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When Fr. Gregory Boyle, SJ, founder of Homeboy Industries, first came to Chautauqua in 2013, he told the Interfaith Lecture Series audience, “The measure of our compassion lies not in our service to those on the margins but (in) our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.” 

Boyle returned in 2015 with the first two Homeboys to visit Chautauqua, Javier Chavez and Germaine Smith. That year, he asked the Interfaith Lecture audience, “How do we get to a place of compassion where we can stand in awe of what the poor have to carry, as opposed to how they carry it?”

Boyle lectured again for the Interfaith Lecture series on the last Friday of the 2017 season. 

“We don’t go to the margins to make a difference, we go to the margins so that folks at the margins will make us different,” he said.

Then Chautauqua invited Boyle to preach. 

One of the most beloved Chautauqua chaplains and back by popular demand in 2022, Boyle will be the chaplain in residence for Week Four this season. In the time between 2015 and 2022, more Homeboys and Homegirls have visited Chautauqua, stayed in several of the denominational houses, rode bicycles on the grounds and enjoyed the many delights of Chautauqua. 

Boyle will preach at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday service of worship and sermon in the Amphitheater. His sermon title is “Acatamiento: Affectionate Awe.” He will also preach at the 9:15 a.m. morning ecumenical worship services Monday through Friday in the Amp. His sermon titles include: “Fire All the Other Gods,” “Love is God’s Religion,” “When the Wave Knows It’s the Ocean,” “Comfort and Joy,” “In the Shelter of Each Other,” and “Occupy Faith.” 

Boyle founded what would grow into Homeboy Industries in 1988. It is the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation and reentry program in the world. The 1980s have been called the “decade of death” in the neighborhood of the Dolores Mission Church, which was then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles. Gang violence peaked in 1992 with a total of 1,000 gang-related killings.

The neighborhood around the church had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. Boyle, along with members of the church and the community, saw that law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration were not working. They adopted a new approach of “treat gang members as human beings,” according to their website.

Homeboy Industries trains and employs former gang members in a variety of enterprises that set them up for success. They provide services like tattoo removal — 3,000 treatments in total so far — and offer GED tutoring to aid the thousands of men and women who visit Homeboy Industries in hopes of improving their lives.

Boyle is the author of Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, a New York Times bestseller. His second book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, was published in 2017.

He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. President Barack Obama named Boyle a Champion of Change in 2014. He was also awarded the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, one of the most esteemed awards given to American Catholics. 

It has been 40 years since the original ABBA split, but its iconic tunes continue to transcend time. The group sold almost 400 million records worldwide from its 10-year career, and in 2022, its music continues to have an impact. 

Through 1999’s Mamma Mia!, an original musical whose narrative centered around some of the band’s most popular songs, numerous fan clubs and tribute bands like ABBA: The Concert, ABBA has established itself as timeless. 

ABBA: The Concert is set to return to Chautauqua at 8:15 p.m. Friday, July 15, in the Amphitheater with classic hits from the original group. 

“We’re so looking forward to coming back to Chautauqua. (We’ve) been there many times, and we absolutely love that place and the people,” said Katja Nord, founder and lead singer.

The group last performed at Chautauqua in 2018, and, according to the tribute band’s website, has been called “the best ABBA since ABBA” by the original group’s international fan club.

First known as Waterloo, the group was founded by Nord and Camilla Dahlin, who perform as Anni-Frid Lyngstad, also known as Frida, and Agnetha Fältskog, respectively. The pair began singing together as teenagers, and they have been performing ABBA hits for over two decades. 

“Waterloo was founded (in) 1996 in Stockholm by me and my friend, Camilla Dahlin,” Nord said. “Many people told us that we sounded and looked like ABBA. There was a ’70s wave coming in at that time, and both of us were big ABBA fans as children.”

The duo received permission from original members of ABBA, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, to perform as a tribute band. 

“We started with asking my mother to sew costumes for us, and of course, it was the Waterloo costumes. We were looking for musicians and got a band together,” Nord said.

Beyond performing, Nord and Dahlin are responsible for how the show is set, including everything from writing the script to sewing the stage clothes.

Alongside Nord, the three other main members who will be performing in Chautauqua include Elin Sjönneby as Agnetha, Andreas Novak as Björn and Mathias Hellberg as Benny.

Several other musicians perform with the group, including Kristian Brink on the keyboard and saxophone, Andreas Westman on bass, Anders Berlin on drums, Magnus Josephson on the lead guitar, and Maria Stadell and Kristin Hellberg on back-up vocals. 

“The four (key) ABBA (members) try 100% to be as similar as possible to the originals,” Nord said. “Our goal is to give the audience the feeling of watching the real ABBA (with our) movements, appearance and sound.”

ABBA: The Concert is also from Sweden, which enhances the true connection to the original Swedish hit band.

“Since we are from Sweden, I think we have a more natural connection, and it also becomes very authentic with our sound,” Nord said. 

Traveling to over 30 different countries, from Brazil to China to the United States to the Philippines, Nord’s most memorable venues include the Royal Albert Hall in London and Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

“We have been touring the whole world, it feels like,” Nord said. 

The concert will feature some of ABBA’s top hits and lesser-known bops. Nord said their main goal is to give audience members the feeling that they are watching the real ABBA.

“Of course we will play the big big hits such as ‘Mamma Mia,’ ‘Waterloo’ and ‘Dancing Queen,’ ” Nord said. “Let the rest be a surprise.”

Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is truly a grand opera. The romance is overwhelming, the ending is tragic and it has been performed for over 100 years, with the Metropolitan Opera running it almost 1,000 times and the Chautauqua Opera Company embarking on their 14th run.

But that does not mean Chautauqua Opera isn’t going to try something new with this Puccini masterpiece.

Tosca follows opera singer Floria Tosca and her lover Mario Cavaradossi during a turbulent two-day period in a volatile Italy, which, at the time, had neither a Pope nor papal government ruling as Napoleon Bonaparte threatened invasion. Tosca makes its 2022 Chautauqua premiere at 4 p.m. Friday, July 15 in Norton Hall, directed by Sarah Ina Meyers and conducted by Chautauqua Opera General and Artistic Director Steven Osgood.

“This is a warhorse piece,” Meyers said. “Tosca is an opera that has a lot of expectation attached to it and a lot of spectacle.”

