part of an oppressed group, from journalism schools not admitting Black women until the 1950s to Black women, currently, having a disproportional amount of college loan debt.

“They were subjected to the same sort of oppression that white women experienced with the added layer of racism. … Black women experience disparities in terms of health care, maternal mortality, and even their opportunity to move in the ways that this country says we can be effective in terms of social mobility,” Clark said.

Another key point is that Black women are a diverse group with different beliefs, class, education and age. 

“I mentioned this to help us remember that when we see people from different backgrounds, who are held up as an exemplar of what the Black community is or does or what the LGBTQ community is or does, we have to remember that we are talking about a range of experiences — with some commonality,” Clark said.

Black feminists throughout history have found alternative ways of making progress, such as organizing child care during the civil rights movement so that people could attend protests and, now, utilizing hashtags on social media to spread information. 

And Clark said the journalism industry, like Black feminists, needs to find alternative ways to progress, especially when it comes to funding. With print advertising decreasing, local journalism shrinking and large corporations taking over small newspapers, she said, this is a large issue the industry is trying to address, and that she did not have the answer. 

Comprehensive work and redistributing power

In 2019, the Associated Press changed their stylebook to say that journalists could write that things were racist — something that was actively discouraged previously. It was a good first step toward reparative journalism, but more should be done, Clark said.

“It’s not enough to simply repair the surface issues. We must look beyond, into the wounds that have been leveraged against our respective communities and find what needs to be addressed,” Clark said.

As well as being comprehensive, Clark said reparative journalism requires a redistribution of power, not through violence, or even through one side losing, but simply by thinking about who is put at the center of stories. 

Clark said this is part of the hard work ahead, for journalists, executives, economists and readers. 

“Reparative journalism, like the struggles for freedom, for justice, for equality, is the work of generations,” Clark said. “It begins with us today. It continues long after we are gone, and I invite you to join us into this great work.”

As part of the Q-and-A session, Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, asked Clark to discuss the role of transparency in reparative journalism.

In a study Clark conducted in 2018, she talked to people in communities who didn’t pay attention to the news media.

“They said one of the reasons that they didn’t was because it was so artificial, that there was no transparency about how stories came to be,” Clark said.

She said readers want to know how the article was created, and for the writer to acknowledge their own biases. 

Ewalt then asked what the ideal structure for journalism could be.

Clark said that the perfect structure isn’t known yet. She said that the industry, as it currently exists, supports many jobs and families — so upending it isn’t realistic.

“We cannot wait for one system to become obsolete in order to take up this challenge. Some of that work has to begin where we are right now, and so there are pushes that are happening from inside the house that help with that regard,” Clark said. “I will never say that I see a singular model or a singular form for reparative journalism.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

People’s trust can be viewed as a pyramid. Previously, said Richard Edelman, the government and those with power held the top as the most trusted. Now, it is flipped, as people turn more to those closest and share news articles with those in their political bubble.

So, Edelman, CEO of the global communications firm Edelman and the creator of the Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual survey of trust in government, business, media and nongovernmental organizations, said businesses are now more trusted than governments — even in addressing systemic racism, climate change and health care reform.

On the most recent Barometer, business is 40 points more trusted in competence and 20 points more trusted in ethics than government.

“When the pandemic hit, the way we all absorbed this was (asking) which institution can actually make a difference and save us from this horrible scourge a year ago — the government?” Edelman said. “Well, the government failed us. The government failed in terms of getting vaccines to us at the right times. The government failed in terms of living up to its halo.”

Though businesses are seeing a rise in trust, society as a whole is also becoming more fearful.

“Every generation has felt that they can do better than what their parents did. It’s not true anymore,” Edelman said. “Fears have eclipsed optimism. They’ve made hope disappear and the pandemic is actually accelerating fears in general.”

Edelman has been at the forefront of mapping trends of people’s trust through the last 20 years, heading the eponymous global communications firm that his father founded in 1952. During his lecture “Recommitting to Trust” at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, July 12 in the Amphitheater, Edelman illustrated trends in national trust in different institutions — such as business and media — opening up the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Three theme of “Trust, Society and Democracy.”

There are five key factors to build trust: ability, dependability, integrity, purpose and sense of self. In recent years, ability has been deemed less important, going from 75% of what determines trust, to 25%.

“It’s the dependability part that is the big question mark,” Edelman said. “Can I rely on these people to do what they say? Can I actually believe that they have integrity of their soul, as opposed to the next quarter’s earnings? Do they have a purpose?”

The Great Recession helped spark this change.

“The Great Recession really showed how empty the promise was to the 13 million Americans who took subprime debt and lost their houses,” Edelman said.

Many experts thought the economy would recover from the 2008 recession in three to four years, as it had from past recessions. Edelman said this wasn’t the case. Thirteen million people lost their homes, and the automobile industry took a large hit.

Edelman said the distrust in politicians shown during the Great Recession led to President Donald Trump’s election, showing that many voters were fed up with traditional politicians; and the Brexit referendum, that showed voters distrusted experts and were influenced by nationalist rhetoric. 

The government is doing better than the media, however, in terms of trust — traditional media has the lowest score among all the institutions Edelman tracks, including government, business and NGOs. News organizations are facing a multipronged threat, including society’s heavy dependence and distrust of social media and many platforms’ “bubble-like” nature, meaning people only share articles with others that agree with them.

“The perception is that the media is biased, that it’s chasing clicks, that it’s desperately clinging for attention. That’s a dysfunctional relationship with its customer,” Edelman said. “It’s not really serving its customer. It’s serving its customer candy.”

To rebuild trust, Edelman said, people are going to have to be brave, speak their grievances, and admit they are wrong or don’t know all the answers. He also said that there is value in talking about uncomfortable history, such as the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Edelman believes that stories like these should be taught in schools because acknowledging and sharing the truth is essential in repairing trust.

Edelman said he is an optimist by nature, and that two-thirds of people polled by the Barometer this year believe that the future will be better after COVID-19.

“Tomorrow demands trust,” Edelman said. “We have work to do to get there.”

During the subsequent Q-and-A session, Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill asked why Edelman started the annual Trust Barometer.

Edelman said it became apparent that a marker of trust was needed. He said he saw shifts in trust throughout the country during U.S. globalization in the ’90s, and later during the Iraq War and Great Recession.

“A lot of our illusions have been smashed, and we demand answers,” Edelman said. “Well, we should.” 

Hill asked how people can move away from tribal impulses. 

“I just think we need to have a bit more bravery,” Edelman said, “and stop going to our little opinion bubbles, and stop being self-referential and recognize that the other side probably has some valid points.”

He also stressed the importance of listening, especially from those in power.

“We should listen more and not just talk,” Edelman said. “The more senior we are, the more we should listen.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

When the Cold War ended, space travel stalled. With less political pressure, the government gave NASA and other space-related organizations less money. This was understandable because the Earth had, and has, a whole host of other problems that need to be addressed. 

But now, private companies are spurring on the space industry, though SpaceX and other groups do receive a lot of funding from the government. 

“This time, unlike Apollo, where it was just the government, really, in a Cold War space race, we now have an ecosystem of economic actors that will help continue to propel this exciting period of space exploration forward,” said Ariel Ekblaw, founder and director of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.

As director, Ekblaw charters annually recurring parabolic flights and suborbital and orbital launch opportunities and leads space-related research in multiple fields. At 10:30 a.m. Thursday, July 8 in the Amphitheater, Ekblaw discussed the initiative’s achievements and what they hope for the future; the historical and future politics surrounding space travel; and how she and others are collaborating to help democratize space. Her lecture, which was part of the Week Two Chautauqua Lecture Series theme of “New Frontiers: Exploring Today’s Unknowns,” came 10 years — almost to the hour — of the launch of NASA’s final manned Space Shuttle mission.

One of the initiative’s major goals is to build better space stations. Building the International Space Station required launching 27 rockets, and astronauts risked their lives to manually build the station while in space suits.

It was an “incredibly dangerous, incredibly exciting and a beautiful moment for those astronauts, but even this partnership between human labor and robotic arms — it won’t scale,” Ekblaw said.

To solve this problem, Ekblaw is helping design a self-building station, with highly magnetized, lightweight hexagonal and pentagonal tiles that are able to configure themselves into a breathable, livable area for humans. 

This structure is called TESSERAE, short for Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments.

“We are working on this opportunity to have you find delight and safety and comfort in the future of life in space,” Ekblaw said. “Can we take it from a domain where it’s just purely survival, building on the shoulders of giants here — NASA and others — who have made it possible to even consider a different paradigm, and go from surviving to thriving in a space exploration context?”

One of the major problems with current space stations is that their structures cannot change without major reconstructions. Billions of dollars are needed to send the material to space. This is a sharp contrast to cities and towns on Earth, which are constantly expanding and morphing. So for inspiration, Ekblaw and others looked to plants.

“There’s a certain logic, almost a fractal pattern, to each individual note and unit,” Ekblaw said, “but they also spiral in a way that you can predict and plan for where your space city might expand into.”

The structures made out of the magnetized tiles are able to assemble and disassemble all on their own. Ekblaw said the panels could one day be used to build larger concert halls or cathedrals. She showed one artist’s rendering of the structures connecting together to make a ring around the earth. 

Ekblaw and the initiative are working to not only advance space architecture, but also bring about conversations concerning ethics. The initiative brings together over 50 graduate students, staff and faculty and fosters conversations with independent artists, CEOs and film directors to help create the next chapter of human space exploration.

“We’re not simply a design house or a speculative-fiction group thinking about futurism and technology,” Ekblaw said. “We’re building these prototypes, and we’re launching them.”

The initiative, she said, has over 40 projects it is developing, testing and sending into space. These projects involve all aspects of everyday life — from designing new bathrooms to creating new instruments.

“We think about musical instruments that (can) only be played while floating, so that we have this opportunity to design new artifacts for the unique culture of space exploration, rather than assuming that we will always simply carry up with us the artifacts from Earth’s culture,” Ekblaw said. “It’s a very interesting blank slate.”

TESSERAE has accomplished all of this in two and a half years. Ekblaw said this is largely because her team is not completely reliant on the government, while some groups wait for years to simply have their idea approved for funding.

