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As the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra reaches the middle of its season, it’s preparing an evening of Schumann and Tchaikovsky under the baton of CSO Music and Artistic Director Rossen Milanov.

The program set for 8:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, in the Amphitheater, with guest pianist Orli Shaham, features Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 54, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, op. 74 — “Pathétique.”

Shaham takes her piano bench in place of previously scheduled Martin Helmchen, whose tour plans changed two weeks ago. With a pianist of Shaham’s caliber joining the CSO on such short notice, CSO Managing Director Kimberly Schuette said the Schumann concerto is in wonderful hands. It’s a piece that’s already part of Shaham’s repertoire, and highlighting her in a week at Chautauqua themed “The Vote and Democracy” is apt, in an unexpected way. 

Shaham immigrated to the United States from Israel when she was 7 years old; in a 2020 interview with Lily O’Brien of San Francisco Classical Voice, she noted that while she didn’t feel she had a “typical immigrant experience,” a key tenet of her new country was particularly interesting for her.

“The American Constitution was a whole new thing for me, and I was fascinated by it and by constitutional law,” she told O’Brien in advance of a concert with the Marin Symphony in March 2020 that was ultimately canceled in the early days of the pandemic. The piece she was set to play? Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor — the same she is set to play tonight.

The Chautauqua dovetails don’t end there; Shaham is co-host and creative for NPR’s “From the Top,” a nationally broadcast program that showcases the talents of teenage musicians — the same “From the Top” that has featured live show tapings from the Amp stage in years past. 

A Steinway Artist since 2003, Shaham is on the faculty of The Juilliard School, and this year on the juries of both the Cliburn and Honens International Piano Competitions. 

For 14 seasons, she has served as artistic director for the Pacific Symphony’s chamber music series, and has performed with orchestras across the United States and internationally, including with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in her native country.

Shaham is also artistic director of a concert series she founded in 2010, called Orli Shaham’s Bach Yard (previously titled Baby Got Bach), which provides children with hands-on activities and instruments while teaching music concepts amid performances.

The educational audience tonight will be more multi-generational, as after the concert Milanov leads an installment of the CSO’s post-performance Q-and-A program “Into the Music.”

“I love seeing how Chautauquans want to engage with the music and the performers,” Schuette said. “We’ve had such thoughtful and interesting questions from audience members at each of our ‘Into the Music’ sessions so far this summer. It’s a great opportunity to ask the conductor a question and find out what goes on behind the scenes in preparing for a concert.”

Before that, however, Milanov and the CSO will present Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” — his Symphony No. 6 in B minor, op. 74. His sixth symphony was his last symphony. He died just nine days after its premiere in 1893 under mysterious circumstances, and Schuette said knowing that makes the work all the more striking.

“One of my favorite symphonic moments is the second movement, an off-kilter waltz in 5/4 time,” she said. “Knowing how close he was to his own end, and the personal turmoil he was going through, the charming melody is also just quite heartbreaking.”

In January 1996, less than 30% of Americans trusted the media to deal fairly with all sides of political issues; less than 30% trusted the media to “get the facts straight,” according to the Annual Review of Political Science. That is what Linda Chavez faced when she first spoke at Chautauqua Institution in 1996. 

She last visited the grounds to discuss media bias, an important topic in the 1990s with both the 1987 abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine, which mandated broadcasters to present contrasting sides of controversial issues, and the decade’s rapidly advancing usage of the internet. 

This summer, Chavez is slated to discuss her work with the initiative Republicans for Voting Rights. 

At 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, July 26, on the Amphitheater stage, with the discourse on the 2020 election looming in America’s recent history, Chavez — who is also chair of the Center for Equal Opportunity — will once again bring a timely and relevant perspective to Chautauqua audiences in her lecture “How Do We Protect Democracy in a Divided America?” 

“She joined us in 1996 and was an important voice inside that week on issues of media bias. To be able to have her join us again, in one of the most urgent and necessary conversations we can have as a community —  we’re honored,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education. “I think she’ll be a truly valuable voice inside the week.”  

Chavez is an advisory board member at Republicans for Voting Rights, an initiative that protects the integrity and accessibility of America’s elections, seamlessly continuing Week Five’s theme, “The Vote and Democracy,” as the topic of voting rights sits at the centerfold of American dialogue. 

“It’s a larger issue at the very heart of conversation and discourse in this country from over the, certainly over the past year, in terms of the overall state of voting rights and questions about what kind of reforms are necessary,” Ewalt said. 

Chavez has served in a myriad of appointed government positions, including being the 1985 White House director of public liaison, earning her the title of highest-ranking woman to serve in Ronald Reagan’s White House. She also served as staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and in 1986 was the Republican nominee for senator of Maryland. 

Nominated in 2001 by President George W. Bush for the position of Secretary of Labor, she became the first Latina to receive a nomination to the U.S. Cabinet, and has been involved in the education of migrants, serving as chairperson on the National Commission on Migrant Education. She was also elected to serve as a U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-comission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection for Minorities.

With the experience and knowledge from these positions, Chavez will work to provide Chautauquans with a nuanced look at the state of American voting rights. 

“Hers is a voice, early in the week, that will help challenge some of our assumptions, and begin to think about voting rights in a way that begins to look at … ways to work together on reform at a time in which voting rights are seemingly so polarized for us,” Ewalt said. “She’s likely to make the case in which we find ways to actually work together toward some very clear goals for the sake of democracy.”

Diana Aviv grew up in a predominantly white part of Africa that experienced the apartheid regime, children taken from their families, and systemic racism. 

Now, as the former CEO of Feeding America, the Partnership for America Democracy, and Independent Sector, Aviv has a broad lens of why exactly America needs a fully-functioning democracy.

Aviv will give her lecture, titled “What Our Democracy Today Requires of its Citizens: An Inquiry into the Role of Everyday Citizens in Building the Next Democracy” at 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, in the Hall of Philosophy for Week Five of the Interfaith Lecture Series, themed “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Democracy.”

“What we really need is a massive effort from people of goodwill across the United States to come together and make sure that we have a functioning, effective and strong democracy,” Aviv said. “If we fail to do it, the consequences are quite dire.”

Aviv emphasized that this is not an issue to toss aside, and said that tending to democracy is the most important thing all citizens have to face, because “our system is breaking; it’s failing.”

She wants people to recognize the severity of the downfall of democracy, and that it won’t resolve itself. 

“What’s at stake is the whole future of American society,”  said Aviv, who  also previously served on the  White House Council for Community Solutions

She wants her audience to go home and figure out ways to get involved in changes to protect American democracy.

Thoughout her career, Aviv has worked with domestic violence issues, the anti-apartheid movement and with people facing the dealth penalty.