It would be easy for Meyers and Chautauqua Opera to follow how Tosca is traditionally produced, with elaborate costumes and even more elaborate sets.

But, Chautauqua Opera is not going for easy. They are going for simple.

“Ultimately, what is most moving about Puccini is the intimate drama of the text, the way every word is set with meaning in the music, and that is the thing that I am most fascinated by,” Meyers said.

In order to focus on the text and the rich emotions of the piece, Meyers and the company are scaling back the aspects of the opera that would distract from the libretto.

“The production is actually stripped back in many ways. It’s really the bare essentials of what we need to tell the story, and as little as possible of that to create a sense of the atmosphere and also to allow the narrative and the drama to speak for itself,” Meyers said.

Having a minimalist set lets Chautauqua Opera use all of Norton Hall as its stage. The singers will use every entrance to the theater, turning the audience into a congregation as they watch Cesare Angelotti, Cavaradossi, Tosca, and Baron Scarpia inside the Sant’Andrea della Valle, the basilica where the first act takes place.

The church the audience is seated in is a church broken by the wars around it.

“The structures that are so iconic in the opera would also have been experiencing the ravages of war,” Meyers said. “The churches were being looted.”

Meyers and set designer Liliana Duque Piñeiro have collaborated to reflect that in the set.

“That danger, which is, shall we say, a constant presence in the atmosphere, almost like in the ether, is literally translated into the structure of the scenery, so that the skeletal elements that we have with the production feel like ruins, feel like the vestiges of that sort of traumatic experience that these places have been through,” Meyers said. 

Tosca represents the destruction that happened in June 1800 during Napoleon’s invasion of Rome, but that does not make it any less timely or any less relatable.

Meyers points to Tosca’s similarities to Thumbprint, the chamber opera which opened Chautauqua Opera’s 2022 season and follows the true story of Mukhtar Mai.

“As a part of this female-driven season, there are so many elements of the (Tosca) story that resonate with the Thumbprint story, which is so horrific in its own right,” Meyers said. “But the same way in which Mukhtar Mai is trying to rescue her brother, and in trying to save her brother, her love is then used against her, and then it becomes an instrument that others use to perpetrate this horrible thing onto her  — that’s very similar to what Tosca is trying to do. She’s trying to rescue her love, and Scarpia takes that love and perverts it and turns it against her.”

Not everyone sees Tosca’s love as empowering, though.

“I’ve heard many people criticize Tosca as a misogynistic opera,” Meyers said. “That all it is is a chance to watch a woman who cares about unimportant things get tossed around by these men doing important things.”

But this is not how Meyers sees it, nor how she believes Puccini saw it, nor how Chautauqua Opera will perform it.

“(This opera is) the celebration of Tosca and her version of femininity and her version of strength,” she said.

Using her research to explore human rights, Kathryn Sikkink, Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, works on international norms and institutions, transnational advocacy networks, the impact of human rights law and policies, and transitional justice.

Sikkink will deliver her lecture, titled “Exploring the Diverse Origins of International Human Rights,” at 2 p.m. Friday, July 15, in the Hall of Philosophy to close Week Three of the Interfaith Lecture Series “The Spirituality of Human Rights.”

“Some people have made the argument that human rights have been kind of a secular replacement for religion,” Sikkink said. “And some people who make that argument see human rights as being a secular tradition very much associated with the West, and particularly with Christianity with Europe and the United States.”

Her work dives into understanding how the diverse origins of human rights correlates with international protections of those rights, an idea dating before World War II.

“I discovered that this idea, that international rights should be protected internationally, … it does not just come from the United States and Western Europe,” Sikkink said. “That’s a misunderstanding of the origins of human rights and, as such, it does not just come from one religion or from one religious tradition.”

Sikkink said she believes there’s a spirituality to human rights that can call on people to put human well-being and dignity first.

“I do hope I make people question what has become almost a commonplace routine of human rights,” Sikkink said — that human rights, conceived by the Global North, focus on the countries of the Global South, with no say or involvement from those actual countries.

Sikkink used her book Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century to document the diverse origins of human rights, discovering Latin American and smaller countries played an important role.

Human rights don’t come from one religious tradition, Sikkink said, but human rights and dignity offer an association with  certain religions that some may find more appealing.

“Most religions in the world have concepts of human dignity,” Sikkink said. “In that sense, human rights, which is focused on putting human dignity at the center of our work in our lives, has similarities with many different religions that also focus on human dignity.”

When she was an undergraduate student, Sikkink received a scholarship to study abroad in Uruguay in 1976. At the time, Uruguay was under military dictatorship control; seeing this led her to work in human rights advocacy.

“My work suggests that human rights have been effective tools … for promoting human well-being,” Sikkink said. “That’s something that I would like people to know, that is not just wishful thinking. It’s not just a bunch of idealists, but that these have actually been concrete tools people have used to improve their lives.”

As a young Yazidi girl, Nadia Murad lived a peaceful life in the village of Kocho in Sinjar, Northern Iraq. She had dreams of finishing high school and opening a beauty parlor in her village. But in 2014, when Murad was 21 years old, horror struck her Yazidi community, as ISIS launched attacks in an attempt to ethnically cleanse Iraq of all Yazidis. Murad’s mother and six of her brothers were killed, while she was forced into sex slavery.

After her escape, Murad became the founder and president of the non-profit Nadia’s Initiative, a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and a human rights activist. A leading advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence, she was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her work.

At 10:45 a.m. Friday, July 15, in the Amphitheater, Murad will close Week Three’s theme “The Future of Human Rights” by discussing the need for greater awareness of wartime sexual violence and the needs of its victims.
She will be joined by her husband, the executive director and co-founder of Nadia’s Initiative, Abid Shamdeen, who will act as her translator. 

Also born and raised in Sinjar, Iraq, Shamdeen advocates for victims of the Yazidi Genocide by managing various projects that have brought aid and assistance to internally displaced Yazidis. He also worked for the United States Army in Iraq as a cultural adviser and translator.

Murad will speak for 10 minutes, before a moderated conversation, wherein President Michael E. Hill will interview her and Shamdeen.