But there are many problems along the way, now and in the future. NASA estimates that there are 27,000 traceable pieces of debris in space around the Earth, with the amount of debris too small to trace estimated to be many times that. This debris is mainly due to miscalculations of scientists and poses a large threat in a future where space travel is more regular. Now, the international community requires a review of the calculations of reentry on almost every mission to space. 

In the future, when space travel becomes more regular, traffic may become a problem along routinely used routes. Another important issue is the security of satellites, with the machines ensuring communication between those on Earth, space and Mars.

As part of the Q-and-A session, Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair of Education, asked about China’s role in international space cooperation and about the prospect of another space race.

Ekblaw said that during the most tense parts of the Cold War, one of the only projects that the Soviet Union and U.S. collaborated on was space travel, with Americans flying on Mir Space Station and the U.S. bringing the Soviet Union into the early planning of the ISS. In the future, the same can happen, with many countries coming together for mutual benefits. 

Ekblaw said one key difference between space programs in the United States and in China is that while NASA is, essentially, civilian scientists who communicate with scientists from other countries, China’s space program is more intertwined with the military and Communist Party. 

“It can be difficult in that way to sometimes reach across the civilian-to-civilian conversation, but I think we need to do more of it and would look forward to opportunities to avoid a deeply militaristic race, if we can, for space,” Ekblaw said.

Ewalt asked what would most disappoint her — and what would most thrill her  — when it comes to her work. 

She would be disappointed if the tiles her team is working on break down and contribute to debris in space. She would also be sad if, in the future, outer space isn’t a peaceful place.

“It’s still an open question and takes a lot of our engagement to tell our government what we want, and also to engage with global citizens around that area,” Ekblaw said.

Ekblaw would be thrilled if the infrastructure helped people experience life in orbit.

“You can come back home, but (imagine being able to) share the magic of the cosmos with more people,” Ekblaw said. “You can imagine a yoga session; instead of sitting here on Earth, you are floating in a windowed, space habitat, truly immersed in the stars.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

Is there a difference between genetically modifying a fish or a rabbit to glow in the dark and breeding dogs for a preferred look?

As technologies that can change parts of the DNA of animals ­— and humans — expand, R. Alta Charo, the Warren P. Knowles Professor Emerita of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said humans will have to reckon with these kinds of questions. 

Altering DNA has a lot of uses, from eliminating genetic diseases and making animals more resistant to changing climates. The application most in the spotlight, though, is potential changes to humans.

“Are we really upset about the technology, about the underlying thing it accomplishes, or simply about the fact that it’s now easier to do it and maybe more people will try?” Charo asked.

Charo, who spoke at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, July 7 in the Amphitheater, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, and the inaugural David A. Hamburg Distinguished Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Wednesday morning, she explored society’s attitude toward genome editing, different current practices and how the advancing field has raised questions about what it even means to be human. Her lecture, titled “Now I Am Become Life, Creator of Worlds: The Era of Biotechnology,” was the third part of Chautauqua Lecture Series’ Week Two theme, “New Frontiers: Exploring Today’s Unknowns.”

Scientists weren’t always conscious of how far their work could expand. In the 19th century, many were simply enamored with the inventive power of science. But, as more and more catastrophic weapons were conceived and deployed in the 20th century, this captivation turned to terror. 

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, was eerily conscious of the power his work created. While testing the Manhattan Project during World War II, he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, and quoted Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

In the late 20th century, fear rose around the environmental impacts of genome editing. One experiment with genome editing attempted to protect strawberries from frost using a commercial product called Frostban; the woman spraying the strawberries wore a full hazmat suit.

“That image of having to wear a hazmat suit while spraying the field — something incredibly innocuous as genetic changes go — is probably what helped to lead to things like the fear of genetically engineered food that we now see,” Charo said.

Then public attitudes transformed again, this time with growing fear about reproduction. Instances of cloning, such as Dolly the sheep, Charo said, caused a media frenzy; some states even issued bans on cloning. 

Charo gave two examples of more recent genome editing: the first was mammoths and another was tomatoes. 

The first revolves around some scientists claiming reintroducing the mammoth would be beneficial to the ecosystem. Critics say that there is no way to measure the impact of reintroducing the species to an environment that has changed over thousands of years.

“It was really driven by this magical idea of bringing back extinct species,” Charo said. “There’s something really very romantic about that.”

The second revolves around hybrid tomatoes. The tomato was bred over the years in order to last longer and travel better, though this made it less flavorful. Now, there is an effort to create a tomato that is flavorful and able to grow in more places, so that the produce does not have to travel as far. 

“If it was exactly the same, every base pair, every last one was identical between the one that we created, and the one that you picked off the vine originally — they’re literally identical in every possible chemical way — would it bother you that one of them has been engineered?” Charo asked.

Beyond extinct mammoths and everyday produce, the main focus within the field of DNA manipulation is combating genetic diseases, such as some forms of blindness and sickle cell. 

Charo said the two forms of manipulation are treatments that change the genes of a single person, with the changes essentially lasting one lifetime; and changing the genes of embryos, with the changes able to be passed down.

One scientist focused on changing embryos in order to give children more immunity to HIV. His work caused controversy, Charo said, because of the touchy subject of the work; critics also said his work was completely unnecessary, considering that none of the mothers participating in the trial had HIV, and that medicine was already advancing to treat HIV.

“We have absolutely nothing near the level of basic science research that you need to even think you have a good way to predict how well this is going to work, and what level of risks you’re facing,” Charo said.

All of these are examples of how far humans have progressed, and Charo said humanity has more power than ever before. This change in humanity’s power has made people ask what being human even means and what it means to “play god.” 

Charo’s final example was Mendel’s Dwarf, a novel about a geneticist with dwarfism. In one scene, he is looking at embryos in a dish and realizes he can choose which one to “bring to birth,” whether it be one with his genetic disease or not.

“He has this revelation that, for him, the deity actually is the one who just rolls the dice. The deity is the one who sets up a system,” Charo said. “He says, ‘If I choose, that is not being God, that is being human,’ a complete reversal of the way that phrase, playing God, is understood.”

Amy Gardner, vice president of advancement and campaign director, asked as part of the Q-and-A session international review boards exist for genome editing. 

Charo said that she is on one of these boards, but enforcing and practicing policies mostly comes down to individual countries. An individual country’s policies around genome editing often come down to how they govern themselves, and the country’s primary religion. Majority Christian, Jewish or Muslim countries often hold different views on this topic. 

In some countries, like the United States, everything is essentially allowed until the government says otherwise; in other countries, if the government doesn’t explicitly state that the practice is allowed, then it is not. 

Gardner then asked what can be done to help societies adapt to the incredible rate of change of gene-editing technologies. 

“Often the change does not happen across all segments of society. It doesn’t happen in a very big way,” Charo said. “There are technologies that people worry about because they think everyone is going to use it, but they won’t. So we don’t have to worry about (an) enormous societal impact.”

In terms of sperm donations, many thought, and still believe, that people would choose the donors who are taller and more conventionally attractive. One business used a model that almost guaranteed that the child would be tall, blonde and strong. Charo said this organization failed quickly because the business model counted on its customers prioritizing conventional beauty.

“You don’t get people doing it because they want to see if they can have a kid that’s going to be more athletic or not,” Charo said. “They do it because they don’t want a kid who is going to have cystic fibrosis and is going to be in the doctor’s office, day after day, month after month, trying to breathe.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

In the early 1900s, the Chicago River was so overrun with sewage that people said a chicken could walk across without getting its feet wet. The river connected to Lake Michigan, where the city got most of its drinking water. So the city’s leaders decided to reverse the flow of the river so that the water went back into the Mississippi River.

A massive construction project was undertaken, said Elizabeth Kolbert, an award-winning reporter and author, and 43 million cubic yards of dirt were moved.

“The project did succeed in achieving its primary aim to preserve the city’s drinking water, which of course is tremendously important. Chicago probably would not be the major city that it is today without that,” Kolbert said. “But it created a new problem, which no one was really thinking about at the time.”

Namely, after the construction project, aquatic animals and plants were able to invade other ecosystems. 

Especially carp. 

Grass carp were brought into the Mississippi to eat invasive aquatic plant species, stopping their spread without the use of herbicides — only the animals escaped their small enclosures, and now, they make up 75% of the biomass of the Mississippi. They are one of the many invasive species wreaking havoc on the ecosystems of the Great Lakes. 

People are trying to solve this problem, caused by human engineering, with more of the same engineering. To deter carp from coming up the Mississippi, engineers added electrified sections, with warnings not to dive, swim or even touch the water. Kolbert said the next plan is to build what one researcher called the “Disco Barrier” that would have water jets and blasting sounds. 

“The response to the problem of control or, if you prefer, control gone awry, is to try to layer on new forms of control. We act as if we believe that if engineering got us into this mess, more engineering will get us out,” Kolbert said. “The projects become more baroque, but we keep at it, either because we don’t see any other options, or because we reject the other options.”

Kolbert is the author of The Sixth Extinction, an influential nonfiction book that won a Pulitzer Prize, and has worked as a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 6 in the Amphitheater, she presented her lecture “Under a White Sky,” taken from the name of her new book Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, as part of Week Two of the Chautauqua Lecture Series’ theme of “New Frontiers: Exploring Today’s Unknowns.” She discussed humanity’s continued desire to control nature and the lack of will to decrease carbon emissions despite growing concerns and proven evidence.

Throughout the lecture, Kolbert explored a phrase etched on a pillar outside one of University of Wyoming’s buildings built in the 1920s: “Strive on — the control of nature is won. Not given.”

“There was a great deal of faith in the idea that nature could and should be harnessed for human ends,” Kolbert said. “This was at the very heart of what it meant to be an engineer.”

The University of Wyoming quote struck many engineers and scientists and, in particular, authors Rachel Carson and John McPhee.

Carson, in her landmark book Silent Spring, didn’t see humanity’s control of nature as triumphant. Instead, she explored it in a darker key, Kolbert said. Carson wrote about how humanity had visibly changed the environment, through roads and buildings, and also invisibly, through pesticides that indiscriminately killed the creatures it was designed for, but also bugs beneficial for farming, fish, birds and — in some cases — people. 

She then read from the final pages of Silent Spring: “The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.”

Decades after Carson, McPhee wrote his book The Control of Nature. Whereas Carson struck a dark note of people’s impact on nature, Kolbert said McPhee’s tone was “bemused and skeptical.” In his book, he explored a volcanic eruption in Iceland, where people used around 8 million cubic yards of water to hose down the magma. They claimed that this effort helped save half the island from destruction. McPhee was less sure, to say the least.

