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Morning Lecture Previews

University of Virginia professor Deborah G. Johnson to talk on deepfakes, election misinformation

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University of Virginia Professor Emeritus Deborah G. Johnson believes that reputation is the commodity that wins elections. But this commodity is threatened by deepfakes.

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Deepfakes are a technology that first started appearing online in 2017, in which sophisticated AI technology compiles and studies existing media to fabricate videos depicting specific people, often public figures, doing and saying things that never happened. These deepfakes can be detrimental in an election year, as videos of candidates can be doctored to show things that are what Johnson describes as “unseemly and inappropriate” to deter voters. 

“The thing that worries me the most there, is that if it were done late in the election cycle, even though you might be able to debunk it, if it’s late in the election, there isn’t enough time to get the word out,” Johnson said. “Even if there is enough time, once it’s out there circulating online, you can’t possibly catch every place that it’s been to debunk it.”

Johnson will discuss deepfakes, election security and more in her lecture “Integrity of Cybersecurity and Digital Ethics” at 10:45 a.m. EDT Thursday, July 23, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, as part of the Week Four Chautauqua Lecture Series theme of “The Ethics of Tech: Scientific, Corporate and Personal Responsibility.” 

“First of all, I want to make people aware of the possibility of these deepfakes being out there, and distorting the information that they’re getting,” Johnson said. “Second of all, I wanted to kind of go into some detail about the ethical implications (of) why this is so dangerous and worrisome. I also want to suggest that there are some possibilities and possible strategies for combating the negative effects.”

While Johnson will be discussing the sinister uses of this technology, she acknowledges that deepfakes can be used for good. Johnson believes that this technology can be used for parody and entertainment, historical reenactment, and editing speeches into different languages. 

“The main ethical (dilemma of deepfakes) is deception. But, if it’s not used in a deceptive way, then it’s not necessarily bad,” Johnson said. 

Through the presentation, Johnson said she hopes to inform the audience about deepfake technology so that they can form their own opinions about future policy to regulate or combat it. 

“I want (the audience) to have a kind of healthy dose of skepticism about what they see in media, social media, and other kinds of media — but at the same time, I don’t want them to be so skeptical that they don’t believe anything they see,” Johnson said. “I think we need everybody to be thinking about how to manage these things. I think there are particular policies that we want people to get behind — whether it’s pressuring platforms to look out for deep fakes, ban them, or label them, or other kinds of legislation or policies.”

Johnson began researching and teaching the ethics of tech and engineering in the early 1980s, when she taught philosophy to classes comprised mostly engineering students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At the time, computing was a hot topic that she wove into her lessons to interest her students. She started to notice along the way unaddressed ethical dilemmas in the field, so she began to shape her research and career around the subject.

Even as technology evolved, her approach to ethics did not necessarily change. Johnson said that tech ethics is not based on technology, but rather social values. 

“Trained as a philosopher, you think of ethics and morality as this thing that’s separate from the world, and there’s right and wrong. I think over the years it’s become clearer and clearer to me that it’s about social values more than right and wrong,” Johnson said. “I now realize that you can’t do the ethical issues without really understanding the relationships between technology and society. Technologies are always embedded in some social context. When you’re doing ethics, you’re really navigating the social context as much as the technology.”

This program is made possible by “The Lincoln Ethics Series” funded by the David and Joan Lincoln Family Fund for Applied Ethics and by the Miller-Beggerow Fund in honor of Cornelia Chason Miller.

Carnegie Mellon University scholars to join panel on ethics and tech

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A philosopher, a roboticist, and a literary scholar log onto a livestream …

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It seems like a silly quarantine-inspired joke, but it isn’t. At 10:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday, July 22, on CHQ Assembly Video Platform, three scholars from Carnegie Mellon University will host an interdisciplinary discussion on the ethics of tech. 

Chautauqua Institution will welcome David Danks, Philosophy Department head and L.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy and Psychology; Illah Nourbakhsh, K&L Gates Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies and director of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab; and Jennifer Keating, former Assistant Dean for Educational Initiatives at Dietrich College  — now a Senior Lecturer and Writing Disciplines Specialist at the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh

Danks said that while many universities have scholars who can speak on issues of ethics and tech, CMU is unique in its interdisciplinary approach.

“Carnegie Mellon, as an institution and as a culture, is more interdisciplinary in ways I think run deeper than you find at almost any other university,” Danks said. “It is a culture where we don’t draw divisions of, ‘This is the ethicists’ job, this is the technologists’ job.’ Rather, it is understood that what we’re doing is we’re trying to work collaboratively to produce technology that benefits all. Ethical AI is about the process, not the product. So, it’s absolutely critical you have these kinds of interdisciplinary connections.”