When her father was 11, he and his family fled from Poland to South Africa to escape anti-Semitism before World War II broke out, but the cruelties were still there, just targeted at a different demographic.

“As a child growing up in South Africa, I saw the horrors of a system that treated some people, just on the basis of their skin color, in a completely different way than others,” Aviv said.

Witnessing this explicit racism, Aviv said she often had privileges or opportunities that someone who was the same as her, with a different skin color, was barred from having.

“I just thought it was wrong. I thought it was despicable for them. It’s not fair to them,” Aviv said. “It meant that whatever I got was because of the skin color — not because of my expertise or knowledge or talent or anything I did — because I was protected.”

When she was a child in South Africa, her family’s housekeeper had a 2-year-old daughter. Aviv said the law at the time dictated that if anyone had children in the towns they worked in, the children had to be sent to the homelands, which were separate areas the South African government created to carry out the forced removal of Black citizens from urban areas. The housekeeper’s daughter was taken from her mother and placed in the designated homeland. 

“That child, up until age 2, was with us every day in the house, and suddenly their child wasn’t there anymore,” Aviv said. “I couldn’t even begin to imagine a society that rips a child from the mother, and then strips their child of any right to come back into the society because they’ve now been sent to one of these crazy homelands.”

Seeing this, and being a part of a youth organization, helped Aviv develop her passion for social justice, where she said she could work with other youth leaders to better understand these wrongdoings and how to fix them.

“What I learned was that when people could have a hatred for another, (they could) try and destroy them in their totality,” Aviv said. “That’s why the apartheid regime so resonated, because it had happened to my own people, or my father and his family.”

Aviv said knowing all of this history made her wary of governmental systems because of the “hierarchy of whiteness” and how it undermines the efforts to make sure these social injustices don’t happen again.

“Always, my life has been about making love fairer for others and creating more opportunity, so that everybody has a fair chance in life,” she said.

For violist Vlad Bogdanas, musicians in string quartets are not like work colleagues or friends, but like members of his own family.

“It’s like a relationship with your brothers or with your parents,” Bogdanas said. “Very often we say that a string quartet is like a wedding with four people. … Sometimes we fight, sometimes we laugh, sometimes we disagree, but as long as the concert goes well, as long as we look in the same direction and have the same goals, it works.”

After wrapping up the European leg of their 2022 summer tour, French quartet Quatuor Danel — composed of violinists Marc Danel and Gilles Millet, cellist Yovan Markovitch, and Bogdanas on the viola — come to North America and make their Chautauqua debut at 4 p.m. Monday, July 25, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall. They’re performing as part of the Chautauqua Chamber Music Guest Artist Series.

Their program exhibits three Russian composers: Sergei Prokofiev, Lera Auerbach and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

“The first half is based on folk themes because that’s how Prokofiev built the second string quartet, and the Auerbach quartet is inspired by Alkonost,” Bogdanas said.

Alkonost is not a classical composer, but rather a Russian folk-metal band that embraces Slavic legends. This is evident in the band’s name,  as the Alkonost is a bird with the head of a woman from Slavic folklore.

Everything culminates in Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 11, which, as legend and Bogdanas both say, made Leo Tolstoy cry when he first heard it.

Has the piece ever made Bogdanas cry? 

“Sometimes it can happen,” he said. 

What happens onstage affects the audience, and Quatuor Danel prioritizes an atmosphere that encourages the emotions of the audience — something they’ve been doing since their founding in 1991.

“Sometimes you have this luck, when the stars are aligned and we are in a special mood and the music is special. I don’t know, it’s something that’s not explainable. It’s just beyond words,” Bogdanas said.

Bogdanas knows the mood is special when the audience claps after the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet.

“Sometimes it happens because the end of the first movement is really like fireworks and sometimes people applaud,” he said. “… It’s not a usual thing that happens during concerts to clap after the first movement, but when it does, it means something.”

Bogdanas clarified that there is no pressure on Chautauquans to have this response; the quartet just looks forward to playing in front of this group for the first time.

“Of course, we like to meet old friends,” Bogdanas said, “but the music we play, we like to share it, always, with new people and new audiences.”

An expert of teaching and law, Sherman Clark, the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, helps people understand how laws and politics can lead people to become better citizens and better humans.

Clark will give his lecture, titled “What Democracy Demands,” at 2 p.m. Monday, July 25, in the Hall of Philosophy to start off Week Five of the Interfaith Lecture Series, themed “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Democracy.”

The big picture he wants to paint for his audience is if and how laws and politics can help nurture the traits, capacities and virtues needed for democracy to work.

“Connected to the civic virtue tradition that has its roots in ancient Greece, and in early Renaissance Italy, and in the American founding, and at various other points — I’m in that sort of civic virtue tradition,” Clark said.

Clark said there are two aspects of his approach that diverge from the civic virtue tradition.

“One is that most of the time, people who have called for civic virtue have been very vague,” Clark said. “They have talked about it as though it’s just sort of general public spiritedness.”

The vagueness is bad, but willingness to pitch is good, Clark said; but society needs more than enthusiasm to make concrete changes to reach the idea of a fully-functioning democracy.

“Second, I think that many of the capacities we need might be described as epistemic rather than strictly moral,” Clark said. “That sounds technical, but it’s not technical … in the field that studies virtues, traits and capacities, a field sometimes called virtue ethics.”

He described virtue ethics as having two subsections: moral and epistemic virtue, which relate to the validity of the values people try to pursue. 

“These are traits and capacities that make you a better thinker, make you better at figuring stuff out and understanding things,” Clark said. “Moral virtues make you a better human being; epistemic virtues make you a better thinker.”

People are easily seduced into other’s beliefs, Clark said, through the government, propaganda and press.

“Democracy is going to have a hard time as long as so many of us are so easily bamboozled and frightened into believing nonsense,” Clark said. “We have a situation right now where, as citizens, we find it difficult to know who to trust, who to believe. Even those of us trying in good faith, we feel we’re being lied to, or manipulated, or confused.”

He said the typical reaction to this is for people to cling to their original beliefs and values, making it harder for new opinions and ideas to come forward.

“We’ve become easily manipulated by politicians, marketers, and even, unfortunately, media outlets sometimes, who prey to our epistemic vices. They prey to our tendency to seek reassurance of our preexisting opinions,” Clark said. “They play to our desire for simplicity. They also play to our other vices, our fears, our cowardice, our selfishness, our vanity.”

Nobody needs to be an expert in a field to inspire change, Clark said, but simultaneously, people cannot be easily manipulated into believing everything at face value and without digging deeper.