Yazidism, with its roots dating back 4,000 years, is one of the oldest religions in the world. Before the ISIS invasion, there were 500,000 Yazidis in Iraq alone, according to the United States Institute of Peace. Now, the total number of survivors of the genocide by the Islamic State is uncertain, with thousands of Yazidis still internally displaced in Northern Iraq. It is estimated by the Together for Girls partnership that approximately 5,000 Yazidis have been massacred, 6,700 abducted and 90% of the Yazidi population in Iraq displaced to refugee camps.

Murad explained the long history of violence and harm against Yazidis in her Nobel Peace Prize speech.

“In our history, we have been subjected to many campaigns of genocide because of our beliefs and religion. As a result of these genocides, there are only a few Yazidis left in Turkey,” Murad said. “In Syria, there were about 80,000 Yazidis. Today, there are only 5,000. In Iraq, the Yazidis face the same fate, their number is decreasing significantly. The goal of ISIS to eradicate this religion will be achieved unless the Yazidis are provided the appropriate protection.”

Beyond the violence perpetrated against Yazidis, Nadia’s Initiative focuses on the need for justice for survivors of sexual violence. She said during her Nobel Peace Prize speech that more than 6,500 Yazidi women and children were sold, bought, and sexually and psychologically abused during the genocide. 

“Despite our daily appeals since 2014, the fate of more than 3,000 children and women in the grip of ISIS is still unknown,” Murad said in 2018. “… It is inconceivable that the conscience of the leaders of 195 countries around the world are not mobilized to liberate these girls. What if they were a commercial deal, an oil field or a shipment of weapons? Most certainly, no efforts would be spared to liberate them.”

Nadia’s Initiative partners with local and international organizations to promote the restoration of Sinjar, Iraq. Their mission, according to their website, is “to create a world where women are able to live peacefully and communities that have experienced trauma and suffering are supported and redeveloped.” They work toward this mission through the collaboration of global leaders, governments and international organizations. 

Bringing Murad to Chautauqua to close the week’s theme with a “deeply difficult discussion” of human rights was “critical,” according to Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education.

“Part of what was critical, is to hear directly from someone who has been recognized as a fierce advocate for human rights and has dedicated her life, following awful violence, to be an advocate on behalf of women around the world,” Ewalt said. 

Through her work with Nadia’s Initiative and as the UNODC Goodwill Ambassador, Murad calls global attention to the justice and rehabilitation of survivors of human trafficking. She advocates for a survivor-centric approach to the issue. 

“I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for survivors to have a seat at the table,” Murad told UNODC in an interview. “From my own experience, I am able to provide a survivor perspective. It is an immense responsibility and not one that I take lightly.” 

Ewalt hopes this presentation, that perhaps may be challenging, will lead Chautauquans to reflect on the kind of role they can play in the fight for justice and human rights.

“(Murad) is someone who I think can help to represent many others, not only as a survivor, but (also through her ability) to move into that kind of deep advocacy role and mobilize others,” Ewalt said. “To be able to hear that strong and powerful voice I think is a challenge for all of us.”

Not many people have the multitude of experiences they wish they did. As a lawyer, ordained minister, professor and former president and CEO of the NAACP, Cornell William Brooks has a plethora of wisdom, advice, knowledge and experience to offer Chautauqua.

Brooks will be giving his lecture, titled “The Moral Inflation of Human Dignity: Race, Repair and Rights,” to continue Week Three of the Interfaith Lecture Series on “The Spirituality of Human Rights,” at 2 p.m. Thursday, July 14, in the Hall of Philosophy.

His main points will cover the dignity of human rights, and protecting the integrity of human beings. He said human rights movements have been reduced to social media phenomenons, such as #BlackLivesMatter and the reaction to the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

“When we see, simultaneously, protesters asserting the dignity of the unborn, we’re also seeing the dignity of women who are grown and born (attacked),” Brooks said. “This is a moment in which people in the midst of this democracy and others feel as though human dignity is under attack and under assault.”

Brooks said while dignity may not be able to be destroyed, it can be diminished, denigrated and desecrated. 

“Life is seen as fragile and tenuous, easily taken,” Brooks said. “In the case of people who were profiled or assaulted on the streets, then the value of human life (and) the value of human dignity is deemed … as being worth more.”

The differences between human rights and social justice is something Brooks compares to the differences between the alphabet and vocabulary of a democratic society.

“Civil rights provides us with the basic alphabet for (a) democratic society,” Brooks said. “Social justice is its vocabulary, the language, the means through which we speak and speak into existence.”

Brooks said regardless of where someone is on the spectrum of religious belief, from devout believer to atheist, it cannot be argued that faith isn’t the base of human rights.

“You can’t ignore the fact that people have faith on the frontlines of social justice in every movement, everywhere around this country and certainly around the world,” Brooks said. “Faith is essential. … You have to have it.”

During his tenure as NAACP president, which he described as a “tumultuous time,” Brooks said he guided the organization through critical social justice movements.

“When I took that job, within eight days, Eric Garner was killed in New York City in a chokehold,” Brooks said. “Within a few weeks, Ferguson exploded, thereafter was (when) Tamir Rice was killed in Cleveland. … Desecrated human beings, hashtag after hashtag, the entire time I was there.”

Brooks organized and led a walk in summer 2015 to demonstrate the urgency of voting rights and police reform. The participants ventured over 1,000 miles from Selma, Alabama, to Washington. He walked alongside a man named Middle Passage, 68, a Navy veteran who carried the American flag the entire journey.

“It began to rain (and) he literally wrapped the flag up so it would be protected from the elements,” Brooks said. “Then the rain stops, the clouds part and he unfurls the flag. As he unfurls the flag he collapses to the ground and has a heart attack.”

The hardest day during his time at the NAACP was explaining to young people in the organization how Passage died and what he stood for.

“The young people asked ‘If a man was willing to march and die for the right to vote, why can’t we fight and vote?’  ” Brooks said. “That is affecting me profoundly, for a couple of reasons. I called for that march, and as a consequence somebody, a friend of mine, literally gave his life. That’s the kind of moral punctuation to the work.”

Brooks attended Jackson State University for his undergraduate education. Jackson State is most commonly, and unfortunately, known for a shooting by police at a dormitory on campus; it was the culmination of tensions between police and local youths that resulted in the death of two young Black men. This shooting occurred in the wake of the 1970 Kent State University shooting during Vietnam War protests, which resulted in the death of four students and the injury of nine by the Ohio National Guard.