“But, as McPhee then notes,” Kolbert said, “the truth of this will never be known, the role of luck being unassessable, the effects of intervention being ultimately incalculable and the assertion that people can stop a volcano being hubris enough to provoke a new eruption.” 

Kolbert herself was inspired by the University of Wyoming phrase, and it became a central subject of Under a White Sky.

“Now in 2021, the issue is not so much that we are trying to control nature, either arrogantly per Carson, or ineffectively per McPhee,” Kolbert said. “It is that without even seeking to, we do control nature, and what I mean here by ‘controlling nature’ is that we dominate it, both by design and in many ways, completely inadvertently.”

She described the scale of humanity’s impact. People have directly transformed roughly half of the earth’s ice-free land and indirectly changed the other half. Most of the world’s major rivers are dammed or diverted; the only remaining ones with natural courses are in remote parts of the Arctic, the Amazon and parts of Congo, though Kolbert said that more dams are planned. Humans also cause 100 times more carbon emissions annually than volcanoes, which used to be the world’s main source of emissions. 

Ninety-six percent of mammals are either humans or livestock; the total weight of human-made objects is roughly the same as the weight of everything else; the biomass of every animal on earth is 4 gigatons whereas plastics are 8 gigatons; and the world is on track to have more plastic than fish in the oceans in 2050.

Though one solution with much support is to reduce carbon emissions, Kolbert said that there is little evidence that people are changing their ways.

“I, myself, am not an advocate,” Kolbert said. “I’m a journalist, and I see my role not as looking at what we should be doing, but more looking at what we are doing. I just don’t see much in the way of evidence that we are scaling back. Or, to put things more starkly, that we have the will to scale back.” 

So what are people doing? As Kolbert said, humanity is “basically betting the future of the planet on more engineering. We are hoping that a new round of engineering can fix the problems created by the old engineering.”

One example is a project in Iceland with large “air conditioners.” These machines take the CO2 out of the air, store it until there is a significant amount and pump it deep underground, where it turns the surrounding rocks into, essentially, chalk, or calcium bicarbonate. 

Another more controversial example is solar geoengineering, also called solar radiation management. The concept is that if a large aircraft flew into the stratosphere and released a large number of reflective chemicals, it would lessen the amount of heat Earth would receive from the sun, thus causing global cooling.

“If your reaction to this is, ‘Well, that sounds pretty scary,’ you are not alone,” Kolbert said. “Solar geoengineering has been described as dangerous beyond belief, as a broad highway to hell and it’s unimaginably drastic. The possible side effects are manifold.”

The negative risks would be disrupting ecosystems even further by suddenly changing their temperatures, damaging the ozone layer and even changing the sky to a whiter color. This prospect of a whiter sky is where Kolbert got her book’s title Under a White Sky.

“I also think it’s important to consider geoengineering, and other world-altering technologies against the alternatives. In the case of geoengineering, the alternative is not going back to the climate that we had before we embarked on the world-altering project that is extracting fossil fuels and burning them,” Kolbert said. “That climate is gone. And it is not coming back in any foreseeable future.”

As part of the Q-and-A session, Mark Wenzler, director of the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative, asked what can people expect from literary arts in helping explore these issues. 

Kolbert said that the proof was in the pudding; while many, including her, have tried, there hasn’t been a transformational text covering climate change — yet.

“To be honest,” Kolbert said, “the book of the future may be a miniseries. It may be a tweet. I don’t know what it is going to be. Maybe an Instagram feed. So I don’t know if a book can galvanize public opinion the way that Silent Spring did.”

After the release of Silent Spring, Congress called Carson to testify on the use of pesticides. 

“It’s since terribly dated and terribly sexist,” Kolbert said. “But JFK says to her, ‘You’re the little lady who started this all,’ which is a reference to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which had an enormous galvanizing effect for the abolitionist movement.”

Wenzler asked what the older generation can say and do for the younger generation so that they have hope and can take action. 

“The simplest answer I could give is: There’s no choice but to face these issues. We’re not being given a choice,” Kolbert said.

Kolbert talked about her children, one of whom is going to graduate school for climate science.

“He knows the science better than I do. It’s not a pretty picture. I don’t have to tell anyone here that,” Kolbert said. “If you want to do meaningful work, there’s going to be a lot of meaningful work to be done in the climate sphere. So let’s go out and do it.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

Aluminum was once worth more than gold. In 1884, the Washington Monument was capped with aluminum because of its value and durability. Yet today, the metal lines the shelves of Walmart and Wegmans. 

Ted Chiang, a decorated science fiction author of works including Exhalation and Stories of Your Life, said this is a consequence of the almost-daily changes caused by the industrial revolution. The world in which parents raise their children is vastly different than the one in which they themselves were brought up. 

Enter science fiction. True science fiction, Chiang said, is the literature of change.

The winner of four Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, four Locus Awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Chiang opened Week Two of the Chautauqua Lecture Series, themed “New Frontiers: Exploring Today’s Unknowns,” at 10:30 a.m. Monday, July 5 in the Amphitheater. During his lecture, titled “Science Fiction and the Idea of the Future,” he explored the differences between fantasy and science fiction, how the industrial revolution has changed how humanity views the future, and his belief in a machine-like universe. 

The differences between science fiction and other genres, Chiang said, are more than cosmetic. Some stories, such as “Star Wars,” are falsely labeled as science fiction because they have aliens and spaceships, but are really adventure tales: a young man saving a princess, defeating a dark force and returning the world to order. 

This type of story, where the world is in the same state both before the beginning of the tale and again at the end, Chiang said, was common before the industrial revolution and Enlightenment.

“For me, the underlying assumption for real science fiction is the idea that arose during the Enlightenment. It’s the idea that the universe can be understood through reason,” Chiang said. “It’s the idea that the universe is a kind of machine, and if we study it carefully, we can figure out how it works.”

Chiang said that The Dead Past, a novel written by Isaac Asimov and published in the 1950s, exemplifies the nature of science fiction. This novel ends with everyone in the world gaining access to a technology that is able to look milliseconds in the past. Much to the characters’ dismay, this advancement effectively ends personal privacy.

The most important characteristic of this story, Chiang said, is that it ends at a different point than it begins, unlike traditional good-versus-evil stories like “Star Wars.” These more traditional stories usually have a message that the past was good, and that humanity needs to preserve the past.

“Many critics believe that this implies a political message, and it is a conservative one because the efforts of the protagonists are directed at maintaining the status quo,” Chiang said. “The underlying message of these stories is that things were good before, and we should try to keep things that way.”

Real science fiction, on the other hand, follows another pattern, Chaing said, starting with the familiar, new technology disrupting daily life and the world changing.

Another key part of science fiction exemplified in The Dead Past is the democratization of technology, like the machine that can look into the past or, in real life, smartphones. He said that true science fiction often asks two questions: What if this technology exists, and what if everyone had it?

The availability of technology, Chiang said, is a major difference between science fiction and fantasy. He said that some people claim that the only difference between the two genres is cosmetic: they say that if The Lord of The Rings had aliens instead of elves, then it would be called science fiction. 

Chiang disagrees. He then gave two stories: one where gold could be created for cheap by anyone and another where only a few people had the ability.

The difference between the two examples is the importance of the practitioner. The second example — found in the genre of fantasy — depends on the individual, with the universe choosing a particular person for a particular reason. The person may have an innate gift, or a purified soul,  for example. Reasons could also include good intentions, hard work, intense concentration or personal sacrifice. 

The first, which he said is more reminiscent of science fiction, requires none of these.

“None of these things are true of scientific phenomena,” Chiang said. “When you pass a magnet through a coil of wire, electric currents flow, no matter who your parents are, whether your intentions are good or bad. You don’t have to concentrate power or offer a sacrifice in order for a light bulb to turn on. Electricity doesn’t care.”

In fiction, magic typically requires individuals and responds differently to each one. 

“Magic is evidence that the universe knows that you’re a person,” Chiang said. “Magic is an indication that the universe recognizes that people are different from things and that you are an individual who is different from other people.”

Science fiction, in many ways, does the opposite.

“Sometimes people say that the scientist’s way of viewing the world is cold and impersonal,” Chiang said. “I am not sure that I would agree that it’s cold, but definitely agree that it is impersonal.”

Chiang said that people, in fiction and in real life, tend to anthropomorphize the universe, thinking of it as a person, with its own will and thoughts. One such example is the idea that positive thoughts lead to positive outcomes. One author, Chiang said, wrote about a character designed after themselves, and when they wrote about bad things happening to the character, bad things happened to the author. 

“It’s the idea that the universe recognizes the interpersonal, because that’s what people do,” Chiang said. “But mass production cannot be understood this way, because people do not behave this way. No one would grant a favor, once a second, all day, every day, 365 days a year.”

The idea of a lack of connection between humanity and the universe grew in Western cultures during the Enlightenment. Instead of relying on the written works of old philosophers, scientists of this era started to rely on their own experiments and looked for replicable results. 

And capitalism has thrived under this philosophy. 

“Capitalism excels at making people feel unimportant. Working on an assembly line takes a lot of joy out of working,” Chiang said. “This is a direct byproduct of living in a mechanistic universe. In a universe where magic works, that type of alienation cannot happen, because magical nature is inextricably tied to (the) individual.”

Chiang said that the world needs more fantasy and science fiction, as both are essential in understanding the universe and humanity, and help people understand the value of themselves and the world around them. 

Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, asked Chiang, as part of the Q-and-A session, which authors should people read that exemplify science fiction. 

Chiang recommended writers Greg Egan and Kim Stanley Robinson. 

Ewalt also asked Chiang about science fiction’s role in inspiring a sense of awe in the reader. 

The awe readers experience while reading is the same emotion that scientists feel when studying the universe, Chiang said. For many early scientists during the Enlightenment, the surprise and inspiration they felt during experiments were vastly tied to their practice of religion because they were gaining a greater understanding of their god’s creations. 

And it is similar for secular scientists. 

“The awe that you get from understanding the universe,” Chiang said, “is the closest thing a non-religious person can get to religious awe.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

While Mao Zedong was radically egalitarian, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, was more practical. He helped open China up to the world and convinced its people to let some among them become wealthy first. The rest of China would follow naturally.