“I want to figure out how we can develop the ability to be the kind of citizens, not just morally, but intellectually, in our capacities, the kind of citizens that democracy needs, if it’s going to work,” Clark said.

While laws and politics can help people nurture and value the idea of civic virtue, they cannot help people develop morals unless they’re willing to put in the work.

“We need institutions like families and churches and schools and communities. And we need our religious and philosophical traditions,” Clark said. “Those are the main places we need our literature, or poetry or art. Those are the main places from which we might cultivate the kind of capacities that we need as human beings or as citizens.”

Clark said laws and politics have an impact because of the way they structure lives, but it’s up to the individuals to progress and cultivate necessary change in society.

“Law and politics are impacting the kind of people we become, and it is at least legitimate for law and politics to think about how we might nurture the traits that democracy needs, rather than nurturing the traits that might end up causing the failure of this great experiment,” Clark said.

Realizing his ideas for a fully-functioning democracy is a long-term project, Clark said it will take contribution from everyone in every aspect of knowledge and consciousness — philosophy, educators, lawmakers and politicians, historians and social scientists — to understand the cognitive biases everyone is pre-wired with.

“I think that the best way to think about big questions is to ground them solidly in reality,” Clark said. “Law, as a field, is a field that works best when you can think about the very particular, but then also put it in the context of the deepest and most enduring questions.”

When it comes to speaking at Chautauqua, this isn’t Trevor Potter’s first rodeo — and there’s always been a common theme to his lectures. 

In 2016, Potter delivered the July 4 oration at Chautauqua, titled “A Republic — If You Can Keep It.”

“We’ve been honored to have Trevor here at Chautauqua, and have always been humbled by the significance he places on addressing issues of our democracy,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education. “There’s the need for reform that will take the work of us, the citizens.”

Ewalt said it’s important to consider the value Potter — a lawyer, president of the Campaign Legal Center and former chairman and commissioner of the Federal Election Commission — places in engaging the Chautauqua community in his work.

“We’ve really wanted to partner with him in that larger work, in building a stronger democracy,” he said. 

At 10:45 a.m. Monday, July 25, in the Amphitheater, Potter will give a lecture on “The Crisis Facing American Democracy,” providing a comprehensive overview of the issues facing our democracy, launching the Week Five theme, “The Vote and Democracy.”

“I think particularly this week, we looked for voices that would not only bring deep understanding of the issues we’re facing, but also for expertise and experience in what it means to be confronting these challenges and looking at potential reform,” Ewalt said, “but also, someone who is not only a strong communicator, but someone who recognizes and priorities a broader dialogue with the broader public.”

It’s that combination of skills and priorities on Potter’s part that make him such a strong fit, Ewalt said.

“He’s really going to be laying the groundwork for our week together in Chautauqua,” he said.

When it comes to speaking about America’s elections and democratic process, Ewalt said there’s no better voice to have than Potter’s.

“He’ll kind of tee up these larger issues around voting rights, redistricting, electoral college process and campaign finance,” he said. “He’s going to ask some of those larger questions that we’ll need to keep front and center throughout the week.”

Ewalt said that Chautauqua is “truly honored” to have Potter back on the grounds.

“We’re so happy to have him back, especially because of his desire to brief Chautauquans on the issues facing all of us today,” he said.

The students from the Chautauqua School of Dance are leaping back on stage with the Music School Festival Orchestra in the pit for a truly only-in-Chautauqua experience.  

“It’s a collaboration with another art form, which is a very, very Chautauqua thing to do,” said MSFO Artistic and Music Director Timothy Muffitt. “It takes advantage of the nature of the Institution, and the nature of Chautauqua, in that we have all of these schools of fine and performing arts, and it’s a great chance for collaboration.” 

The MSFO will be under the baton of guest conductor, Stilian Kirov, music director of Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra.

“He was a conducting fellow here at Chautauqua several years ago and has now gone on to have a terrific career as a professional conductor,” Muffitt said. “I like to bring our conducting fellows back to do this, to do a guest conducting appearance every season.”

The opening piece, Danzon, choreographed by Sasha Janes, interim director for Chautauqua School of Dance, set to music by Arturo Márquez perfectly shows this collaboration, as Muffitt originally suggested the music to Janes. 

“We wanted to bring in a composer who was from a traditionally underrepresented community in classical music, and Márquez is a Latin American composer. This has actually become a very famous piece because it’s just really infectious, (with) Latin rhythms and melodies,” Muffitt said. 

Janes described Danzon as a fun and fast-paced piece. 

“All the steps are inspired by the music. It’s just a lot of fast-paced, fun sort of tango-inspired movement,” Janes said. 

The second piece, “Baile de la gente,” debuted at Chautauqua’s Student Gala I on July 17 and is choreographed by My’Kal Stromile; he described the piece as starting in a classical place before shifting to something different by the end. “Baile de la gente,” set to 14th and 15th century Spanish Renaissance music, provides a unique opportunity to experiment with modern instruments making older sounds.  

“The MSFO, they’re having to adapt the music to modern instrumentation because in this time, the 14th and 15th century, the instruments that they used are much different than now,” Stromile said. 

The MSFO will be using a harpsichord, an early version of the piano, in the fourth movement. 

“I’m very excited about this because I feel like it could give the piece a lot more breath,” Stromile said. “There’s all these small little elements that I feel are important, and they are what’s going to make the piece its own special thing.”

This is Stromile’s first summer season choreographing for the Chautauqua School of Dance. 

“I really feel like he is a name you’re going to be hearing in the future as an up-and-coming choreographer,” Janes said. “He has a vocabulary that’s really interesting. He’s been really good for the dancers, and he’s very specific about what he wants.”

The performance continues with another piece debuted at Student Gala I: Janes’ “Loss.” Set to music by Samuel Barber, “Loss” shares the heartbreaking story of parents losing their children. 

“I had the costume preconceived into the colors of the Ukrainian flag,” Janes said. “You see little splashes of blood, as well. That was just a tribute to what was going on, and I thought it fit that same thing; lots of parents are losing children or loved ones.”

The evening ends with excerpts from a classic George Balanchine ballet staged by Patricia McBride, director of ballet studies and master teacher. The ballet is set to music by George Gershwin, orchestrated by Hershy Kay.

“Patricia McBride is always the greatest inspiration,” Janes said. “She’s almost the last generation that learned straight from George Balanchine, so any coaching or tips or staging that she does is as close to the original as you can get.”

Balanchine’s “Who Cares?” is the longest ballet on the program, at around 30 minutes. 

McBride described it as pure joy. The 50-year-old ballet challenges professional dancers and students alike even now.