Brooks attended Jackson State about 10 years after the shooting and still remembers the ghost-like quality he felt walking across campus.

“Standing on the Gibbs-Green Plaza, looking up to your left, (about) three to four stories up, you can see in the women’s dormitory at the time, Alexander Hall, you can still see bullet holes 10 years later,” Brooks said. “You’re not just walking past the memorials to young people your age, you literally saw the bullet holes made by the weapons (used) to kill them.”

Brooks walked across this plaza every day on his way to class, and he said it’s a reminder that social justice “was a matter and a concern for people my age. I learned that lesson immediately just walking across the plaza, (and it) just affected me profoundly.”

Social justice is also not limited to the race or any other identity that may be under attack. Brooks said for white people to be good allies, they need to act rather than just echoing people of color.

“It’s also a matter of white people telling other white people how to support a movement,” Brooks said. “It’s a matter of white people lending, sharing (and) investing whatever they have in terms of their resources. Then (to realize) the legitimacy and credibility of people of color — realizing and recognizing that people of color can lend credibility and legitimacy to them.”

During his time at Jackson State, Brooks attended a lecture given by a speaker who asked three questions that affected him profoundly, and still do.

“First question he asked, ‘How many of you believe that America, generally speaking, is a great country?’ People raised their hands in the affirmative,” Brooks said. “Then he asked, ‘How many of you have read the Constitution in its entirety?’ No one raised their hands, including me.”

The speaker then asked questions in regard to religion.

“He asked, ‘How many of you believe in God?’ Everybody raised their hand,” Brooks said. “Then he asked, ‘How many of you read the Bible in its entirety?’ No one, including me.”

He then asked how many people believed Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man; everybody raised their hands. Next, he asked how many had read all of King’s books. Again, no one, including Brooks, raised their hand.

“I walked out of that auditorium embarrassed by my own ignorance and resolved to read the Bible from cover to cover, the Constitution in all its entirety (and) Martin Luther King’s books in all their entirety,” Brooks said. “There’s a massive amount of reading with respect to law and prophetic ministry, and in the case of Dr. King and in terms of the Bible, that put me on the path to law and ministry and I’ve been on that path the last several decades.”

Brooks said his hope is that his lecture today lives on, and not just end when he’s done speaking.

“It’s my hope that my few words live in people’s hearts and inspire them in the same way that the thought that I heard many decades ago inspired me and changed my life,” he said.

For Stephine Hunt, part of what makes good writing exceptional is its structure. It isn’t flimsy or hard to follow; it’s concise, concrete and, above all, clear. 

So when it comes to Erica Chenoweth’s book Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, Hunt first noticed its unique structure. 

“It’s posed in the form of a question-and-answer sequence,” said Hunt, the CLSC  Octagon manager. “It makes a really large collection of data and historical content much more approachable and readable.”

Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School; they also direct the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, where they study political violence and its alternatives. Civil Resistance, their most recent book, takes readers through what civil resistance is, how it works, and what its long-term impacts can be. 

Chenoweth poses a set of questions at the back of the book that Hunt said are particularly thought-provoking.

“They pose a lot of good questions and thoughts for the future of civil resistance at the end of the book that’s exactly what we’re looking for,” she said. “Especially when it comes to the future of civil rights, a future that we’re examining this week.”

At 3:30 p.m. Thursday, July 14, in the Hall of Philosophy, Chenoweth will discuss Civil Resistance, the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Week Three selection.

“I was introduced to Erica Chenoweth when I was taking a graduate seminar class on peace and conflict studies at Kent State University,” said Sony Ton-Aime, Michael I. Rudell Director of the Literary Arts. “A professor assigned an earlier work by Chenoweth, and I fell in love with their book and have been following their career and writing ever since.”

At that time, Ton-Aime said, Chenoweth was a recent hire at Harvard University.

“This is a selection that is very dear to my heart,” he said. “To quote a professor of mine at Kent State: ‘Erica Chenoweth is a superstar of peace and and conflict studies right now.’ ”

To have Chenoweth come to Chautauqua and give a lecture, Ton-Aime said, is an incredibly important thing for all Chautauquans.

“For them to come and talk with us about civil resistance, something that we desperately need, just as we’ve seen authoritarianism rising all over the world, it’s really important,” he said. “More than ever, the people need to find a way to reject authoritarianism.”

According to Ton-Aime, statistics in Civil Resistance show that nonviolent resistance and protest are more likely to bring about change, as opposed to violent methods.

“Right now, in this country, we need a book like this,” he said. “I’m so excited for everyone to read this book. While this is a very academic book, I have no doubt that everyone will deeply enjoy it.”

To Noah Feldman, the overturning of Roe v. Wade represents a cataclysmic shift in modern politics.

“When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, it repudiated the very idea that America’s highest court exists to protect people’s fundamental liberties from legislative majorities that would infringe on them,” wrote Feldman, a historian, author of 10 books, and Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, in an Bloomberg opinion piecetitled, “Ending Roe Is Institutional Suicide for Supreme Court.”

At 10:45 a.m. Thursday, July 14, in the Amphitheater, Feldman will give a lecture focused on free speech, Big Tech and social media platforms. Feldman’s presentation falls under the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Three theme, “The Future of Human Rights.”

For Bloomberg, he wrote that the recent ruling, a “catastrophe for women,” also represents a tyranny of the majority. 

“The right to an abortion was based on the principle of a living Constitution that evolves to expand liberty and equality,” he wrote. “That same master principle of modern constitutional law provided the grounding for Brown v. Board of Education, ending segregation. It was the basis for Obergefell v. Hodges, finding a right to same-sex marriage.”

Feldman described the Supreme Court’s decision as an act of “institutional suicide” for the court as a whole.

“The legitimacy of the modern court depends on its capacity to protect the vulnerable by limiting how the majority can infringe on basic rights to liberty and equality,” he wrote.

Within the context of the week’s theme, Feldman will relate human rights to free expression, Big Tech and social media. 

“With how we were framing this week, considering the future of human rights, we invited Noah Feldman — one of the great legal scholars of our time — to be thinking about social media platforms from an ethics and human rights perspective,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education.

According to Ewalt, Feldman, who played a role in creating Facebook’s oversight board, will be speaking primarily on the issue of free speech. 