Dexter Roberts, a fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative, said Deng was very successful over the next several years. Too successful, some thought, to the point his own successor was worried the wealth gap between China’s rich and poor was becoming too big. 

This is one of the main problems that China faces today, Roberts said. China is now tainted with wealth gaps even greater than the United States. 

Roberts reported in China for over two decades for Bloomberg Businessweek, is a fellow at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, where he is also an adjunct instructor of political science. At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 1 in the Amphitheater, Roberts delved into China’s uncertain financial future and the hurdles 300 million internal migrant workers face. His lecture, titled “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: Challenges to China’s Future as a Global Superpower,” was the last presentation of the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week One’s theme of “China and The World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

In 2000, Roberts reported on China’s young migrant workers. He met many of these people in Guizhou, often called the factory of the world because it has the world’s highest number of exports, from clothes and toys to iPhones. One of those migrants was Mo Pubo.

Mo left his village when he was 15 before starting high school and spent the next five years traveling around China working at factories. He eventually landed in Guizhou, where he met Roberts.

Roberts talked to Mo’s coworkers, many of which were his distant cousins, and also Mo’s girlfriend. 

“She had been very shy. She had always seemed afraid. When I addressed her, she would look down at the table,” Roberts said. “It was quite the experience to then see her several months later back at her village. She was really transformed. She was actually pretty proud of her village.”

Mo’s girlfriend returned home for two reasons: Her parents needed help during the rice harvest, and her identity card expired. 

This ID is more important than one might think, not only to migrants like Mo, but to the future of the Chinese economy. It states where a person is born within China. According to Chinese law, a person cannot use health care, public education or pension funds outside of their birth area. This means that the 300 million workers must travel back to their homes in order to receive medical care. Similarly, they must send their children back home for their education, or pay high prices for private urban schools. 

And it is a large risk to have an expired identity card. One of Mo’s cousins was held for ransom because theirs had expired.

“In places like Guizhou, the local police often saw migrants as a source of extra income. They would get them on the streets for any infraction they can pick up,” Roberts said. “Certainly an expired card would be one of the classic reasons they would grab someone. They would hold them in what they would call black jails and, in fact, hold them for ransom.”

Mao and his government initially created the card policy as a means of controlling the rural population and restricting migration across the country. Roberts said Mao wanted a “captive” rural population living in communes to produce cheap grains and foods for the urban population. 

“The economic rationale was: Sacrifice the livelihoods of the Chinese rural people in order to support the city,” Roberts said.

Unlike Mao, his successor, Deng, allowed the rural population to travel and live wherever they chose. But, Roberts said, Deng still tied social welfare — like health care, education and pensions — to where each person is born. 

“The issue here probably does not come as a surprise: China’s rural health care, China’s rural education, is far, far inferior to what is available in cities,” Roberts said.

Like in the U.S., the wealthier the area is, the more resources the local schools and hospitals have. With rural areas lacking the factories and foreign investments that urban areas have, villages are usually poor. A lot of the money that these remote villages receive, Roberts said, comes from migrant workers’ earnings and local agriculture. 

In 2000, the average wage of people in urban China was three times the average wage of those in rural China. Today, the ratio is around 2.5 to 1. 

Roberts said migrant parents can spend a high amount of money for private urban schools for children from rural areas, but even these schools are often not much better than their rural counterparts. Rural schools have a very high dropout rate; Roberts said very few actually finish high school in these areas. Furthermore, around 100 million children of migrant workers grow up separated from their parents. 

China and its migrant workers are reckoning with the welfare rules around the identity card, but also with another Mao-era policy lingering into modern times. 

In urban areas, homeowners are essentially free to sell, rent or buy their property and keep most of the profits. Roberts said this has led to an explosion of wealth within the real estate industry.

But, in rural areas, when owners sell their land, they receive very little because the local Party members take most of the profit. 

The policies around the identification cards and selling property leave migrant workers with little money, and the extra money they do have, they need to save for emergencies. This is especially dangerous for the Chinese government because their economy is transitioning from factory- and export-geared to one that needs to be driven by the spending power of its own people. 

China’s old economic model is not working as well, Roberts said, because the one-child policy has left the country with few working-age adults and factory wages have increased. China’s economy initially grew at unprecedented rates partially due to the very low wages the companies paid their workers. Since those wages have grown over time, China’s profits have decreased, and are still decreasing.

Additionally, migrant workers often save as much as 23% of their wages, which is 15% higher than the global saving average. It is either this, Roberts said, or risk going bankrupt.

So, China’s leadership wanted to increase its household consumption, Roberts said, which is at a very low 39%, 15 points below the world average. In comparison, Roberts said American household consumption is between 70 and 75%.

Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair of Education, opened the Q-and-A by asking why the Chinese government is resistant to expanding education to rural areas. 

The main issue, Roberts said, is money, as funding for schools and hospitals comes from the local area. Another issue is that there is not much benefit for rural governments to invest in schools. Their reasoning is, Roberts said, if they invested heavily in educating children, the students would still leave for wealthier cities as soon as they come of age, instead of staying within the community. Urban populations also do not want to share their access to welfare, particularly with education. 

“Some of the bigger protests we’ve seen in recent years (in China) have actually been the parents of city kids who have gone and protested against the well-meaning efforts by the central government to try and allow more young people from rural China to also attend these schools,” Roberts said. “We’ve seen parents go march outside of the board of education and say, ‘Keep them out.’ ”

And, Roberts said, President Xi Jinping is not a strong supporter of reform.

“He does not necessarily believe in allowing young people to decide to live where they want to live and to sell when they want to sell,” Roberts said. “So I think there’s a large issue of control by the Communist Party — this perception that it’s socially destabilizing to allow rural people to move around the country.”

With Week One of the CLS ending, Ewalt ended the lecture by asking who the audience should read to learn more about China’s role in international affairs.

Roberts recommended journalists and authors Peter Hessler, Ian Johnson and Mei Fong — a friend of Roberts’ who lectured at Chautauqua two days before him.

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

The first thing, Michael Pillsbury said, that President Joe Biden needs to understand when approaching diplomacy with China is the balance of power. During his campaign, Pillsbury said, Biden did not seem that concerned with China.

But Pillsbury is impressed that the president’s sentiment has changed. Biden is now saying that the United States is in major competition with China and has brought up the country multiple times during the recent G-7 conference, for example.

Currently a senior fellow and director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute, Pillsbury has served in the U.S. government for more than 40 years, working with presidents including Jimmy Carter, both Bushes and, most recently, Donald Trump. 

At 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 30 in the Amphitheater, Pillsbury discussed multiple questions he believes the Biden administration needs to consider as they tackle large issues regarding China. His lecture was the fourth installment of the Chautauqua Lecture Series of Week One, “China and the World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

Biden’s advisers, Pillsbury said, have grouped issues with China into three categories: adversarial, which includes the U.S.’s condemnation of what it considers the genocide of the Uyghur people; competition, which includes Chinese corporations selling technology that rivals the U.S.; and cooperation, which includes both countries working together on climate change initiatives. 

Pillsbury said there is rare bipartisanship in Congress when it comes to diplomacy with China. Most senators, for example, voted for a bill that requires a Congressional review when China buys any small, tech-focused American startups.

The next aspect that Biden needs to consider is how tough to be on China, including in trade, technology and economic investments. Pillsbury said there is a lot of debate around this topic. President Barack Obama and his administration, around seven years ago, called for the arrest of five Chinese hackers, some of whom focused on getting nuclear reactor information from a company in Pittsburgh in order to advance Chinese technology.

Biden needs to consider the great risk involved with letting China steal military technology, Pillsbury said, while also not stoking the flames too much and risking another Cold War.

And what would a cold war with China look like? That was the next question Pillsbury brought up, one which he called “devilishly difficult.”

Despite their history as allies in World War II, within a few years, the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in the Cold War. During this time, Pillsbury said the U.S. government established the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense (which unified the branches of the military), the Air Force (which used to be a part of the Army), and the National Security Council.

Pillsbury said that in comparison, the U.S. has not done much to prepare for a cold war with China.

Pillsbury told a story about dedicated, China-focused offices in each department of the U.S. government. When members of the Chinese military were visiting Washington, Pillsbury was involved in a tour of those offices. At that time, only four people dedicated to China issues worked in the Pentagon.

“The Chinese general says, ‘No this isn’t the real one.’ They were talking amongst themselves: ‘The Americans are deceiving us, they are making us think that they don’t take China seriously,’ ” Pillsbury said. “So we never again did that.”

Pillsbury then transitioned into the next issue Biden must understand: unity within China. To truly understand this issue, Pillsbury said one must know about the four T’s.

The first is Taiwan. Different presidents have taken different positions on Taiwan. President Richard Nixon’s policy was that Taiwan was a part of China, while other presidents, like Bill Clinton, said that it wasn’t, but also that it wasn’t an independent country. Aligning with China would open more doors for cooperation, but not all presidents have taken that tack.

The second and third T’s were Tibet, where the Dalai Lama is in an exile government that has power over the area but is not recognized by China; and Turkestan, the homeland of the Uyghur people, a mainly Muslim, Turkic ethnic group who live in China’s North-Western Xinjiang Province. 

When President George W. Bush was compiling a list of terrorist organizations in the world in the early 2000s, China said that if the East Turkestan Independence Movement was not added to the list, the country would likely not help in the war on terror.

“So everyone rushes to the files. People at the CIA and other places (say), ‘What the hell is the ETIM? There’s nothing on it,’ ” Pillsbury said. “So ordinarily you would have said, ‘No, sorry, we can’t confirm there’s any such thing.’ But some people, and there was really harsh discussion, … some people said, ‘The Chinese say it is a terrorist organization, it goes on the list.’ ”

Pillsbury said that 20 years later, the world learned that Uyghurs were in “re-education” camps. One Chinese diplomat claimed that all the doors in the camp were open, and they were free to leave whenever. The New York Times asked to visit the camps to verify this claim, but China declined.

The last T is Hong Kong — though Pillsbury admitted that there is no T in Hong Kong.

Pillsbury said a question among media coverage is if China’s treatment of Hong Kong has broken the 1984 declaration between Hong Kong and the United Kingdom — an agreement that gave Hong Kong all the rights of autonomy.

“The first year of the Trump administration, the Chinese announced this declaration is null and void,” Pillsbury said. “President Trump did not object at that time. President Biden faces this issue now.”