“It brings them further in their technique with the movement and the musicality, and to be free throughout it. In the group pieces, you have to really watch your line, watch each other and work together,” McBride said. “It’s pretty remarkable what (the students) have done in a short amount of time.”

McBride holds Balanchine’s ballets close, as she worked with the great choreographer and has performed his works throughout her dance career. 

“I’m staging Mr. Balanchine’s ballets because it’s very dear to my heart,” McBride said. 

To McBride, “Who Cares?” rounds out the program. 

“It’s a wonderful closer that shows the exuberance and joy of dancing to that music,” she said. “Balanchine is a genius.”

Overall, the performance will be a tremendous experience for dance students and the MSFO. To Janes, dancing to live music is an “unparalleled experience.”

“When can you do any other summer program and have it with a live orchestra and approximately 4,300-seat theater. It’s extraordinary,” Janes said. “I don’t know anywhere in America, or in the world, where you can get a summer program that is equivalent.”

The lead up to the performance, as well as the performance itself, is a learning experience for everyone. 

“It’s a good experience for our students, some of whom may have not played for a ballet,” Muffitt said. 

Some companies the dance students are going into will perform with live music, Janes said, stressing how different the experience can be compared to a recording.

“Dancing to live music, it’s a double-edged sword because you get used to the recordings (sounding) exactly the same every time,” Janes said.  “So it’s important for their education that they really listen to the music. … This training tool is invaluable.”

The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra returns to a galaxy far, far away as it journeys back to the Star Wars series with “The Empire Strikes Back,” two summers after it first performed “A New Hope.”

The orchestra is picking the trilogy back up at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 23, in the Amphitheater under the direction of Principal Pops Conductor Stuart Chafetz, performing live John Williams’ original, Oscar-nominated score alongside the full 1980 film.

“It’s great to be back now, after COVID, in full gear, being able to do July 4 and premiere ‘Aladdin,’ which was fun,” Chafetz said. “This is just amazing music, and people have been looking forward to this since the first Star Wars that we did in 2019. So, this is really fun.”

George Lucas’ “The Empire Strikes Back” is the second in the Star Wars film series, but the fifth chronological chapter in the Skywalker saga. The film features not just the iconic cast of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams, among others, but Williams’ well-loved and respected original score, which won a Grammy.

“John Williams writes amazing music, but it’s extremely difficult,” Chafetz said. 

For Chafetz, the real difficulty is in the concentration of following the movie exactly. 

“It’s easy to get off of the movie. We have to follow the movie exactly for the music, for the drama,” Chafetz said. “So, the hardest thing is just staying focused for two hours and four minutes.”

To stay in time with the film, the CSO musicians use a click track, which clicks the rhythm in their ear. This rhythm changes often and almost out of nowhere. In addition to the difficulty of staying in time with the film, the original score was not made to be played in concert. 

“These film scores were designed to be recorded in chunks, not the entire film to be played at once. They would do one section, take a break, go back, maybe fix it,” Chafetz said. “For this, we just play it in concert with the film. So it’s extremely intense, and it takes a lot of concentration.” 

This enormous feat is mostly done through individual practice, as CSO only meets twice to fully run through the movie before the performance, and only once with the full screen. 

The CSO is used to this quick turn around, as they regularly perform a wide variety of music. 

“Every week is something different, and yet very challenging. But it says a lot about the orchestra because they’re able to play a variety of styles. They could be doing classical one night and then pop the next,” Chafetz said. “It takes a great orchestra, with many great musicians, to be able to just change on a dime like that.”

At Chautauqua, the CSO’s audience is ever-changing, like its music. Star Wars In Concert opens up classical music to a wide range of people, Chaftez said. 

“You get a lot of different varieties of people. Plus, you get mom, you get dad, you get grandparents, you get the kids, and this is one of those things where you can take the entire family and really enjoy,” Chafetz said. “That’s the beauty of it — being able to look out into the audience and seeing a packed Amphitheater with generations of families enjoying this wonderful film.”

The CSO enjoys submerging the audience in the experience.  

“The biggest compliment we always get is ‘Oh, I forgot there was an orchestra.’ That means that we’ve lined up perfectly with the film,” Chafetz said. “That’s my goal.” 

Oceans and seas cover 70% of the Earth’s surface and account for 97% of its water, yet the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that 80% of the ocean has yet to be mapped, observed and explored. Except at the surface, it cannot even be seen without special technology. 

The high seas — known informally as “international waters” — take up two-thirds of the ocean and half of the surface of the Earth. Beneath much of the high seas, the jurisdiction of the mineral-rich seabed is also international. 

Whether under national or international jurisdiction, or a variant of the two, this enormous mass of free-flowing boundary-trespassing water — and virtually everything it brings with it — is of strategic interest and concern to coastal and landlocked nations across the world. 

It is no wonder then, that coastal protection and effective sea power have historically been top U.S. military priorities.  

At 2 p.m. Saturday, July 23, in the Hall of Philosophy, as part of the Chautauqua Women’s Club’s Contemporary Issues Forum, retired Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, president of the Naval Postgraduate School, will deliver an address titled “Technological Leadership: Combining Research and Education for Advantage at Sea.” Her lecture is made possible by the bequest of Elie Haupt. 

“We need to understand we’re entering a new cognitive age, and we need to make decisions differently, and a great deal of the time, much faster,” Rondeau said. 

Accordingly, the Navy and Marine Corps must keep up with and adapt to the unprecedented national security challenges created by the fast pace of technological change. For America’s maritime advantage to be decisive, the leaders it develops must possess the cognitive know-how to ensure technological advance. 

“I believe there are existential challenges,” Rondeau said. “I am committed to the development of knowledge, especially with exquisite speed and understanding. Our democracy is at risk internally and externally if we don’t make good decisions. … It’s a different world, … (one) that’s changing in ways unseen. … We have people with no governance, no boundaries.” 

Rondeau said she knew when she was just 5 years old that she was good at leading. 

“I liked leading teams doing things,” she said. “… (But) I’m not an extrovert or an introvert.”

At Eisenhower College in Seneca Falls, New York, the birthplace of women’s rights in the U.S., she majored in history and social science, won the Groben Award for Leadership, and was honored by the board of trustees as the most distinguished 1973 graduate. It was the late Warren Hickman — a longtime Chautauquan who attended Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “I Hate War” speech in the Amphitheater at age 13 and would later become a frequent Amp lecturer — who had developed a unique world studies program that became the basis for Eisenhower College. Hickman had served as part of Eisenhower’s staff at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force during World War II.

“I learned about Chautauqua when I was a sophomore in college — that was 1970-71 — from … Warren Hickman, who for 20 years tried to get me out to Chautauqua,” Rondeau said. “He was one of my main mentors. … He was a wonderful man, a gentleman, scholar, teacher and coach (who) led an active, dignified life. … It is my honor and privilege, and an extraordinary coming-around of my life (to be speaking at Chautauqua).”