“He’ll be speaking about it both in the ways social media platforms have helped us communicate with each other,” he said. “But perhaps most importantly, Feldman will talk about the potential risks and dangers that that technology creates, and really connect it to the larger human rights issues and challenges.”

It’s a topic that Ewalt said he hopes will act like a lens for Chautauquans to be “more critical consumers” of social media platforms. 

“The very questions we need to be asking ourselves are about better understanding the consequences of using these platforms,” he said. “And we need to not take for granted the role of these platforms within our larger consideration of human rights challenges.”

Soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer’s dream career is to be a lounge singer, but right now she is more than  happy to sing classical music with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.

“The composers I sing the most (are) Beethoven, Wagner, Strauss, but the composers I love the most are Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and Sondheim,” Harmer said. “I sort of just happened into opera, and it was the path of least resistance in a lot of ways, so that’s the path I ended up on.”

Harmer will perform alongside the CSO at 8:15 p.m. Thursday, July 14, in the Amphitheater, under the baton of guest conductor Gemma New — musical director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Hamilton, Ontario, and the first female principal conductor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. 

New, Harmer and the CSO will present an evening of Beethoven and Samuel Barber, a 20th-century American composer, as well as Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1.

“I would love to do an all-Beethoven program, and I would love to do an all-Barber program,” Harmer said. “Doing them together is sort of interesting, but I love (it). I think it’s working really well.”

Harmer will accompany the CSO for Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” and Beethoven’s “Ah! Perfido.”

“(The Barber piece is) basically this memory of how it was when I was a child, and my mother spreading a quilt on the grass; I would just sit there, and it was this peaceful (experience),” Harmer said.

While “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” evokes these pleasant emotions, it is not a one-dimensional piece.

“There’s also this underlying darkness because then at the end she, the narrator, says several times, ‘But they won’t tell me who I am,’ ” Harmer said.

Beethoven’s “Ah! Perfido” follows “Knoxville,” moving from a softer nostalgia to intensity.

“(It) is rage and fury and anger and very Beethoven,” said Harmer, a alumna of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and a previous Chautauqua Opera Company Guest Artist.

Although symphony performances are not necessarily as intimate an experience as seeing a lounge singer, Harmer appreciates how she can see individuals in the audience during a concert. When she performs in operas, that connection is not always there.

“I don’t usually see the eyes of the audience. I mean, I can see the audience, but I’m not individually picking them out,” Harmer said.

Eye contact during a concert reminds Harmer of how powerful and influential the music she sings can be.

“I was doing (Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9) not long ago,” she said, “and … there was a woman who clearly brought her grandchildren, and they were kind of nodding off. And we get to the fourth movement where all of a sudden, all the kids sit up straight because they’re like, ‘Wait a minute. I know this tune.’ … You can just see the light go on.”

Witnessing an audience’s reaction to the music  is a unique experience for vocalists in orchestra concerts. Seeing the audience up close gives them the opportunity to immediately see the impact of the music they are making.

“It’s sort of fun to view, and it’s a good reminder that sometimes we feel, as performers, like, ‘Oh, we’re just coming and doing our job that we do everyday,’ ” Harmer said. “But it’s really gratifying to realize from the other side, like, this kid is seeing his first Beethoven 9, and he’s totally hooked.”

After opening the Week Three Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “The Spirituality of Human Rights,” the Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community, will deliver a presentation for the African American Heritage House’s Chautauqua Speaker Series at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 13, in the Hall of Philosophy.

Taylor’s talk Monday — a recap of which can be found on page 6 of this edition of The Chautauquan Daily — was titled “Dignity for All: Faith, Spirituality and Human Rights.” In it, he argued that faith traditions must work toward progressing human rights.

Sojourners, a social justice organization celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, publishes a monthly magazine and daily articles online. The print magazine has a readership of over 67,000, and its digital platform reaches 6 million. Broadly, Sojourners works to discover the intersection of faith, politics and culture, across Christian traditions.

Prior to joining Sojourners, Taylor previously led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group and served as the vice president in charge of Advocacy at World Vision U.S. He has also served as the executive director of Global Justice, an organization that educates and mobilizes students around global human rights and economic justice. He was selected for the 2009/2010 class of White House Fellows and served in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs and Public Engagement. Taylor is a graduate of Emory University, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. Taylor also serves on the Independent Sector Board, the Global Advisory Board of Tearfund UK, and is a member of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellowship.

Ordained in the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Taylor serves in ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia.

Human rights have been at play in legal issues since the beginning of time. Slavery in ancient Rome, peasants in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, segregation in the United States, wars on religion and women’s rights — government, monarchies and dictatorships have been using human rights as political and legal power plays for as long as anyone can remember.

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law, associate professor in Emory College of Arts & Sciences and senior fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

Originally from Sudan, An-Na’im came to the United States 20 years ago and will be returning to Chautauqua for the second time to deliver his lecture, titled “Beyond Platitudes of Interfaith Discourse,” at 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 12, in the Hall of Philosophy.

“The idea is that when we think we engage in interfaith discourse, we do so sort of sporadically (and) superficially, without challenging ourselves about what is really the issue,” An-Na’im said, “which (are) the underlying biases and attitudes that create tension among communities.”

An-Na’im said he credits the boundary between interfaith and intrafaith for creating this tension. While interfaith refers to relating to or between different religions, intrafaith refers to relating to one specific religion.

Oftentimes people don’t ask the questions necessary to grow in their religion, An-Na’im said. For example, he will say to himself, “I’m a Muslim,” and follow with “Am I really a Muslim? Do I behave as a Muslim?” He said he’s been struggling with these questions his whole life.

“The main worry for me is we talk of platitudes, things that we assume we know and understand and believe in, whereas, in fact, we don’t,” An-Na’im said. “We don’t act on what we think we believe in.”

He has plans to discuss the June 24 overturn of Roe v. Wade. An-Na’im said this decision has made the public realize false positions and how much people like to hide behind legal jargon.

“The problem is that we tend to use the Supreme Court and the legal system as a sword or as a shield,” An-Na’im said, “instead of really taking on the issue to understand what is the problem and how to transform social attitudes and individual behavior.”

After the overturn of Roe v. Wade, states can individually create laws allowing or banning abortion, a right that was protected for almost 50 years. 

An-Na’im said the original decision of Roe v. Wade was used as a shield against those who tried to take away that right. 

