Welcome home to Chautauqua! It’s a true joy to welcome you to the 151st Assembly and our sesquicentennial year.
As I write my annual column to welcome you to Week One of our Summer Assembly, we have just completed a million-dollar-overhaul of Bestor Plaza. Thanks to the generosity of Willow and Gary Brost, with support from Bonnie and Jim Gwin, the Bestor Plaza fountain has been completely restored. The brick paver extensions that bookend the plaza were made possible by gifts in honor of Paul and Toni Branch, and from Craig and Cathy Greene. The smaller fountain in front of the Post Office Building was repaired and restored, as were the columns of the Colonnade.
Our “town square” upgrade symbolizes the millions of dollars that have been invested in our grounds since the last time we met to have Chautauqua look her best for this hallmark birthday. I’m grateful to the donors, the contractors and our entire team for the countless hours of work to ready our grounds for your arrival.
We launch this first week with a timely exploration of “The Evolution of the Modern Presidency.” Like the world around it, the United States has undergone profound transformation since its founding. Has the office of the American presidency been similarly transformed since its conception in 1789?
Shifting and increasing partisanship, coupled with growing responsibilities and consolidated power of the Executive Branch, prompt us this week to situate ourselves in the texts defining the creation of the American presidency. We will trace our history to learn what and who have complicated those original concepts, how they evolved, and whether a new way of thinking about the presidency should be considered.
I can think of no better way to demonstrate the relevance of Chautauqua today than this lead-off conversation just five months before the 2024 presidential election.
One could not ask for better guides on our journey, beginning with presidential historian Jon Meacham, a Chautauqua favorite and a national treasure. He is joined by Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program; former White House Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush, Andrew Card; and our inaugural Chautauqua Perry Fellows in Democracy, Melody Barnes and David French.
Melody is the founding executive director of the University of Virginia Karsh Institute of Democracy, guiding the organization on an action-oriented path to realizing democracy in both principle and practice. She is a dedicated public servant with more than 25 years of experience crafting public policy. She served in the administration of President Barack Obama as assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. David has written an opinion column at The New York Times since January 2023. Previously he was a senior editor at The Dispatch and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is a former constitutional litigator and a past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. A New York Times-bestselling author, his most recent book is Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. He is a former major in the United States Army Reserve and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he was awarded the Bronze Star. Heartfelt thanks to Paul and Marnette Perry for underwriting and propelling this incredible program at Chautauqua.
In our companion Interfaith Lecture Series, we dive into “Race and the American Religious Experience.” Race remains a primary dividing line in American society. Religious practice can serve to reinforce those divisions, or to break them down — uniting people around shared commitments.
In this week, we will learn about how race intersects with American religious experiences across traditions, individually and at both the communal and institutional levels. What can we learn about religion through a lens focused on racial inequity, and what can we learn about the construction of race from an examination of religious history and sociology? What insights can religion offer for racial reconciliation and social transformation?
To answer these and many other questions, we are joined by Ilana Kaufman, whose work centers on the Jewish community, racial equality and justice; Sahar Aziz, distinguished professor of law, Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, and Middle East and Legal Studies Scholar at Rutgers University; PJ Andrews, who co-coordinates the U.S. Bahai Office of Public Affairs; George Yancy, a professor at the Institute for Studies of Religion and Sociology at Baylor University; and Robert P. Jones, the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute.
Few chaplains are as beloved as our Week One Chaplain of the Week, Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J., founder and director of Homeboy Industries. He joins us on the opening Sunday and will share his reflection throughout the week. As in the past, he will be joined by some of his “Homies,” who add to the richness of our community and, in many ways, minister alongside Fr. Greg. While there are so many things to celebrate about Fr. Greg, we are thrilled that he was recognized in May by President Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Also in Week One, Chautauqua Opera Company premieres Love and Longing by the Lake with a performance Friday on the lawn of the Athenaeum Hotel – a special venue for a very special opera made for and about us! Heartfelt thanks to the Chautauqua Opera Guild for its patronage of this joyfilled birthday present!
No Chautauqua celebration would be complete without the incredible musicians of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra under the baton of our very own Maestro Rossen Milanov. We are excited to have the CSO featured so prevalently in the first week of our anniversary season.
You may have read about the transformative gift that our friend Roe Green has given through The Roe Green Foundation to create the new Roe Green Theater Center. How fitting then that we celebrate our first new play workshop, an effort Roe also supports, when Jade King Carroll and the artists of Chautauqua Theater Company present the first New Play Workshop of the summer. Jade, who serves as CTC’s producing artistic director, will give a talkback following the event on Friday.
Given the early heat we’ve had, why not celebrate week one with a return visit by the Beach Boys?!
We kick off our series of 150th Anniversary activities and events with an 1870’s era tent re-enactment at Miller Park following Sunday’s morning worship — complete with live re-enactors, including Chautauqua’s own Kathryn Chesley who will not be Kathryn that day, but our beloved Mina Miller Edison. We express deep appreciation to Chautauqua trustee Paul Hagman who coordinated the tent planning, construction and decor! You’ll also meet our StoryCorps Ambassador Nancy Stanley, who is here to guide you in capturing your own StoryCorps conversation at the Cohen Multimedia Studio. You can meet Nancy every week at the Community Activities Fair, and she’ll also host an informal coffee every Wednesday at the Author’s Alcove next to the Brick Walk Cafe. And, be sure to visit the “Our Chautauqua Photo Exhibit” online and in the Colonnade lobby – and please do submit your favorite Chautauqua photos.
If you’re already thinking, how am I going to fit this all in, it may help to know that Chautauqua has already had a very active “Week Zero” (the week before the Summer Assembly begins). The tour de force that is our new Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director in Literary Arts and Inaugural Writer-in-Residence the Emmy Award-winning author Kwame Alexander, h,as just concluded his first Kwame Alexander Writer’s Lab & Conference at Chautauqua. We were blessed this week by incredible authors Will Schwalbe, Nikki Grimes, Jillian Hanesworth, Ann Marie Stephens, Kekla Magoon, and Cynthia Leitich Smith, with keynote addresses by Safiya Sinclair and Kate Bowler, all infused by Kwame’s spirit. Not only did participants get a dive deep into one of three tracks — memoir, poetry or children’s literature — there were special events, workshops and expert panels. Oh, and did I mention three times as many registrants as our previous Chautauqua Writers’ Festival? Welcome, Kwame! We’re so excited to have your brilliance leading this work.
Friends, the challenge with any weekly column is that I’ll never be able to mention every event or thank every person. I hope this cursory view of our first week (and the week prior!) whets your appetite for an invigorating 150th Anniversary here at Chautauqua Institution.
Welcome home, Chautauquans. It wouldn’t be Chautauqua without you.