There’s a good reason Rondeau hasn’t made it to Chautauqua before now; her work has kept her in near constant motion elsewhere. Although Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibited sex-based discrimination in schools or other education programs, received federal funding and was in its infancy when Rondeau graduated from Eisenhower, she said that it eventually benefited her.

“Title IX changed girls’ futures,” she said. “You didn’t have to be an athlete to have it affect you. It was also in the military. When I came in, Title IX … wasn’t changing (things), yet it had to be passed to change structural foundations for women. … I came in when there wasn’t the opportunity to do team sports or be in combat. I came in at the very end of that. Things changed over time.”

When she entered the Navy near the end of the Vietnam War, Rondeau said that the women’s uniforms weren’t khaki like the men’s; hers was light blue seersucker. There was no allowance for the positive effects that uniforms have on “identity, meaning, belonging.”

After completing Officer Candidate School in 1974, Rondeau was commissioned as a Naval officer and served as commander of Pacific Fleet Navy Communications for two years. President Richard Nixon had ended the military draft in January 1973, when the war was nearly over, and the military became an all-volunteer force.

“A lot of men were not coming in,” Rondeau said. “… Almost every year was different. I came in, in a fleet communications job in Hawaii. I had no experience, but they put me in because they wanted to put women in various jobs. I was the first woman many times, and other women came in behind me. So I had the opportunity, and pretty quickly they did, too.”

With the help of male bosses, Rondeau said she “looked for loopholes.” This led to training in merchant marine ships and combat ships at sea. After she became the second woman, and the first in Patrol Squadron Fifty, assigned to operations intelligence with submarine warfare, she said she was sent to Georgetown University — wearing a khaki uniform. There, she earned her master’s in comparative government in 1982.

“I now had a better sense of belonging,” Rondeau said.

Because she has a broad base of interests, from history to science, her naval expertise is very diverse.

From 1982 to 2001, Rondeau progressed from NATO-Europe strategy and policy, to the Pentagon, to a White House Fellowship under the Attorney General, to Fast Sealift Squadron One, to the Military Sealift Command in New Orleans, to the Naval Operations Executive Panel, to Naval Support Activity in Italy, to the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group in Rhode Island, back to the Pentagon, then to Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Tennessee, and finally to managing and overseeing all of the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s shore installations.

“Along the way there were markers, navigation points, (like being) the first woman,” she said “Boy, did I study hard, and I worked really hard. When you’re the first and only, you stand out, and I wanted to stand out good. … I was curious, and I sought to be proficient. I wasn’t arrogant; I thought I could always learn more.”

Spending between one and three years per post from 2001 to 2012, she advanced from overseeing naval service training in the Great Lakes, to commanding the Naval Professional Development Command in Virginia, to directing all Navy staff and supporting agencies at the Pentagon as a vice admiral, to serving as deputy combatant commander for the U.S. Transportation Command in Illinois, to becoming president of the National Defense University in Washington in 2009.

Rondeau won three Distinguished Service Medals, a Defense Superior Service Medal, four Legion of Merits awards, five Meritorious Service Medals and three Navy Commendation Medals. She also earned her Doctor of Education in education, research and public policy at Northern Illinois University “over a nine-year period with five moves and jobs, and four different dissertation chairs; but I got it done by 2010.” Retiring from the Navy in 2012, Rondeau went to IBM as a full-time consultant for The Watson Group, where she learned about artificial intelligence, business risk versus military risk, business as a potential provider to the government, and how IBM operates.

“I grew up about 10 miles south of Poughkeepsie,” she said. “(There were) huge IBM labs that fed that region. … Then they closed down, and people felt it. IBM is a really interesting study. In 1999, it almost went broke. It shed a lot of real estate and had to change because of the environment. The military is kind of the same way. You have to learn from your environment. By living near and working in IBM, I learned how much (that means) for survival.”

When she learned that her mother was terminally ill, she left IBM in 2014 and moved to the Midwest. While she was in Wisconsin, she said she was asked to put her name in for the presidency of the College of DuPage, Illinois’ largest community college, located in a northwest suburb of Chicago.

“DuPage is very well-heeled,” Rondeau said. “Half of the students in nursing were empty-nester women. They had been mothers, and now they had a skill set.”

Although she had thought DuPage would be the culmination of her career, she said she was asked to apply for both the presidency of the Naval Postgraduate School, and of a distinguished university in the northeast.

“A friend said, ‘You could get both, but which is your destiny?’ ” Rondeau said. “… I returned to a (very) different Navy. … At NPS, these are 32 year olds coming from a conventional context, not high school or college students. I have to (lead) well and effectively when there’s enormous buffeting against it.”

On Saturday, Rondeau will speak about the strategic challenge of maintaining a decisive maritime advantage, “and how the unique mission of NPS contributes to technological leadership and protection of the seas, which is the foundation of economic growth and security for the U.S., as well as our allies and partners throughout the world.”

Service as a guest speaker by the Naval Postgraduate School President at the Contemporary Issues Forum does not constitute an endorsement of Chautauqua Women’s Club, its services, or activities by the Department of Defense or any of its components.

In the fall of her junior year at Fisk University, the Rev. Emma Jordan-Simpson was asked to be the “makeshift student chaplain.” Someone had to choose the hymns and transpose music to play on the carillon with a bunch of stuck and broken keys, she wrote on her blog, “A Voice in Ramah.”

In this particular reflection, “A Watershed Moment: Finding Life in the God-Story,” she shared her encounter with two men who wanted to tell her why women should not be preaching and why it was “ridiculous” for women to be ministers. They were seminary students in Nashville and “knew” that God did not call women to preach.

But Jordan-Simpson was called and now will be the Week Five chaplain at Chautauqua. Her sermon series is titled “Seeking for A City.” At the 10:45 a.m. Service of Worship and Sermon Sunday in the Amphitheater, she will preach on “Meet Me at the River.” For the 9:15 a.m. morning worship services Monday through Friday in the Amp, her sermon titles include “Intercepted by Hope,” “Journeying Together,” “A Song on the Way,” “Praying In Motion” and “Dreaming Anew.”

Jordan-Simpson, the president of Auburn Seminary, preached her first sermon at 17 and knew she was called to ministry. 

So, she wanted to hear why those two men thought it was ridiculous for women to be called, and remembered that when they made that comment, they were speaking at Fisk University, “whose heartbeat was life for formerly enslaved ancestors who proved that God often calls the least expected to do ridiculous things,” she wrote.