“When you do that, the other side has no choice but to go for the same type of tactics,” An-Na’im said. “The pro-choice group immediately goes into our struggle to recapture the Supreme Court. Now, a Supreme Court which can be recaptured or captured is not yet a Supreme Court, it is a partisan goal.”

Glorifying the legal system and Supreme Court is futile, he said, because they are composed of human beings, and the people of the United States are giving them too much power. To rectify this, he said people need to go toward transforming attitudes on the topic.

“What is really at issue here is the dictatorial impulse to impose our position on others,” An-Na’im said. “Whether I am in favor or against choice, when I impose my view on the other side, all the other side will do is wait until they impose their view on me.”

His second point is that some people believe that socially and culturally, religion is making “a return,” but he wants to make sure people know religion has never left.

“The First Amendment clearly cannot take away the political impact of religion, and the social impact,” An-Na’im said. “All it says is that the state cannot do this or that. We need to change attitudes about sexual relations, about intimacy, about privacy, about women’s right to choose — those are the issues that we need to really confront instead of using legal jargon to cover our biases and impulses.”

An-Na’im said he wants people to understand the action of “don’t talk, just do,” is based in believing in the values communities need to cross boundaries.

“I am committed to human rights advocacy, but I challenge a sort of dedicated understanding of what human rights are and, ultimately, it’s telling the hypocrisy that our societies are about human rights,” An-Na’im said. “We talk about it in condemning others, but we do not challenge ourselves on the issues in our own communities.”

Progress is neither linear nor inevitable, yet trends in past advancements in human rights can indicate when it might fluctuate, according to policy analyst and managing editor of HumanProgress.org Chelsea Follett.

At 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, July 13, in the Amphitheater, Follett will take the lectern to examine what exactly human progress is, and how society can apply the lessons of the past to correct current human rights abuses in her lecture “Human Progress, Humility and the Problems that Remain.”

“My lecture is a broad overview of progress throughout history,” Follett said. “What is progress? Have we made any progress? What kind of progress? Material progress and moral progress: How do those relate? What are the causes of progress? What has allowed people to make progress in the past, and what social conditions have furthered their advocacy? And how can we apply those lessons to the problems that remain today, and how can we use that to tackle the very severe human rights abuses that remain?”

Follett will be the third Chautauqua Lecture Series speaker to talk about human rights in Week Three’s theme “The Future of Human Rights.”

HumanProgress.org is a project of the Cato Institute, an American liberatarian think tank, that provides the public with free empirical data collected from reliable sources that focus on global trends in human progress. 

Follett believes that free access to empirical data about past human rights movements is crucial not only to understanding how the world has become this way, but also to keep perspective in times of political, economic and social strife. 

“I think (the data) helps to counteract the sort of declension narrative view of history that is very unfortunately common, both in just public discourse and in academia where we live in the dregs of the ages, and everything is getting worse,” Follett said. “It’s very easy to get that impression when you just turn on the news and you see headlines reporting truly despicable human rights abuses (and) all of the problems that remain: wars, rising authoritarianism, environmental degradation, inflation.” 

Follett’s career with the Cato Institute began with an internship she held with the think tank in graduate school at the University of Virginia in 2014. Having been inspired by authors Steven Pinker and Matt Ridley (both of whom she now works with at Cato Institute) in her undergraduate years at the College of William & Mary, Follett’s passion for empirical data began. 

“​​I just loved the data-based, evidence-based approach to history that it promotes, and its approach to current events,” Follett said, “(and the) problem-solving mode of thought, where people don’t get into despair, but rather look to history for clues on the policies and institutions that we can adopt to promote progress, both material progress and moral progress, in areas such as human rights.”

Within her eight years at the Cato Institute, Follett made the Forbes’ 30 under 30 list under the category Law & Policy in 2018. Her writing has been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes and other news outlets. 

Her lecture will take shape from her upcoming book, Centers of Progress, in which she explores major human advancements in the past in specific cities that can help readers understand how to navigate the current political and social climate. 

“I don’t, in any way, want to downplay the transformative efforts of individuals who have moved progress forward throughout history,” Follett said. “But what we do see is that certain places at certain times in history have contributed disproportionately toward human progress. I believe that is because human rights advocacy and a campaign, or other modes of progress, are the most effective when certain conditions are met.”

Follett says she looks forward to speaking at Chautauqua for the first time, and she hopes to bring a fresh perspective to Chautauquans about the current state of human rights in the United States. 

“I hope that people will come away from the lecture with a renewed sense of hope in the struggle for human rights, (and) that they will take to heart from the reality of moral progress to date, and that it will help them to further promote progress,” Follett said. “While understanding that utopia is forever out of reach, we can show curiosity about the causes and conditions that brought about human progress and morals in the moral realm in the past, and continue that important work of cultivating those conditions to promote human rights going forward.”

The chimes from the Miller Bell Tower won’t be the only bells ringing this week. Returning to Chautauqua Institution for the sixth time, the Raleigh Ringers will be performing at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, July 13, on the Amphitheater stage. 

Founded in 1990 in Raleigh, North Carolina, 2022 marks the Ringers’ 33rd season performing. Throughout the group’s career, it has performed nationally, in 39 states across the United States, and internationally in countries such as France and Canada. The Ringers have been featured in two national primetime holiday special concerts on PBS, titled “Holiday Handbells.”

The ensemble first came to perform in concert at Chautauqua in 1999. Unlike other musical groups, the group performs using only one type of instrument — handbells. 

They own the most extensive collection of handbells out of any performance group. The ensemble contrasts the traditional sounds of English handbells, with the overtones of Dutch handbells, and the steady tones of choir chimes, to form a dazzling synchronization of sounds.

The 18-member group performs a gamut of music, ranging all the way from classical music to rock ’n’ roll tunes, and sacred songs to secular music. David Harris, director of the Ringers, said that Chautauquans can expect to hear a wide variety of music tonight. 

“We will perform some traditional sacred songs,” Harris said. “But, we will also do some original music that was written for the instrument that is more solemn and serious. And then we will do lighter stuff, as well.” 

The ensemble will perform songs such as “Hotel California” by the Eagles, “Yakety Sax” by Boots Randolph, “Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, “Be Still My Soul” by Katharina von Schlegel and “Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa, which has become a Chautauqua favorite.   