As he wrapped up his lecture, Pillsbury made one final point: the need for those in the West to better understand China.

“The truth is, my fear is we know way too little about China, especially in the important areas,” Pillsbury said. “So more work with China, and more work to understand Chinese strategy, is very important.”

Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill asked Pillsbury how he thought China would celebrate its 200th anniversary of the Communist Party in the country. Its 100th anniversary was on the same day of Pillsbury’s lecture. 

Pillsbury said many think that China will collapse eventually, either because the Communist Party will break up or because its economy will slow down.

“In a 100 years, you’re looking at the balance of power clearly going towards China,” Pillsbury said. “The China experts who say China is going to collapse, the Communist Party is going to collapse, hopefully they’re right. But I don’t think so.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

‘Too Male’

China has 30 million bachelors. That’s more than the population of California.

The one-child policy in China, designed to control population growth in the mid-20th century, was a law that mandated families could only have one baby. In a patriarchal society, the law led many Chinese to choose to only keep male babies, often terminating pregnancies or abandoning baby girls in favor of trying for a boy. 

As Mei Fong — a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist currently an executive at Human Rights Watch — said, the prevailing opinion in China was and is that “raising a daughter is like watering someone else’s flowers, because they will marry into another family.” 

In her morning lecture on Tuesday, June 29 in the Amphitheater, Fong told many stories of how the policy has affected individual people. One man, from a village with 30 adult men and no single women, helped pay and arrange for 30 women to marry the community’s bachelors. Then one day, all the women simply left.

“When I first heard the story, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, good for these women.’ I had these images of brides racing across the paddy fields with their veils flowing in the wind,” Fong said. “The man told me that he couldn’t blame them for this because he knew that they were under a lot of pressure. I thought it was very forgiving of him. This is the problem for many men: they are stuck in a problem not of their own making.”

This man, and the other single sons of his generation, are also feeling the effects of the policy. Because China does not have a strong social security program, a young man will often have to provide for his two parents and four grandparents — essentially becoming six people’s retirement fund. 

As part of her lecture, “Long-Term Consequences of China’s One-Child Policy,” Fong explored the one-child policy and its cultural and financial impacts on China and the global community. Hers was the second installment of Week One’s Chautauqua Lecture Series theme of “China and the World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?” The author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, her work has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. For several years she was a staff reporter for the China bureau for The Wall Street Journal, where she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

‘Too Old’

The one-child policy was created in the 1980s, Fong said, by men who worked in the military. 

“These men were primarily, themselves, scientists who envisioned women as machines,” Fong said. “What these men thought was that, ‘Women’s fertility — that is something you can push out and push in like a switch.’”

These men also thought that when they officially lifted the policy nationwide in 2015, Chinese citizens would rush to have multiple children again. Fong said this isn’t that case.

“This is a leadership that has 30-plus years telling you, relentlessly, one child is best,” Fong said. “If you do not believe the power of messaging changes you, then the billion-dollar advertising industry would not exist.”

Despite the two-child policy being in effect for years, and the recent approval of the three-child policy that was passed on May 31, China still has a very elderly population — 40% of the world’s Parkinson’s patients are Chinese. Fong said the retirees of China would make up the world’s third-most populous country.

People outside of China also believe in the policy. After reporting on it, Fong said, she received notes from people telling her that the whole world should have a one-child policy because of overpopulation.

“The question I ask is: Are you okay with if someone takes away your mother, your sister, your wife for forced abortion or sterilization?” Fong said.

‘Too Few’

No one wants to be “shidu parents.” This is a Chinese phrase for a couple whose child has died. While a child’s death is a tragedy for anyone, no matter the country, under the one-child policy in China, this also means no one will financially provide for the parents when they are no longer able to work. Fong said this is why the phrase shidu parent has extra weight to it. 

In 2008, Fong reported on the massive earthquake in Sichuan, China. She interviewed a man whose daughter was crushed to death. The man was 50 and his wife was 45. 

Neighbors avoided them afterwards, Fong said, because they did not want the financial responsibility of taking care of them. Just weeks after his daughter’s death, the man went to the hospital to reverse his vasectomy in order to try to have another child. 

Having working-age children is integral for families like the one Fong interviewed, but also for the economy. With China’s economy still growing rapidly, the country’s youthful population can’t keep up with job demand. 

Fong said that in the 1990s, right when the Chinese economy first started growing at unprecedented rates, the country had high numbers of young adults and a low number of retirees. This was the perfect equation for the economy at the time. As those workers age, however, the next generation is not large enough to effectively financially support them in the customary way.

The United States also has decreased population growth. Fong said almost every developed, wealthy country has this problem. The United States, in particular, supplements its population with immigration, but China has never done this, and Fong said the Chinese government has no large plans to do so.

Shannon Rozner, the Institution’s senior vice president of community relations and general counsel, started the Q-and-A by asking Fong why people at first saw the one-child policy as positive. 

Fong said that lawmakers in the 1980s felt the one-child policy was necessary in order for China to climb out of poverty — the government decided to limit population so that resources would go farther.

Other countries in Asia have approached the problem of overpopulation far less drastically. In Thailand, she said the government encourages women to go to college, have a career and start families later in life. 

She also said that before implementing the one-child policy, China had a similar movement called the “Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign. The government encouraged its citizens to marry later in life, wait longer before having children and to end up with fewer children. 

“That period was the greatest fertility drop that China experienced,” Fong said. “Average households went from having six children to three children.”

Fong said that some people argue that if China stuck with the “Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign, the country would be seeing fewer negative effects — such as forced abortions, tragedies within the adoption system and burden on a singular male of the family — and still have many positives, such as a decreased population and fewer strains on government resources. 

Rozner then asked if the huge population of unmarried men has opened Chinese culture to nontraditional families, such as LGBTQ+ or single-parent households.

“That has not been the case at all,” Fong said. “By and large, the one-child policy is also very much linked to the issue of control of the kinds of people they want to have.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping cooperating to combat climate change, Somini Sengupta said, is like a couple in divorce court trying to plan their child’s wedding. 

“In short, this is the biggest diplomatic test, in my view, for both of them — not just for their countries, but also for the rest of humanity,” said Sengupta, the international climate change correspondent for The New York Times.

The two largest economies and militaries in the world have had a complicated relationship, to say the least. Tariffs, trade wars and tensions over Hong Kong are just the tip of this decades-long and trillions-of-dollars-deep iceberg.

Sengupta said the global community, most importantly China and the United States, has to work together to effectively combat climate change. Biden and Xi, the leaders of the two largest carbon emitters, are at the eye of that storm. 

And, Sengupta said, 2021 is the most important year, in the most important decade, in terms of climate change. Many scientists have estimated that the world must take drastic action by 2030 to prevent global temperatures from rising an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius from the industrial revolution, the estimated ceiling that humanity will be able to survive. 

The world is already at 1.1.

As well as being a climate change reporter, Sengupta is the author of The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India’s Young and a former United Nations correspondent at the Times. At 10:30 a.m. on Monday in the Amphitheater, Sengupta opened the 2021 Chautauqua Lecture Series and delivered the first lecture in the Amp with a live audience in almost two years. Her lecture, titled “Can China and the United States Save the Planet?” is part of the Week One theme of “China and The World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

“It is really my pleasure and my honor to be seeing your faces, in real life, IRL, and not being reminded to mute and unmute,” Sengupta said.

One of the first topics Sengupta touched on was the inequality around the impacts of climate change. Often, the communities with the lowest carbon footprint feel the greatest impact. She said this could be seen in many Southeast Asian countries, especially in coastal cities. Above her, on the three hanging projector screens, a photo of Manila was shown: the water from the sea ravaged the pictured buildings, an effect of rising sea levels.

“My job is to bear witness to the human experience, particularly the struggles,” Sengupta said, “of those whose stories do not often get told, and need to get told. So, for me personally, it is very important to be there and see and hear and smell.”

One assignment took Sengupta to Kenya, where many farmers’ livelihoods, she said, were no longer possible due to climate change, yet who “had no carbon footprint to speak of.”

She interviewed a man at a food distribution site who was profoundly impacted by climate change. He told her that in his life, one day he might wake up and find five of his cows dead and the next day 10, and then at the end of the year, he might spend money to replace them, only for it to happen again.

Farmers are impacted in the United States, too. Sengupta reported last year during the heatwave and wildfires in California, and focused on farmers, particularly those that pick and pack food. Sengupta interviewed and followed them as they worked in the fields. One young woman, and many others, would pick crops from 4:30 a.m. before the sun had risen, and by 10 a.m. it would be nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and they would have to stop. They were even able to see the wildfire in the distance. 

“I remember the day when I learned about what she was out there harvesting, at such an incredible hazard to her health,” Sengupta said. “She was harvesting dried corn that the rest of us would buy to decorate our Thanksgiving table.”

“As one economist said, ‘We own this problem,’ ” Sengupta said.

While the U.S. has emitted more greenhouse gases cumulatively over the past decades, China emits the most yearly, taking up 28% of global totals. The U.S. has around half of that, as does the European Union. 

Despite other, more vulnerable countries bearing the effects of climate change, she said, the United States holds the most responsibility. The U.S. per capita emissions are the highest.

“Enter these two men,” said Sengupta as a photo of Biden and Xi appeared on the projector. 

Sengupta said Biden is not coming into climate diplomacy with Xi from a position of strength. China dominates production in almost every industry, including sustainable energy. This includes solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. In another milestone, Shenzhen, China, was the first city to electrify all transportation. 

The need for climate action also comes at a politically tense time between China and the U.S., with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying cooperation depends on how the United States responds to China’s treatment of Hong Kong and Thailand. This minister said that if the U.S. stopped interfering in China’s “internal affairs,” then cooperation would be smoother. Biden’s administration, however, seeks to separate these two issues. 

Sengupta said there were a few tests in the coming months that will be crucial to preventing global temperatures from rising before 2030, including how much the Biden administration can accomplish around climate change within a short time frame.

Biden committed to halving U.S. emissions by 2030, but the current version of the 2021 trillion-dollar infrastructure bill has very little to help achieve that goal.

“That makes this larger budget reconciliation process, in the coming days and weeks, really, really important for climate diplomacy, especially with China,” Sengupta said. “This is something that every major country is watching. What can the U.S. deliver?”

Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, opened the Q-and-A by asking Sengupta what some countries are doing well in terms of combating climate change.

Sengupta said that some countries are experimenting with reducing food waste, like Paris requiring supermarkets to donate food that is about to expire to food banks. Another interesting plan is adding seaweed to cow food. When cows eat grass, Sengupta said, they burp a large amount of methane. When seaweed is a part of their diet, this amount of methane is significantly less.

The closing question was a simple one: What can people do to help?

“Far be from me to tell people what should be done,” Sengupta said. “I am a reporter. I find out stuff and try to explain it in everyday language.”

She did recommend that people pay attention to the 2021 trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and listen to scientists. 

“Listen to the people who are translating what happened,” Sengupta said. “Now.”

Her second suggestion is to talk about it. She said that the majority of Americans support more action on climate change but hesitate to talk about it out of fear of being divisive. It is also important to talk from a person’s own perspective, on topics like water shortages, food production to rising sea levels.

“If it is extreme heat you are concerned about, talk about it. If you are an elderly person in Portland, without air conditioning, in this heat, that is a hazard to your health,” Sengupta said. “So find out how to talk about it from where you are.”

Of every role Samantha Power has served in her lifetime — diplomat, author, journalist, professor and scholar — none has been more meaningful than United States Ambassador to the United Nations. 

During her time as ambassador, from 2013 to 2017, Power helped mobilize 70 countries to take on ISIS, brought into force the Paris Agreement, worked with Civil Society to get prisoners out of jail and supported President Barack Obama as he leveraged contributions to end West Africa’s Ebola outbreak. 

In other words, Power said she has seen the indispensable need for diplomacy and what it can accomplish at its very best.

“The grim facts of the current moment help us appreciate just how important and how necessary diplomacy is,” Power said. 

Power’s lecture, “America’s Role in International Engagement and Leadership,” closed the 2020 Chautauqua Lecture Series and the Week Nine theme in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, “The Future We Want, The World We Need: Collective Action for Tomorrow’s Challenges,” at 10:45 a.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 28, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. 

Diplomacy is necessary, first and foremost, to end conflict. More countries are experiencing some form of violent conflict in modern-day than at any other time in the last three decades, Power said. And they aren’t just increasing in numbers — conflicts are also lasting longer. The average humanitarian crisis involving the United Nations lasts more than nine years. 

“That’s almost double the duration of such crises as recently as 2014,” she said.

Conflicts often give rise to massive population movements, which are inherently destabilizing and have led to a rise in “xenophobia and nationalism across the globe,” according to Power. Close to 80 million people have been forcibly displaced across the world, this worst displacement crisis since World War II. 

“Over the last decade, this number has essentially doubled, to the point that 1% of the entire population of the globe has been forced from their homes,” Power said. 

Diplomacy is also needed to negotiate “more ambitious” global commitments to combat climate change. 

“The commitments made under the 2015 (Paris Agreement) was a starting point, not a solution,” Power said. 

Unprecedented drought and climate-induced migration already gave rise to two of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century: the Darfur genocide and the Syrian Civil War. 

“Even in places where climate change doesn’t cause violence, it is due to cause mass displacement on a scale that is hard to fathom,” she said.

In the face of COVID-19, Power said diplomacy is essential to coordinating global action, as she did with the Ebola outbreak in 2014. Power worked alongside diplomats from 50 nations to support West Africa in ending the outbreak, but since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Power said more than 90 governments have instead restricted exports of personal protective equipment, medicine and medical devices. 

“It’s generating antagonism and a zero-sum mindset among nations to the detriment of individuals in need,” she said. 

Despite the indispensability of using diplomacy, Power said the United States and other democracies have not invested sufficiently in that “lost art.” The Pentagon and armed services have 228,000 American personnel deployed outside of the United States. The U.S. Department of State? Only around 8,000.

“The Pentagon, famously, has only slightly fewer people serving in marching bands than (the state department has) diplomats,” Power said. 

The “undervaluing” is apparent in a lack of proper funding as well, which Power said creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

“The less we engage in diplomacy, the more chaotic the world becomes, and the more chaotic the world becomes, the harder it is to convince people at home and abroad that international engagements are worth pursuing,” Power said. “We have to break out of this cycle.”

China, on the other hand, is making “gigantic investments” in diplomacy. China’s spending on diplomacy has doubled since 2013, at the same time the United States’ budget has stagnated. 

To give a sense of the trajectory, when Power joined the Obama administration in 2009, China was the eighth-largest donor nation, contributing about 3% of the U.N.’s budget. Currently, they have passed Japan as the second-largest donor.

“I believe that building a strategic relationship with China is essential,” Power said. “It’s also going to be immensely challenging.”

China is doing more with its standing than “play defense,” Power said. China is promoting national sovereignty, an interpretation that “endangers the international human rights system.”

“China is spearheading an effort, welcomed by undemocratic nations, to redefine inalienable rights as state-bestowed privileges,” she said. “China is bringing relief to many governments.”

The key question becomes: What can be done? Power offered three ideas, presented with “humility, as the task before us is genuinely daunting.” 

First, Power said America must strengthen the internal workings of its “democracy at home.” 

“No matter how many diplomats we have, our greatest weapon is the model of our democracy at home,” Power said. “Our perceived domestic strength and our perceived domestic competence has huge bearing on the willingness of other nations to follow our lead.”

Strengthening democracy at home begins with building the diplomatic core. Power said the Department of State is in crisis as many senior leaders have left, its mission is uncertain and “morale has hit rock bottom.” 

Three years into the Trump administration, more than one-third of the top positions are vacant or filled by acting officials, such as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, which has not had a Senate-confirmed ambassador since April 2019. 

In filling the vacancies, Power said “we need to make the face of America look like America.” 

“For as long as national security has existed, it has been a field dominated by white men,” Power said.

Since the country’s founding, fewer than 1 in 10 U.S. ambassadors have been women. No American woman has served as ambassador to China, Russia, Israel, Turkey or Afghanistan.

“More often than not, those (female) ambassadors have been posted to countries considered less critical to U.S. national security,” Power said.

Power said the record of “recruiting minorities is even worse.” Only 6% of foreign service officers are African American, a mere 6% Latino. As of this summer, of the 189 U.S. ambassadors posted overseas, only seven are African American or Hispanic.

After the murder of George Floyd, Power said many African-American diplomats began speaking out about the prejudice and discrimination they have faced. As the former U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe Harry Thomas Jr. put it, “You can set up all of the kumbaya panels you want, but until you see people of color being given opportunities, nothing is going to change except Band-Aids on surfaces.”

“The standard half-measures used to address these inequities just won’t do,” Power said. 

Once those positions have been filled, Power said diplomats need to focus on supporting democractic transitions and strengthening alliances among democracies. 

“The economic heft of democracies dwarfs that of even an economically potent China,” Power said. “The ability of China or Russia to silence any one country using its economic leverage is far diminished if we can coordinate our positions and stand up collectively on behalf of one another.”

Lastly, Power said diplomacy needs to take into account one of the most “underestimated forces” in politics and geopolitics: dignity. 

Why did a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire, igniting the Arab Spring? He felt humiliated. It was a matter of dignity. 

Why have many Russians supported Vladamir Putin despite their country’s stagnant economy? Partly because they believe he has restored Russia’s status as a major player on the world stage. It’s a matter of dignity.

There have been more mass, non-violent movements around the world over the past decade than at any time in recorded history. What has been at the core of these protests, the peaceful resistance that helped bring down corrupt governments? Dignity. 

In closing, Power revisited the 2014 Ebola outbreak, a time before the United States and Cuba had reestablished diplomatic ties. Nevertheless, one of the very first countries to heed president Obama’s call for global contributions was Cuba, which sent more than 200 medical professionals to the region. One of the doctors deployed was a 43-year-old Felix Baez Sarria, who was dispatched to an Ebola treatment facility in Sierra Leone. 

Sarria contracted Ebola and was airlifted to Geneva where for two days, he drifted in and out of consciousness. He almost died, but with time, pulled through and ultimately chose to return to Sierra Leone to continue working. 

“He said he needed to, that Ebola was a challenge he wanted to fight to the finish, to make sure it didn’t spread to other countries,” she said. 

Power pointed out that to save his life, multiple nations had to come together. Sarria was initially treated in the clinic where he worked, which was built with the help of the United States. From there, he was transported to a clinic run by doctors from the British Ministry of Defence. Then, Sarria was airlifted to Switzerland aboard a plane operated by an American charter service. Upon arriving, he was treated with a Canadian-developed experimental treatment. 

Every one of the stops on his itinerary was negotiated by people practicing diplomacy. To Power, diplomacy was used to make “(something) hard happen in the interest of a better world” — diplomacy at its best. 

“It will not be enough to back to a point where we proclaim that diplomacy matters, nor even to say why it matters,” Power said. “Instead, we must treat diplomacy as a top line, national and global priority, rooted in a deep-seated, broad-based, whole new appreciation of the fact that our livelihood and our lives depend on it.”

Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Fabrizio Hochschild said the news media has covered in depth the life-threatening, physical effects of COVID-19, but the amount of people whose mental health has been impacted is much larger. 

Mental and emotional vulnerabilities come with being isolated, and many have been forced to stay in abusive households — not to mention the number who have lost their jobs, and the countless people who have needed to change their daily lives.

“Just about everybody has been subjected to the growth of uncertainty and anxiety about the future. All these are massive stresses on mental health that don’t get the attention that they deserve,” Hochschild said. “I’m afraid they will be with many of us long after we’ve discovered a vaccine.”

Hochschild hopes that the pandemic will make society more empathetic and “drop this awful, macho … approach to expressing vulnerability when it comes to mental health.”

“None of us feel inappropriate when it comes to our physical health, none of us have a problem confessing to a stomachache or a backache,” Hochschild said. “Yet, we have this terrible trend not even to acknowledge the worst depression or major anxiety disorder.”

At 10:45 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2020, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, Hochschild gave a presentation titled “UN75 and the Future of International Cooperation,” as part of Week Nine of the Chautauqua Lecture Series themed “The Future We Want, The World We Need: Collective Action for Tomorrow’s Challenges,” in partnership with the U.N. Foundation. Hochschild discussed the UN75 initiative, the common desire for greater international communication and the importance of empathy in the reckoning brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The discussion was led by Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, who asked about Hochschild’s work to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the U.N., and how that anniversary has been framed.