The group will discuss AI in particular, as each member has unique research in that area. Keating and Nourbakhsh wrote the book AI & Humanity, published in March 2020. Along with the book, the two curate a website by the same name that provides teaching points for educators about the increasingly normalized interaction between humans and technology.

The content from the website and book was informed by a multi-year experiment at CMU, where freshman students, from humanities and computer science departments, were put together in seminars on issues of tech’s influence on society. 

While working in administration at the university, Keating developed this class among others as an interdisciplinary approach to society’s most “gnarly” challenges. 

“It makes sense to start thinking about the ways in which our society has responded to other meaningful advances in technology like the steam engine, the cotton gin, the printing press. Those have had broad societal implications,” Keating said. “What have we learned from researchers in history, anthropology, sociology, political science on attending to those advances in technology and how might you refashion some of those questions to attend to this boundary space that we’re navigating currently?”

This project is Keating’s introduction into the world of tech. Previously, she studied culture and literature from places amid strife — in particular, the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In this research, she began to shift her attention to how advancing technology in the military and police force influenced human-to-human relationships, and shaped the decades-long conflict itself. 

“With my own interest in representations of language, veracity and communication, a lot of my considerations on the political effects of language, and people’s relationship to political systems, and how they present that in different fiction or nonfiction forms, really turned into a very rich area of study,” Keating said. 

Nourbakhsh provided the roboticist’s point-of-view in this educational experiment, having spent the last decade studying human-robot collaboration and community-based robotics. 

“(Through the course) I learned that the humanities students can do extraordinarily deep thinking about technology, and its ramifications,” Nourbakhsh said. “A lot of our technology students are also really equipped to study literature, and to use literature, futuring and science fiction to create an understanding of the kind of imagined possible futures that we face.”

The course was designed to teach students a way of interdisciplinary thinking. Nourbakhsh said that many existing social ills are because of a lack of lateral thinking — causing the movers-and-shakers of the world to be too narrow-minded. 

“I think lateral thinking is the only way to solve the complex problems we have in society right now,” Nourbakhsh said. “This is a chance for them to exercise that ability to think laterally, to not just think as a technologist, not just to think as somebody who studies literature and writes science fiction, but to think about how you can use science fiction and rhetoric to advance a narrative to explain to people issues like privacy and surveillance and drone warfare.”

Danks, Keating and Nourbakhsh will replicate this classroom experience in their presentation by utilizing what Nourbakhsh calls “key words” from the field, which can unlock and encourage deeper conversation beyond the presentation. 

Keating said that she hopes that with this newfound mindset and vocabulary, the audience will engage in deeper conversations about technology and its impact on society. 

“I want the audience to feel empowered,” Keating said. “I would love the audience to interact with us — to ask questions, to bring their expertise to the discussion — to feel like technology is not some advancing tidal wave that is going to overtake their lives, but that these really are just tools.” 

After this panel, Danks will present a lecture at 3:30 p.m. EDT on CHQ Assembly on remedying cultural biases in algorithms as a part of the African American Heritage House Lecture Series. 

This program is made possible by “The Lincoln Ethics Series” funded by the David and Joan Lincoln Family Fund for Applied Ethics & the McCredie Family Fund.

Affectiva CEO Rana el Kaliouby to discuss ethics of artificial intelligence, burgeoning field of “Emotion AI”

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As a toddler in Kuwait, Rana el Kaliouby was surrounded by technology. “My dad had one of the first video recorders,” el Kaliouby said. “I would stand on a blue plastic chair, at 3 or 4 years old, and ramble to the camera.” 

When her dad gave el Kaliouby and her sisters an early video game console, she loved it — “but it wasn’t about the game,” she said. It was about bonding with those she played with.

When she grew up, el Kaliouby took this love of connecting through technology and ran with it. She is the author of a recent memoir, Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity by Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology, and the CEO of Affectiva, a pioneer in the field of Emotion Artificial Intelligence. She has always sensed the incredible potential that comes with programs that can read a user’s expression. 

“As it turns out,” she said, “only 10 percent of human communication is verbal. Ninety percent is nonverbal — expressions, gestures. I’m in the business of developing the 90 percent.” 

El Kaliouby will give a virtual lecture on the potentials of Emotion AI and her work at 10:45 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, July 21, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. Her lecture, titled “Humanizing Technology Within AI,” will cover her work to enhance the emotional intelligence of the devices we carry in our pockets every day. Following the lecture will be a live Q-and-A with Institution Vice President and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education Matt Ewalt. Viewers can submit questions through questions.chq.org or on Twitter at #CHQ2020. 