“The interesting thing about ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ is that it was arranged for our first-ever concert performance at Chautauqua on July 4th, 1999,” Harris said. “Since the first concert was on July 4th, we thought to ourselves at the time, we have to play ‘Stars and Stripes.’ ”

Playing “Stars and Stripes” has become a tradition every time the Ringers return.

Harris has been the director of the group since its original formation in 1990, and is one of the original founders of the ensemble.

“The core group of Ringers and I had the concept of creating a community not based on any other organization,” Harris said. “We got started to provide an opportunity for folks to be in an advanced choir to play different music. People generally learn and play handbells in churches. But this way people can play from a concert stage.” 

Playing from concert stages allows the group to not only play sacred music but incorporate different genres of songs. 

Harris said that the Ringers will be hosting an instructional handbell workshop through Special Studies from 4 to 5 p.m. this afternoon at the Amp. One of the group’s key missions is to teach others how to play through handbell festivals and workshops. 

“As we’ve learned skills ourselves, we like to share those with others,” Harris said. “A big part of our group is education, as well.” 

After a lecture-filled day, if it makes them happy, Chautauquans can head over to the Amphitheater to catch nine-time Grammy-winner Sheryl Crow.

Crow, Keb’ Mo’ and Southern Avenue take the stage for a special triple lineup at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 12, in the Amp. 

With the Showtime documentary “Sheryl” premiering May 2022 — and screening at 5 p.m., Tuesday, July 12, at the Chautauqua Cinema — and a full schedule of shows this summer, Crow stays busy. 

She is known for hits such as “All I Wanna Do,” “Strong Enough,” “If It Makes You Happy” and “Soak Up the Sun.” She has released more than 10 albums and sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. 

After providing background vocals for top artists, including Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Jimmy Buffet, in the late ’80s, Crow released her first album, Tuesday Night Music Club, in 1993. The album earned her Grammys for Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. 

Her most recent album Threads was released in 2019, peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s weekly U.S. Top Country Albums, and features collaborations with different artists on each track. Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Stevie Nicks and Neil Young are just a few of the legends to appear on the album. 

Crow is excited to make her Chautauqua return after her Amp debut in 2017. Eclectic Memphis group Southern Avenue opens the night, followed by Grammy-winner Keb’ Mo’. Crow will finish the night with her set.

“We are really looking forward to playing Chautauqua again. We have such great memories from 2017,” she said. “It is one of the most idyllic places full of wonderful people and an inspiring environment. My boys and I love it there. Can’t wait to get back.”

Similar to Crow’s versatility, Mo’ also surpasses the binds of a single genre. Over the course of his nearly 50-year long career, he has contributed to the music industry as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, drawing inspiration from folk, rock, blues and jazz, to name a few. 

One of his career highs includes performing at the White House for President Barack Obama in 2012 and 2015. He’s proud of the continued forward momentum in his career. 

As an advocate for social, environmental and racial justice, Mo’ relates to the Week Three Theme of “The Future of Human Rights” by trying to uplift people through his music while conveying a message of positivity and unity. 

“Our fight for human rights never ends; we have to remain vigilant and use our voices where we can to make a difference,” he said, “especially right now, with the state of things in this country.”

Mo’ is currently touring with a six-piece band, which “for this tour, has really taken things to the next level.”

Chautauquans can expect a high-energy set, and Mo’ hopes they’ll walk away with some of his contagious positivity. 

“(We’re) getting the band rocking and people in the dancing mood,” Mo’ said. “After such a rough few years, people are looking for some inspiration and entertainment. We do our best to give them a party.”

Mo’ has enjoyed his touring experience with Crow and Southern Avenue. 

“Sharing the stage with Sheryl is a dream. Such a fantastic experience so far,” he said. “And Southern Avenue brings such an exciting energy to the package.”

Southern Avenue, which formed in 2015, is a five-piece that describes their style as “Memphis Music.” The group consists of Tierinii Jackson for lead vocals, Ori Naftaly on guitar, Tikyra Jackson on drums and background vocals, Jeremy Powell on keys and Evan Sarver on bass. 

The band has toured the world with the likes of Los Lobos, Mississippi Allstars and Karl Denson. With the frequency of their shows at an average of 150 performances a year, guitarist Naftaly said they love playing live and are accustomed to being on stage. 

“We do have to repeat songs because people expect to hear them, but we have the ability to improvise and try different things whenever we want to,” Naftaly said. “We keep exploring more avenues to take when we play our songs live.”

Naftaly said Southern Avenue hopes to enact change and make the world a better place with their music. 

“We are genuine people. We come with a message and with the intention to make a change in the world through music,” he said. “We give it all and hope the audience will allow us into their hearts.”

He said he wants people to walk away from shows with the message of not giving up. 

Naftaly reflected on the opportunity to play a series of shows with Crow and Mo’, sharing that they have made the band feel welcomed throughout the tour. 

“It’s been a huge blessing. We are huge fans of both of them. Keb’ Mo’ is an icon. Sheryl is an icon. We just feel blessed to be included,” Naftaly said. “We try to be like a fly on the wall, but both camps make us feel at home, so we feel just like that, at home.”

Tonight marks the second to last time Crow, Mo’ and Southern Avenue will share the stage this summer. If all you wanna do is have some fun, don’t miss tonight’s show. 

At 13 years old, Nicole Austin-Hillery received an award from her eighth grade teacher, Miss John, for most likely to succeed in a field involving public speaking. With Miss John’s recognition of her talents, Austin-Hillery’s future was cemented. 

“From that moment on, I decided I was going to be a civil and human rights lawyer,” Austin-Hillery said.

Austin-Hillery, former executive director of the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch and the current president and CEO of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, will deliver a speech at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, July 12, in the Amphitheater. 

Following Week Three’s theme of “The Future of Human Rights,” Austin-Hillery will discuss race as a human and civil rights issue during her lecture. 

“I’m going to talk about how (racism) is tied into every system that exists in this country,” Austin-Hillery said. 

After receiving her law degree from Howard University School of Law, Austin-Hillery went on to work for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and then for a private law firm where she focused on civil rights litigation. 

Once she began to establish herself in the field, Austin-Hillery became the first director and counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington Office and later took the role of the first-ever executive director of the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch.

“My entire path has been about ‘How do I secure rights and empower communities that have historically been disenfranchised?’ And for me, the issues of civil and human rights are, and have always been, inextricably linked,” Austin-Hillery said.