“There’s a sense, even before COVID struck, that we were facing this contradiction between a growing number of challenges that can only be resolved through international cooperation, and the flagging commitment to the mechanisms of international cooperation,” Hochschild said.

In order to reverse this contradiction of the growing global issues and declining interest in cooperation, the U.N. wants to inspire the people it serves, and reinvigorate the international organization.

Ewalt asked him to speak on the current state of global cooperation. One example, Hochschild said, is the U.N. Security Council.

“According to some permanent members sitting on their council, they haven’t seen it as dysfunctional, as unable to reach agreement, at any time since the Cold War,” Hochschild said. “That’s a pretty tough statement.”

The conflict in Syria, which has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, is “perhaps the most painful and tragic indication” of a lack of global cooperation. Hochschild said that the U.N. Security Council has become more fragmented on these large issues that are more visible to the public, but also on issues that the majority of the council historically agreed on. 

“The last climate summit in Madrid, presided over by my own country, Chile, in the diplomatic words of many U.N. members, was really an abject failure,” Hochschild said.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed more of this lack of coherence, and that creating fractures instead of bridges has very immediate consequences, such as widespread death.

Ewalt asked about UN75, and the initiative’s efforts to learn millions of people’s hopes and fears about the future, and the focus on inviting people to discuss priorities for the future.

Hochschild said the project has focused on reaching young people in as many parts of the world as possible. He said the initiative has partnered with organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America and platforms like Facebook, in order to reach a wider audience, and has currently reached millions across all 193 countries. 

Hochschild said despite growing political divisions, there are common hopes to strengthen global cooperation.

“What is very striking in the results we’ve achieved so far … is that there is a remarkable amount of unity across political divides, across generation groups, across genders and across continents, around what people’s fears and hopes are for the future,” Hochschild said. “Maybe we should tap in more to those and build more on (them).”

Ewalt asked what people should think about in the coming months in terms of prioritizing international cooperation.

Hochschild said the pandemic and growing global dysfunction may bring changes to educational systems. He gave an example of how some educational experts have argued that children should be taught programming instead of literature, but they eventually found that most programming would be done by artificial intelligence in 10 years. 

“There’s a lot of confusion about what this brave new era means for education, but I think (it’s important to be) coping with uncertainty, coping with change and building resilience,” Hochschild said, “not the sort of silly macho resilience that I was taught about, bottling up one’s feelings and always showing a brave face.”

During childhood, people experience three major turning points regarding education. At around age 5, said Henrietta Fore, they should be ready to learn.

“This means in those first 1,000 days, you need enough good nutrition so that your brain and your bones develop, so you have a full chance to both live to survive, as well as to thrive,” said Fore, executive director of UNICEF.

The second point is at age 10, when Fore said children should be able to read and understand a paragraph or short story.

“(UNICEF is) worried about the quality of education around the world, especially in the poorest communities,” Fore said. “For many of the children, 40% or 60% can graduate out of primary school without having this ability to read and comprehend a simple paragraph.”

The third turning point is at age 18, when Fore said the child should have enough secondary school foundational life skills to learn an occupational skill to make a livelihood.

“Our greatest worry is that many of the children will now drop out,” Fore said. 

She said because of the pandemic, 1.6 billion students were out of school, though some have started to go back into the classroom. Fore thinks that in the poorest countries and poorest communities, students — especially girls — are unlikely to have a chance to return to schools. In the poorest countries, she said students are tuning into class by radio and in middle-income countries, children are watching classes on TV. In high-income countries, such as the United States, she said, students go to school online.

At 10:45 a.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, Fore held a conversation with Vice President and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education Matt Ewalt titled “How to Help Children Reach Their Full Potential,” as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series’ Week Nine theme of “The Future We Want, the World We Need: Collective Action for Tomorrow’s Challenges,” in partnership with the U.N. Foundation. Fore discussed the challenges children face across the globe, how the pandemic has changed UNICEF’s work, and the importance of education in a global context.

UNICEF works in more than 190 countries and territories, helping children survive, thrive and fulfill their potential. The U.N. organization supports children across the globe, focusing on education, sanitation, and the protection of young people against violence and exploitation. Its office and caseworkers also work to improve hygiene and health among young people.

Fore said that most mental health problems start to show by age 14, and young children who have experienced trauma show mental health issues even earlier.

“They will come in (to our caseworkers) and they will draw pictures of guns firing, people getting shot and names of members of their family,” Fore said. “They are reliving (trauma), and we need to make sure that we have safe places, that they can let their feelings be expressed, that they can talk to an adult and then they can learn how to deal with those feelings of anxiety and depression.”

UNICEF has offices in every country. Fore said the best practice to solve international issues is to work with local governments, so UNICEF is deeply involved in communities.

“We are hearing from people, and they are very worried. There is an enormous challenge ahead,” Fore said.

Many countries have been experiencing floods, others droughts, and she said locusts have hit eastern Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided an additional challenge to communities across the world.

Community health care workers are absolutely essential to our fabric of life, and governments need to know that these are not just policies that they’re implementing or systems or people in offices,” Fore said. “These are people.”

“The number one request our country officers had when COVID first came to us was that the governments wanted to reach out to their people in every language,” Fore said, “(in) all the local dialects, as well as in the major languages, to tell them about COVID and how they could stay safe, and what it means to wash your hands and have good hygiene.”

Because much of the world does not have ready access to water and soap, she said it is difficult for homes, schools and hospitals to have good hygiene practices. UNICEF is spreading information about the pandemic to various countries with handbills, as well as on social media.

Ewalt asked how UNICEF social workers keep children safe, and how much governments invest in these employees. 

“Community health care workers are absolutely essential to our fabric of life, and governments need to know that these are not just policies that they’re implementing or systems or people in offices,” Fore said. “These are people.”

She said these social workers are talking to parents and children in their daily lives, teaching them about immunizations, keeping children away from violence, the importance of education, and making sure the community has access to water.

“Many of (the social workers) have been falling ill. We are getting personal protective equipment out to everyone that we can. We have enormous demand around the world for this, but they risk their lives,” Fore said. “They didn’t miss a beat when COVID came. They just went out there and began talking and making sure that a community feels safe.”

Part of UNICEF’s work is also interacting with local and national governments.

“We are calling on every government to make sure that they do not cut their budgets on community health care workers,” Fore said. “All of our partners who are nonprofit organizations are trying to spread this word.”

Ewalt asked how the pandemic has affected prevention and response services for children who may be living in abusive households.

Fore said one of the ways UNICEF helps children is making sure every child can be identified by the government and has a nationality, meaning they are a citizen of a country, so they can be counted for school and have health care. As children get older, UNICEF focuses on protecting them from violence. She said one in four young people are in areas of conflict, and they sometimes are separated from their families.

“If you’re a very young child, it’s very hard to know your name, your parents’ names and the name of your village,” Fore said. “It’s hard sometimes for the caseworkers to know how to bring this child back to their family, but UNICEF does this with many of our partners, so that we reunify families; we want to be sure that children are not trafficked in these times of emergency.”

Fore said it is important to make sure the children that are safe and secure, have access to food, health care, sanitation and education. 

“If you (are) separated, it makes you very distressed, very anxious; and children can just be crying,” Fore said. “When I was in Mozambique just after the cyclone, … roofs had been blown off of most of the homes. So often, families were separated and children and families ran to the schools, because the schools’ roofs were still on.”

Rachel Bowen Pittman grew up in a segregated Memphis, Tennessee. At age 15, she attended a National Conference of Christians and Jews summer camp, which encouraged children to interact with other cultures and taught them how to reduce prejudice and be leaders in social justice. The second day, the counselors placed the campers into different groups based on their race, and gave different rules to each group. For example, white campers got special food, and Black campers were tasked with clean-up duty.

“As teenagers, we know we have to respect and listen to adults. We knew we wanted to rebel, but we’re afraid of the consequences,” said Pittman, executive director of the United Nations Association of the United States of America. “However, after some time, one camper stood up and crossed the line into another group to break the rule. And then one by one, we all stood up until we were united as one in protest against the counselors.”

This was a planned exercise by the counselors; the goal was to teach the campers they had collective power, and sometimes building a better world requires breaking some rules. 

Pittman spoke at 10:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Aug. 26, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, as part of Chautauqua Institution’s Week Nine Lecture platform, “The Future We Want — The World We Need: Collective Action For Tomorrow’s Challenges,” programmed in partnership with the U.N. Foundation. Her lecture, “Americans’ Role in Addressing Global Problems at a Local Level,” discussed what the United Nations is doing for its 75th anniversary, the effects COVID-19 has had on the globe, and actions each person can take to create a better world.

No step is too small, no movement forward will go unappreciated. Our path to a better world is real,” Pittman said.

The U.N. predicts that 71 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty due to the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of 2020. Pittman said 270 million people could face acute food insecurity — more than double the number of 2019 — meaning their lives would be in immediate danger from lack of food.  

“It is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is not the great equalizer,” Pittman said. “It, in fact, has a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable and marginalized communities.”

She also said by the end of 2020, the U.N. predicts global greenhouse gas emissions will decline by 6 percent. This decline, however, will not keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, which Pittman said would require world emissions to fall by 7.6% every year.

Pittman discussed her work with UNA-USA, dedicated to inspiring Americans to support the work of the United Nations, and how she helps members of UNA-USA tell their stories in Congress. According to the UNA-USA website, the organization has over 20,000 members and more than 200 chapters across the country. Members can participate in monthly national conference calls with U.N. experts and have a forum to voice their support for U.S. engagement at the U.N.

“Before the pandemic, I saw this framework in action by (UNA-USA) members,” Pittman said. “I escorted younger and older members around the halls of Congress, so they could advocate for full U.S. funding for the U.N. … Many of them had never taken this action before.”

Pittman said the audience needs to think about how they will participate in the global COVID-19 recovery. She said people of any age can become involved in community engagement and activism, as well as write letters about important issues to their local paper. People can also reach out to their elected officials to make sure they are endorsing laws and practices that promote equity.

“No step is too small, no movement forward will go unappreciated. Our path to a better world is real,” Pittman said.

The lecture then shifted to a Q-and-A session with Emily Morris, Chautauqua Institution vice president of marketing and communications and chief brand officer. The UNA-USA website states that 60% of their members are under the age of 26, and Morris asked how that affects Pittman’s work.