Eventually, the two men got into their own battle over which Scripture really mattered and forgot about Jordan-Simpson. In that moment she felt God’s grace, and it changed her life forever.

“I knew that I was where I was, not because of Scriptural texts. I was standing in the fullness of who I was — poor, Black, female, maybe ridiculous, but called — standing on the campus of Fisk University because of the whole God-story,” she wrote. “At that moment, by the grace of God, I saw it: They were arguing about something that God had settled long ago. I am made in the image of God. I could get lost in the ‘verses,’ over which we will argue until the end-times, or I could find my life in the God-story.”

In October 2021, Jordan-Simpson became the president of Auburn Seminary. Founded in upstate New York by Presbyterians over 200 years ago, the school is committed to a multifaith, multiracial movement for justice.

The university is a research institute that develops leadership skills in students by equipping them with the skill sets to create community, strive toward justice, heal the brokenness in the world and reach across divides; Auburn creates faith leaders. 

Jordan-Simpson preached her first sermon at the House of Prayer Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey. She was ordained by The Concord Baptist Church of Christ, a historic freedom faith congregation in Brooklyn, New York. Her ministry has been grounded in the call to community, and her leadership of nonprofit organizations has addressed the sacred issues representative of her congregation’s convictions.

She has served as the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and provided leadership for the Children’s Defense Fund of New York, Girls Inc., Edwin Gould Services for Children & Families, and the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation.

A graduate of Fisk University with a Bachelor of Arts, she also has a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary and a Doctorate of Ministry from Drew Theological Seminary. She acts as president of the board of American Baptist Churches of Metropolitan New York and is a member of the board of directors of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies in New York City.

Audiences might be used to staying up to the late hour of 11:30 p.m. for Jay Leno in the past, but Chautauquans can catch the comedian earlier when he performs at 8:15 p.m. Friday, July 22, in the Amphitheater.

It’s a familiar line-up for the Institution, as warming the crowd up for Leno is prolific blues guitarist Austin Walkin’ Cane with a performance starting at 7:30 p.m. tonight. It’s the same opener-headliner bill that debuted Chautauqua’s new Amp in 2017; while Aretha Franklin had been set for the first evening of that season, health concerns caused her to back out, and Leno stepped in as the replacement. With his opening act, Cane was the first musician to ever perform in the new Amp.

Now, five years later, both are back to show some love to Chautauqua’s biggest stage.

Leno famously hosted “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” which boasts four Emmys, 22 seasons and over 4,500 episodes. 

In 2000, he also got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Since the final episode of the show aired on Feb. 6, 2014, Leno has gone on to host “Jay Leno’s Garage” on CNBC where he gives car reviews, and has continued his stand-up comedy career — the skill that brought him to fame and his career as a television host.

Since Leno’s last visit, he has continued hosting “Jay Leno’s Garage,” which had its sixth season in 2021. The season featured guests like fellow car lover and comedian Tim Allen, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and pop singer and host of her own television show Kelly Clarkson. All the while, Leno never stopped doing comedy, delivering around 200 shows a year.

“Comedy is funnier when you share it with other people,” Leno told the Daily in 2017. “I’m sure you can sit in a room and laugh by yourself watching something. But it’s not nearly as much fun as being in a crowded room and people are laughing around you.”

Described by those who know her as engaging, sensitive and insightful, author Amy Edelstein’s mission is to support people in growing beyond their expectations.

Edelstein is the founder and executive director of Inner Strength Education, a nonprofit that supports youth development. It uses a trauma-informed methodology to create techniques for teaching around 20,000 Philadelphia high school students.

She will be giving her lecture, titled “Wholeness, Fragmentation and the Mystery of the Emergent Possible,” at 2 p.m. Friday, July 22, in the Hall of Philosophy to close Week Four of the Interfaith Lecture Series on “The Future of Being.”

“The main thing I want to address is our human experience of inherent wholeness, and that sense of goodness in the fabric of life,” Edelstein said. “Our experience on a daily basis in our world (is one) of increasing fragmentation, alienation, difficulty, fear and a sense of brokenness, not wholeness.”

Edelstein wants to understand how people can lean into the discomfort of the fragmentation of the world and recover from it.

“We’re never going to solve our problems from a level that is just experiencing pessimism, futility, frustration and alienation,” Edelstein said. “It won’t give us the wisdom, the expansiveness or the creativity to pull something from the future into the present, which is really what we need.”

She said the digital era gives younger generations a great advantage; there are, however, limits on how great they can be, with increasingly niche communities created by human division.

“We’re seeing a friction between those subgroups, so we’re not seeing the universality of human experience uniting us,” Edelstein said. “We’re seeing the particular belief systems or identities as something that divides.”

The fragmentation of the world is not only affecting human communication, Edelstein said, but the Earth’s natural resources, as well. 

People separating themselves into different identities or subgroups may seem beneficial for certain aspects of communication, but not when a group effort is necessary to save the Earth’s depletion of resources.

“We can’t simply will our way into the future,” Edelstein said. “We need a context and perspective, a philosophical system or a theology that will be able to bring us into a vantage point where we can see a higher order of unification.”

Edelstein wants her audience to “feel a profound sense of inspiration and possibility,” realizing that human connection is not a luxury, she said, but also giving creativity and thoughtfulness to respond to the problems going on with the world.

She wants her work to guide the reality of the postmodern world through philosophical and spiritual traditions so it doesn’t dilute the truth and insights of evolving culture. She said the most challenging part of her work is remembering to look at the big picture while working in a very large, very under-resourced school district.

As a meditator for 40 years, 20 to 30 of which were spent in retreats, Edelstein had the opportunity to explore, study and research philosophical questions. Chautauqua gives people a similar sense of space to explore, study and research. 

“I love gatherings like the Chautauqua lectures where people can come together and have deep conversations with strangers,” Edelstein said.

In order to be a “writer,” many people believe that one must have a degree or writing experience. However, author, writer and historian Alexandra Zapruder proves that anyone can be a writer.

“You don’t have to be a ‘good writer.’ It’s not about being good or bad, talented or gifted,” Zapruder said. “Rather, it’s all about being authentic. There’s three main parts to writing that I always talk about: observe, write and reflect — that’s all you have to do.” 

At 10:45 a.m. Friday, July 22, in the Amphitheater, Zapruder closes out Week Four’s theme, “The Future of History.’’ A founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 2002, she released her first book, Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, which contains firsthand diary accounts of young people’s experiences during the Holocaust. 

Throughout her career, Zapruder has located and collected numerous historical diaries written by young people, ranging all the way from World War II to present day.  

