Welcome to Week Three of Chautauqua’s 150th Anniversary Season. As we explore the topic of “What We Got wrong: Learning From Our Mistakes,” it is my hope that you are already experiencing all that Chautauqua gets right: Community, family, new and rekindled friendships, and a one-of-a kind natural setting and lifelong learning legacy, all serving as the perfect backdrop for a week of exploration and discovery.
In examining what we got wrong, we turn with both candor and curiosity to our past, pinpointing the moments and ideas we can now say emphatically and categorically were misguided, incorrect or flawed. We look at the psychology of personal decision-making, and the reflective introspection and humility that happens when we change our minds. Finally, we take the same lens of hindsight and apply it to our present, considering the thought experiment: What will future generations say we’re getting wrong now? Guiding us on this journey are Kori Schake, senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute — a Chautauqua favorite who also recently served as host on our Chautauqua Travels journey to Paris and Normandy on the 80th anniversary of D-Day. On Wednesday, we’ll hear from Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, historian and journalist Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. I’m honored to have had the opportunity to meet and interview Kai in May as part of the Cleveland Orchestra’s 2024 Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival, and I can’t wait for you to meet him.
Thursday will bring into our conversation Bethany McLean, co-author of The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Helps and Who It Leaves Behind. We conclude this week of reflecting on bad decisions with the No. 1 ranked management thinker in the world, Amy C. Edmondson. Amy is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her most recent book, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, will frame her presentation.
Our afternoon Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “Ethics and Meaning-Making Beyond Faith,” acknowledges religion is only one framework for ethical meaning-making, and other paradigms are often more prominent, accessible or influential. This week’s theme will explore the secular dimensions of ethics and human values and will feature non-religious and post-religious perspectives, including those of Tara Isabella Burton, author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World and Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians; Lynn Underwood, senior research associate at Case Western Reserve University, where she studies stress, social support, quality of life, compassionate love, neuroethics and spirituality; Greg Epstein, author of the New York Times best seller Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, and Deborah Threadgill Egerton, internationally recognized psychotherapist and author. Our Interfaith Lecture Series concludes with a talk by author and associate professor at Eastern Illinois University, Ryan Burge, known for his books The Nones, 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America and The Great Dechurching.
We offer a special welcome to our chaplain of the week, the Rev. Richard Kannwischer, the eighth senior pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia. His message Sunday and each weekday will be presented amid the glorious sounds of our Massey Memorial Organ at the hands (and feet!) of Director of Sacred Music and Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist Joshua Stafford, alongside the wonderful voices of the Chautauqua Choir and Motet Choir. Please also join us in welcoming our 2024 organ scholars, Rees Roberts and Owen Reyda.
The performing and visual arts calendar also offers a diverse range of experiences this week, including the popular “Jurassic Park” film with the live Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Principal Pops Conductor Stuart Chafetz. (Please note this film is rated PG-13.) Monday, we welcome back to the Amp stage our beloved artist-in-residence, master of the piano, Alexander Gavrylyuk. On Wednesday, Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to Chautauqua. This week in Bratton Theater, Chautauqua Theater Company’s production of Birthday Candles takes the stage — a play that was originally workshopped here at Chautauqua. On Friday, Chautauqua Opera Company’s lakeside triple-bill performance of Love and Longing by the Lake is presented on the lawn of the Athenaeum Hotel. Friday also brings us contemporary folk artists Shawn Colvin and KT Tunstall together on stage in the Amphitheater.
As always, we have many community activities throughout the week, including Art in the Park at Miller Park on Sunday, and the Bird, Tree & Garden Club’s biennial House and Garden Tour on Thursday. We express appreciation to all our community organizations that truly make the Chautauqua experience one of a kind.
As we explore what we got wrong, may we also pause this week to celebrate the many gifts we have within easy grasp here in this incredible place. May a spirit of gratitude, earnest reflection, and humility inform our time together. Welcome to Week Three!