“We felt that the voice of youth needed to be heard more,” Pittman said, “and we noticed that youth in general were becoming more engaged in advocacy issues, such as climate change and gender equality, so it was a natural move for us to want to engage more youth.” 

She said UNA-USA reaches out to young people in several ways, including Model U.N. programs.

Morris asked what UNA-USA would be focusing on in the next few months.

UNA-USA holds the Global Engagement Online Series — webinars featuring a variety of experts in global issues. The next one, on Sept. 9, will be about how COVID-19 is impacting the educational systems in the U.S. and abroad, especially with the start of the academic year.

And for the 75th anniversary of the U.N., UNA-USA chapters across the country are hosting virtual programs.

“We are always looking for people to advocate for the United Nations and the work of the United Nations — especially the World Health Organization,” Pittman said. “We need to fight the COVID pandemic.”

In 1796, James Phipps, a child living in Gloucestershire, England, became the subject of the first successful documented vaccination. In 1967, Marcelino Candau, then-director general of the World Health Organization, initiated a global movement to eradicate smallpox before the new millennium, which succeeded when Ali Maow Maalin, the last known individual to contact the virus, was cured in 1977.

“These three people illustrate an arc of ingenuity, determination and collective action that is one of the greatest examples of overcoming a world scourge that had wreaked havoc on human civilization for centuries,” said Elizabeth Cousens, the U.N. Foundation’s third president and chief executive officer.

Cousens said a similar arc happened after World War II, during which nearly 3% of the world population died and half the world lived on less than $1 a day. Due to the effects of the war, the United Nations was created to help reconstruct shattered economies, settle refugees and revive agricultural systems. 

“The founders of the modern multilateral system were not sentimental. The architects of the system didn’t share every value,” Cousens said. “They understood how imperfect and cruel the world could be, they’d seen the failures of the League of Nations a generation before, and they understood that their task was about both purpose and power.”

At 10:45 a.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 24, 2020, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, Cousens delivered a lecture titled “This Is Not a Test: Collective Action in the Age of COVID,” opening Week Nine of the Chautauqua Lecture Series. This week is themed “The Future We Want, The World We Need: Collective Action for Tomorrow’s Challenges,” a week in partnership with the U.N. Foundation.

Cousens discussed the founding and purpose of the United Nations, its accomplishments during its 75-year history and the need for greater cooperation in the face of a pandemic.

She quoted former U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who said the U.N. was not created to take humanity to heaven, but to save it from hell. 

“(The U.N.’s founders) understood that each country would benefit from an infrastructure of cooperation that could deliver critical global public goods, provide institutions an incentive for cooperation and maybe, just maybe, create a platform for our better instincts to prevail,” Cousens said.

Since the U.N.’s founding 75 years ago, Cousens said there has been “a lot of ebb and flow.” Dozens of countries gained independence, globalization distributed wealth in new ways, and 193 countries are currently represented in the U.N. — compared to 50 in 1945. During the Cold War, Cousens said the U.N. helped stabilize conflicts. After the Cold War, the U.N. helped strengthen international human rights standards, such as a commitment to ban landmines and the creation of the International Criminal Court.

She also said that 20 years of polling has shown that American citizens have widespread support for the United States, but often do not vote for political leaders based on their leadership capabilities on the world stage. This has caused some U.S. leaders to walk away from global efforts. 

“Then came COVID-19. A spiked particle, all of 125 nanometers large, that has dramatically accelerated and accentuated all of the dynamics we were already facing,” Cousens said. “We’re still deep in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, which may well get worse before we see our way through to the other side.”

Because of the pandemic and the deepest economic turndown since the Great Depression, Cousens said 71 million people are at risk of being forced into poverty, 1.5 billion schoolchildren are affected by school closures, and there has been a 30% increase in domestic abuse. 

“We are interconnected as never before,” Cousens said. “We have mutual vulnerabilities as never before, and we have incredible potential to lift each other up as never before — if we are able to summon new ways of working together, and at scale.”

Cousens said society will have to embrace new forms of cooperation, such as the Republican and Democratic governors and mayors who created the U.S. Climate Alliance, to solve issues revolving around the pandemic, inequality and climate change. Another example is the U.N. creating the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, which worked with philanthropists to raise a goal of $50 million, but has since raised $220 million.

“While it is certainly a moment of consequence, I actually don’t believe we have a real choice,” Cousens said. “Why wouldn’t we eradicate more diseases, starting with COVID-19? Why wouldn’t we consign racism decisively to the past? Why wouldn’t we act to save our only planet for our children?” 

The lecture then shifted to a Q-and-A session with Vice President and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education Matt Ewalt. He asked Cousens to discuss her role during the 2015 adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Cousens said one of the main drivers of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) was the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) — a set of goals, such as eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, agreed upon in 2000, and expiring in 2015. 

“There was a big question of what to do next, both with the unfinished business of the MDG needs but also with the future development agenda,” Cousens said. “Alongside that, there was a growing sense that our economics, which had created so much prosperity for people around the world and so much to celebrate, was at the same time causing accumulating pressures on our planet.”

Cousens said that the SDGs, unlike its predecessor MDGs, was meant to be “universal aspirations that citizens in all countries have” and not simply what one part of the world would do for another part.

Ewalt asked how American citizens, and citizens of the world, should think about their responsibility on a global scale. Cousens’ response was simple: “just being aware, being conscious and conscientious about your place in the world and the things that you can do as an individual, such as talking to your neighbors and discussing issues in your own communities.”

She also said that people can be more aware of what they are buying and the companies they are supporting. And everyone, especially younger citizens, needs to vote.

“There’s almost nothing in a given day that doesn’t give you an opportunity to expand your own horizons, to talk to others about the issues at stake in the world and to think about ways that you can make even a small difference,” Cousens said.

In 1786, with Daniel Shays leading a rebellion and the Articles of Confederation proving to be ineffective, George Washington and the other Founding Fathers believed the newly formed United States was in peril. Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham said people were burning prisons, court houses and other government offices, and there were even rumors of the U.S. returning to monarchy.

Henry Knox wrote in a letter to Washington that he was “in dire apprehension that a beginning of anarchy with all its calamities has approached and (we) have no means to stop the dreadful work.”

“Fears of American decline are, therefore, older than the Republic,” Meacham said. “The imminence of chaos of a nation torn asunder, of a country irretrievably lost, has been a standard political trope from the beginning.”

Meacham said that this kind of political language is almost universal currently, particularly in national campaigns. 

“First, I’m neither Democrat nor Republican. I’ve voted for candidates of both parties and plan to continue to do so,” Meacham said. “The thoughts I’m offering you grow out of a historical sensibility and, I hope, an appreciation of the best of the past, not out of any particular partisan concern of the moment.”

At 10:45 a.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 21, 2020, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, Meacham delivered a lecture titled “How the Constitution Endures.” Meacham discussed the differences between the struggles of the Founding Fathers to create a stronger system than the one laid out by the Articles of Confederation, and the current, extremely partisan political climate, as well how each generation of Americans has dealt with a major crisis.

He said the Constitution depends on the character of the United States’ leaders, and if citizens are willing to sacrifice individual interests in order to maintain the country. He also quoted Winston Churchill: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

Meacham said the the Constitutional order is currently in jeopardy, from freedom of the press to voting rights. He believes that the Constitution will endure if enough people choose to play by the rules, even if they are not what everyone wants them to be. But he did say the Constitution does have major problems.

“The Constitution was essential in preserving slavery and in securing white male supremacy,” Meacham said. “It was written, in many ways, to protect people who look like me.” 

He said that the Founding Fathers did not think the document “fell wholly in perfect from heaven. They knew it was the work of many flawed hands and hearts.” This is why they created ways for future generations to amend the document, and also why reformers like Frederick Douglass believed the best way forward was through amendments, and not revolutions. 

From the Civil War to the Cold War, Meacham said the U.S. has largely been in a “perpetual crisis,” and yet people have time and time again reached temporary consensus. He said each generation tends to think of itself as uniquely challenged.

“Our crisis is this: We live in an age of division, of self-absorption. We stare at screens, we filter our news to our ideological predispositions. We offer reflective opinions without thought and with increasing fervor,” Meacham said. “Yet, our common welfare, our common constitution, lowercase c, depends not on what separates us, but on what unifies us.”

The U.S. has amended its Constitution 28 times since its conception, and Meacham said that each time, people have opened their arms wider.

“Fear is more emotional than rational,” Meacham said. 

He also said people cannot, and have never, agreed on everything at all times, and that “ferocious disagreement and exhausting debate are hallmarks — inevitable hallmarks — of American politics.” 

The lecture then transitioned to a Q-and-A session with Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill, who asked Meacham what he thought about Joe Biden’s Aug. 20 presidential nomination acceptance speech. 

“Acceptance speeches are like inaugural addresses — more fall flat than soar,” Meacham said. “I’ve not seen reviews as universally as positive as Biden is getting. I think it’s the most effective acceptance speech since 1988 with George H.W. Bush.”

Meacham said Biden said what he needed to, which was to tell the country he was not Franklin D. Roosevelt, Washington or Martin Luther King Jr., but that he’s “a hell of a lot better than the other guy.”

He also said that President Donald Trump is running a challenger’s campaign, “though he’s the incumbent, because he’s saying ‘Joe Biden’s America will be,’ — because he’s so desperate not to have us look around and see what Donald Trump’s America is.”

Hill then asked Meacham to talk about his upcoming book, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope.

Meacham was a reporter with The Chattanooga Times when he met Rep. John Lewis in a hotel in Atlanta. He knows the exact date, Thursday, Nov. 24, 1992, because he kept his notes. Meacham asked Lewis what the difference was between protests in places like Selma and Nashville, versus serving as a congressman.

“He gave a classic John Lewis answer. It was: ‘You keep fighting. You keep going,’” Meacham said. “(In) the world he was born into Feb. 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama, with his great-grandfather was born (enslaved), … his sense was, ‘Yes, it takes a long time, but it’s worth the struggle.’”

Meacham said he was lucky enough to meet many times with Lewis at different news events. 

“This is a story that I wanted to tell. He was great,” Meacham said. “We talked until about probably three weeks before he died. And one of the things that makes me a little gooey is he got a chance to read (the book). That meant a lot to me.”