“One of the things about historical diaries that has surfaced is that not every writer was a ‘good writer,’ ” Zapruder said. “There are many literary writers, but there are also a lot of historical diaries that were written by average individuals and kids with no literary experience.”

While Zapruder spent the beginning of her career compiling historical sources, she now works to encourage current teenagers and young adults to document their own lived experiences. In her work, she balances recovering history with documenting history as it occurs.

“There’s the process of researching and finding what’s already been made,” she said. “But with the current work I am doing, there is now an added dimension, which is to create opportunities for material to be written.” 

In her lecture, she will discuss the different historical diaries that have been written by young people, and will speak to the importance of cultivating experiences for younger generations to have the opportunity to document history as it happens. 

Zapruder’s recent project, Dispatches from Quarantine: Young People on COVID-19, provides teenagers with an online space to document their real-time experiences during the pandemic. This week, she hosted journaling workshops with young Chautauquans at Boys’ and Girls’ Club, and she pointed to the need of continuously fostering environments where adolescents can openly express themselves. Aside from social media, there are not many forums for young people to do so.

“In my view, young people experience the downstream effects of adult policy all the time without really having a mechanism to be on the historical record,” she said. 

Through her work, Zapruder is working to place teenagers and young adults on the historical record, and to give them a voice. 

“The message I want to impart to young people is that the way they view the world and what they record about their lives really does matter to history,” she said. “You never know if what you are photographing, seeing and observing could have enormous consequences for future generations.” 

In her book, Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film, she wrote about her grandfather, Abraham Zapruder’s, home movie of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. On Nov. 22, 1963, her grandfather decided to film JFK’s motorcade procession through downtown Dallas, near his office. He was excited to see Kennedy drive through and wanted to capture the moment; he had no idea the footage he filmed would become a tragic moment forever embedded into America’s historical record. 

“With my grandfather, it’s this interesting mix of both intention and accident. He took the movie on purpose, he was mindful about his camera being at the right spot and angle,” Zapruder said. “However, what he couldn’t have predicted was what was going to be on the film, and how monumentally important that one piece of footage would be to American history.” 

Her grandfather’s camera captured the exact moment JFK was shot. The footage was used in FBI investigations, and was highly sought after by the press. The clip became a valuable artifact of a single moment of time.  

History is often unpredictable, and Zapruder believes that documentation can help make sense of these unexpected events.

“I think it’s important for young people today to repurpose the strength of keeping a journal,” she said. “What you write might not only be valuable to history, but it can cultivate reflection,  observation and self-awareness, which can shape the adult you become. The more teenagers and young adults can do that, the better off we are going to be.”

When nonprofit leadership expert Joan Garry spoke at the Chautauqua Women’s Club’s Contemporary Issues Forum on July 2, she said: “Nonprofits are essential to building a truly civil society. Nonprofits turn towns into communities.”

Among the handful of organizations Garry noted was the Y. Led by CEO Margaret Mitchell, YWCA USA is one of America’s oldest and largest women’s organizations.

At 3:30 p.m. today in at the Hall of Philosophy, Mitchell will join Felicia Beard for a special Chautauqua County Day panel discussion — “Women, Girls, Race and Poverty.” Beard is the senior director of racial equity initiatives at the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.

The issues they will discuss matter not only to the nearly 51% of the U.S. population that is female, but also to everyone else who is not.

Mitchell and Beard will talk about the connection between the work they lead and facilitate, and intersections between women, girls, race and economic inequality. This includes efforts to amplify voices of women and others who have been historically marginalized.  Held for the first time in 2022, Chautauqua County Day opens the Institution up to county residents, free of charge.

Margaret Mitchell
YWCA USA

Before being selected in 2021 as the YWCA’s national CEO — and being honored with its Excellence Award for Racial Justice the same year — Mitchell served for a decade as president and CEO of YWCA Greater Cleveland. Under her leadership there, the Y’s budget nearly tripled, and the number of staff more than tripled.

“I think when you dive into these topics around gender and racial equity, there’s an overwhelming sense of where and how and why and when,” Mitchell said. “There’s a sense of impossibility. I want people to know that this work is an invitation to everything better. (People) keep getting trapped in ‘you have that and I have this.’ I believe it will be better for everyone.”

Mitchell said racial and gender equity can be difficult for people to actualize. 

“Part of why we’re not there is that we have emotional barriers — roadblocks, brakes. We can’t imagine the possibility of individuals being their best, and living their best lives. This is what (Martin Luther) King (Jr.) said. Regardless of race and gender … you can thrive.”

Under her leadership, the YWCA “is trying to be more authentic and deliver on its promises. When we get rid of these barriers, we get there,” Mitchell said. “There isn’t a magic recipe. There aren’t winners and losers. Power is such a shortsighted view of how we approach this. … Even if we’ve moved three steps back — some say it’s 30 steps back — I think it’s part of the process that moved us forward.”

According to Mitchell, being able to “reframe and reimagine the future,” and understand the “collective work there is to do,” will benefit people.

“I want people to know that there’s a world in which everything is better,” she said. “Change is really not easy, (but) there’s so much more.”

Felicia Beard
Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo

Beard develops, supports and advances the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo’s work on racial and ethnic equity.

“We talk a lot about ‘equity’ as opposed to ‘equality,’ ” she said. “Equity is giving people what they need based on how they are situated. Equality is giving everyone the same thing. If you meet people where they are, then they can succeed. Everyone being able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps is a myth. Communities of color exist because of policies, practices and procedures.”

As senior director of racial equity initiatives, she manages the Greater Buffalo Racial Equity Roundtable, composed of over 30 community leaders from the public, private, nonprofit and faith-based sectors in Western New York.

“We have 10 different strategies,” Beard said. “Overall we’ve worked with 350 partners in our community. It’s a cross-sector partnership. A lot of partners are at the leadership level.”

Using a comprehensive tool to make racial equity actionable and measurable, called Racial Equity Impact Analysis, she has worked with 145 organizations since 2016 to help them develop diverse and inclusive workforces, including educational institutions, media companies and many businesses.

“That’s a big deal to us, especially because an organization we work with, Race Matters Institute, isn’t local,” she said. “(The REIA toolkit is) specific for CEO and C-Suite leadership teams … and it’s about including racial lenses in practices and policies.” 

This toolkit is something many businesses have found to be valuable in starting conversations on equity.

Businesses “know it’s good for the bottom line,” she said. “One of the questions employers are always asking is, ‘How do we have conversations and touch the subject?’ (At Chautauqua) I’m going to offer some advice about how the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo has been successful, and how this is benefiting all people in the region.”

For Beard, closing racial equity gaps is eminently possible.

“We have a report called The Racial Equity Dividend: Buffalo’s Great Opportunity,” she said. “It shows the benefits to Buffalo when you close gaps, and that it’s doable.”