When she was still the executive director of the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch, Austin-Hillery said she mainly worked to “embed a focus on race as a human rights issue in the United States, and the focus of the work for the U.S. division has been around just that.” 

After Austin-Hillery worked closely with issues related to race at Human Rights Watch, she embarked on a new journey in February 2022 at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. The foundation was established in 1976, and Austin-Hillery said it was started to be a vehicle for Black leadership with its affiliation to Black members of the United States Congress. 

“Our mission is to empower the global Black community through creating a pipeline of future Black leaders, educating the community writ large on issues of concern to the Black community and doing critical research, data analysis on the modern-day issues of concern that are impacting our country from the perspective of the Black community,” Austin-Hillery said.

At today’s lecture, Austin-Hillery will speak to the importance of conversations about race. 

“For all of the issues that we are concerned about right now, for all of the things that we are focused on, we cannot deal with those issues … (or) figure out how to resolve them if we are not looking at how the history of race in this country has impacted them,” Austin-Hillery said. “And it’s everywhere.”

She mentioned the American police system’s racist history, and how the police first started out as slave patrolers, to make her point.

“I want to talk about how, if we really want to understand how we move forward as a country, how we create opportunities for real equality, that we have to see and understand the basis of race as a part of our struggle for human and civil rights,” Austin-Hillery said. 

She would like audience members to understand that race is not a siloed issue. 

“I want them to understand that it is a thread that runs throughout the fabric of this country, and who we are as a nation and how we operate,” Austin-Hillery said. 

Beyond this, she also hopes to encourage audience members to have conversations about race, rather than avoiding the issue. 

“It’s not just an issue for people of color, but it’s something that we all have to grapple with and understand,” Austin-Hillery said. “Coalescing around it can be a way for us to break barriers. It can be a way for us to bond as a country, and it can be a way for us to heal as a country. … We cannot begin to move forward from the ugly parts of our past until we actually confront it, own it, accept it and embrace it enough to try to move past it.”

She hopes her lecture will eliminate the feeling that individuals cannot take action due to their place in society.

“I really want people to walk away with this understanding of what each one of us can do where we sit,” Austin-Hillery said. “You do not have to be a civil or human rights lawyer. You do not have to be a politician. You don’t have to be someone who’s sitting in Washington … to make a difference.” 

Austin-Hillery believes everyone can take action to make change, even on the community level. 

“There are things that each one of us can do in the communities where we exist to talk about race to help combat systems of discrimination, through your local church, through your local community groups (and) by being engaged with your local schools,” she said.

Human rights issues aren’t limited to any gender, but the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church, Virginia, works specifically to help female immigrant survivors fleeing gender-based violence. Tahirih founder and attorney Layli Miller-Muro believes deeply in the power of spirituality to guide the achievement of human rights.

Miller-Muro will give her lecture, titled “Walking the Spiritual Path with Practical Feet: Operationalizing Human Dignity,” at 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 12, in the Hall of Philosophy.

“A journey that I’ve been on for my whole career is how to apply these spiritual principles with practical feet and how to operationalize them,” Miller-Muro said. “I’ve been doing that primarily in the context of women’s rights and race equality.”

At Tahirih, the human rights issues most commonly brought to them are: human trafficking, female genital mutilation or cutting, domestic violence, child and forced marriage, rape and sexual assault.

Miller-Muro said despite the lack of resources, Tahirih tries to counter overwhelming need by reflecting on stories of past survivors to motivate them. They provide victims with legal support as well as self-defense training.

“There’s a lot of joy that comes from seeing how their lives have been transformed,” Miller-Muro said. “What makes me most happy or satisfied about it is to see how they are in turn, change agents, and how then they go on to end the cycle (of violence).”

When it comes to human rights issues, intentionality plays a big part. Whether with positive or negative connotations, actions are almost always made with intent, Miller-Muro said. 

She said she wants to discuss why people are so bad at treating others with dignity and respect.

“Reason No. 1 is we say it and we don’t believe it,” Miller-Muro said. 

She said this can be seen most clearly in the documents written by the Founding Fathers; these documents say the founders believed in equality, but they didn’t actually mean it.

“What happens when you don’t believe (in respecting people), is you create exceptions in your mind and then put in systems or laws in treatment of people,” Miller-Muro said.

Categorizing or labeling people is the same as demonizing them, she said, and can lead to actions like separating mothers and children at the Mexican border.

“It makes it easy to put them in cages. It is because we’ve dehumanized (them), so it’s easy to do that,” Miller-Muro said. “Frankly, whether we’re talking about people at our border, whether we’re talking about races (or) religions, history has been unkind in its demonization and its attempted extermination of different people based on those labels.”

She said the majority of human rights violations stem from this preconceived notion of how we choose to treat others. Sometimes, she said, people know to treat others well, but they don’t know how. Or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, people don’t want to treat others well, so they don’t.

This leads to microaggressions. Miller-Muro said she lived in a very white community and intentionally moved because of the little things adding to discrimination and alienation.

In her new neighborhood, she was talking to a friend who was a mom of a child in the same school district as Miller-Muro’s children. Her friend lived in low-income housing, but the kids all went to the same school.

“She said, ‘In the three years my kids have gone to school here, they haven’t been invited to one birthday party, and whenever I pick up my kids, the mothers never speak to me,’ ” Miller-Muro said.

This led her friend to move her family to a lower-quality school district so she and her kids would feel comfortable and appreciated.

“It’s the little stuff … none of those mothers probably thought about it,” Miller-Muro said. “None of the kids who didn’t add them to their invite list probably thought about it. But her kids were Brown, her kids didn’t have the same clothes (and) they weren’t on the same soccer teams.”

Miller-Muro said these behaviors lead to a pattern of not being able to connect with people who are different from us, which then leads to alienation.

“Big human rights abuses come from really overt demonization and not believing the principle of ‘treat others as we should treat ourselves,’ ” Miller-Muro said. 

She hopes to give her audience an understanding that all faiths and values teach the same core concept to treat people with kindness.

“There are things we can do to get (human kindness),” Miller-Muro said. “They involve structural changes to address grave human rights abuses, but they also involve small micro moments and tiny decisions every day that can add up to making the world a better place and treating each other with dignity.”