Beard said she hopes Chautauquans attending the panel will be engaged enough to want to know: “How do I start?”

LOCAL NONPROFIT LEADERS

In addition to Mitchell and Beard, four local nonprofit leaders will be participating in this panel, hosted by the Coalition of Chautauqua County Women and Girls. 

Jane Cleaver Becker, executive coach and consultant, will provide a brief overview of the CCCWG. Amanda Gesing, Jamestown YWCA executive director, will make introductions. Amy Rohler from United Way of Southern Chautauqua County will serve as the panel moderator, and Tory Irgang, of Chautauqua Region Community Foundation, will facilitate the Q-and-A and closing.

Jane Becker
CCCWG

According to Becker, its founder, the Coalition of Chautauqua County Women and Girls is dedicated to providing opportunities that enable all local women and girls to thrive. Its Women2Women mentoring program trains volunteers to coach other women, on a one-to-one basis, in order to support their personal and professional goals. CCCWG also develops and implements programs on issues that all women and girls deal with, such as finances and leadership.  

Amanda Gesing
YWCA Jamestown

As the executive director of the Jamestown YWCA, Gesing has been leading this Y’s efforts to eliminate racism, empower women and promote peace, justice, freedom and dignity for everyone.

The Jamestown Y collaborates with the CCCWG on the Women2Women coaching program as part of its “Empowering Women” project portfolio.

Amy Rohler
UWSCC

Rohler serves as executive director of United Way of Southern Chautauqua County.

“When you think about the outcomes that United Way is trying to achieve,” Rohler said, “the issues around poverty, economic inequality, children, and equity and inclusion are priorities for all United Ways.”

She said that the UWSCC is “the backbone agency” for the nascent Chautauqua County I.D.E.A. Coalition, which was launched this Juneteenth.  

Based in Jamestown and directed by Leecroft Clarke, the I.D.E.A. Coalition’s mission is to “make Chautauqua County a place where everyone belongs and has opportunities to thrive, especially those who have been historically marginalized.”

Rohler said that she hopes that after this panel discussion, people will return home, look up the census data about their own communities — at UnitedForALICE.org for instance — and lead systems change work. 

Tory Irgang
CRCF

Irgang is the executive director of the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation, a nonprofit community corporation created by and for the people of the Chautauqua region. The CRCF seeks to enrich lives by serving as a bridge between donors and charitable activities. This stellar cast of six changemakers bolsters Garry’s long-time observations: nonprofits make towns into communities and are critical for building a genuinely civil society.

Human beings are given many gifts, whether they’re seen as such or not. Being alive and experiencing nature — the wind rustling through the trees and birds chirping — are some of these gifts.

Artist and Faithkeeper Diane Schenandoah of Wolf Clan of the Oneida Nation in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy works to make sure all people are caretakers of the Earth.

Schenandoah will give her lecture, titled “Our Journey of Being,” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy for the Interfaith Lecture Series Week Four theme “The Future of Being.” Activist Belvie Rooks, originally slated to speak for today’s lecture, will give her presentation at a later date. 

Schenandoah said she wants her audience to understand the role humans have to take care of not only their communities, but also their family and nature as a whole. 

“I’m hoping that more will come away with the understanding of our gifts that we’ve been given: the Earth, Mother Earth, all the things that she provides for us,” Schenandoah said. “There’s so many gifts that we’ve been given, and we run through our daily lives, we kind of forget about the importance of these things.”

The importance of preserving the Earth is vital, and Schenandoah said it’s disappointing to see the depletion of Earth’s natural resources.

“I did try to speak to a lot of elementary schools, as well, about the importance (of water supply),” Schenandoah said. “I always like to ask young people ‘Who brushed your teeth today?’ You’d like the water to come out nice and clean, and that water is an element that we need to give thanks to, and make every effort to ensure that our waters stay clean.”

Her mother was also a faithkeeper of the Wolf Clan, so Schenandoah learned early on the matters of diplomacy, responsibility and how to help a community grow and better itself. Schenandoah said her mother’s role as faithkeeper was a big influence on her decision when the community asked her to become the faithkeeper.

She works at Syracuse University as their Honwadiyenawa’sek, meaning “the one who helps them.” This is the first position of its kind at Syracuse and is part of their diversity and inclusion initiative after concerns were raised by Indigenous students.

“My work is grounded in my culture and traditional Haudenosaunee teachings, along with the techniques of hands-on energy work, art therapy, tuning forks, acupressure, dream interpretations and self-empowerment,” Schenandoah said.

Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno said she is delighted to bring in Schenandoah’s perspective of spirituality.

“Diane Schenandoah brings the gift of the spirituality of our Native peoples, whose Indigenous ways of being offer us a paradigm that can both transform humanity and ensure the continuing health of our precious Earth home,” Rovegno said. “We welcome Diane’s rich source of knowledge and wisdom to our conversation in this consciousness-transformative week.”

A renowned presidential historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, contributing editor at TIME, husband and father. These are a few of many titles to describe Jon Meacham as he returns to Chautauqua for the third time, and second time in-person. 

Meacham will give his lecture as part of Week Four’s Chautauqua Lecture Series theme “The Future of History” at 10:45 a.m. Thursday, July 21, in the Amphitheater. 

“What we expect him to do is reflect on this larger theme of the future of history and the moments that our democracy is faced with, in terms of a divided country and deep polarization, with reflections through work he has done,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle author Isabel Wilkerson was originally scheduled to speak at today’s lecture, but had to postpone; Ewalt and his colleagues are working with Wilkerson to reschedule her lecture for the fall or as an online event.

Meacham’s work with presidential history and studying the Constitution allows him to provide an informative and speculative view. 

“The Constitution was essential in preserving slavery and in securing white male supremacy,” said Meacham in August 2020 on CHQ Assembly.
“It was written, in many ways, to protect people who look like me.” 

Meacham spent that August 2020 virtual lecture addressing the partisan political climate.

“He joined us specifically with a week on the Constitution, really offering his reflections on the founding document and its lasting power. I think there are some themes that Meacham often looks to that will continue to resonate with us,” Ewalt said “But I think that this is also a critically important moment in our country, when we think about the role of history in a national dialogue — so I think he will speak on that as well.”

Meacham is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Society of American Historians. Ewalt thinks he will bring a fresh perspective, as history is ever-changing.

“He’s a historian whose work is constantly doing this deeper research and exploration as he grows as a scholar, and he’s someone who is very attentive to be thinking about the conversations we need to have about history and our current moment,” Ewalt said. “I’m confident that he will help us to confront our current moments, and the state of our democracy and in very powerful ways.”