Artificial intelligence is becoming more common — in our cars, our diagnostic healthcare, our hiring practices — but el Kaliouby argues that we have built AI, and technology at large, without regard to making it a more human experience. On a small scale, we may find it difficult to read others’ emotions over texts. On a larger scale, as many schools transition to online learning, translating a positive teaching experience to Zoom or Skype can be hit-or-miss. 

“In a classroom, a great teacher will re-engage you,” she said. “With Emotion AI, you can identify a level of confusion or frustration.” 

There is also a potential to democratize education globally. “Great teachers aren’t always available,” she said. “With programs like Khan Academy or Corsair, (there is an opportunity for) personalization.”

Both the problems of communication and learning are critical to el Kaliouby. 

“If it wasn’t (for) COVID, I’d be there (at Chautauqua),” she said. “I’d have a sense of the audience and be able to adapt in real-time. ‘Oh, are they confused?’ ‘Oh, did they like my joke?’… But in a Zoom webinar, I have no idea how people are engaging.” 

To el Kaliouby, this means a future opportunity to use Emotion AI to graph audience emotions and reactions.

With opportunities, however, there are risks. El Kaliouby outlined two principal possibilities for abuse: unethical development and unethical deployment. Unethical development’s primary risk is the accidental introduction of data and algorithmic bias, leading to situations where the AI might not be able to accurately generalize expressions to women or people of color if the only inputs are the faces of white men. In terms of unethical deployment, el Kaliouby said, “privacy is paramount.” Affectiva’s technology is sometimes sought by governments or companies seeking to use it for shady or malevolent purposes. 

“There are certain industries,” she said, “which we won’t entertain — surveillance, lie detection.” 

It is hard for a company to turn down those profits, which are sometimes in the millions, but el Kaliouby and Affectiva are standing firm in this conviction. She noted that it was important to set those boundaries with technology use, and to present an alternative to perceived inhumanity within the tech industry. 

“As we continue to be catapulted into this virtual universe, how do you make sure you’re leading with emotional intelligence and empathy?” she asked.

Since tech and AI are transforming so many parts of our lives, she said, tech leaders need compasses, and need to embody clear social and moral leadership of their companies. 

“It’s not just about creating cool new tech,” she said. “It’s about fundamentally changing how we communicate with each other (in a responsible way).” 

Developers and users of AI alike must own up to the duty that comes with the possibility.

“We need to humanize technology,” she said, “before it dehumanizes us.” 

This program is made possible by “The Lincoln Ethics Series” funded by the David and Joan Lincoln Family Fund for Applied Ethics and The Kevin and Joan Keogh Family Fund.

Nicholas Thompson to showcase the history of tech and the debates swirling around it

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Routine is important to Nicholas Thompson.

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At 6 a.m., even in the midst of a global pandemic, he wakes before anyone else in his family to go on a run. 

By 7 a.m. he’s making breakfast, and around 8 a.m., he’s at his job. For Thompson, that means working remotely as the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. 

Thompson is forward-thinking. In his capacity as editor-in-chief, he’s published pieces for Wired on how technology helped him to run a faster marathon, how Microsoft is partnering with Land O’Lakes to equip farm cows with sensors to improve yields, as well as multiple stories on the corporate turmoil ravaging Facebook

Even the story of how Thompson became interested in journalism is fascinating: After getting his start writing opinion pieces for his college newspaper, he traveled to Morocco after graduation and was immediately kidnapped by drug dealers.

“I was released; it was fairly innocuous,” said Thompson, a journalist, musician and author. “But I wrote about that experience and other experiences that I had in West Africa, and I was published in The Washington Post. That was fun. So it was a combination of liking traveling, liking talking to people, liking journalism. Journalism is a great job for young people: You get a lot of interesting assignments and responsibilities at a young age.”

At 10:45 a.m. EDT Monday, July 20, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, Thompson will do a deep dive into “The Most Important Story: Science and Technology,” a lecture that will kick off the Chautauqua Lecture Series’ Week Four morning lecture theme: “The Ethics of Tech: Scientific, Corporate and Personal Responsibility.”

“My talk (is going to be) about the biggest debates in tech right now,” he said. “It’s a little bit of the history of the tech industry, and how we ended up where we are at this moment.”

“How” is the operative word there — Thompson said that in his lecture, he intends to both pose and investigate questions like, “How do we think now about how work will change, how artificial intelligence will change? How do we think now about our communications platforms? How do we think now about the trade-offs between security and privacy?” 

That last question is especially relevant, given the COVID-19 pandemic and its ripple effects in the tech industry.

“The big issue — and we’re seeing it less in the United States right now — is contact tracing,” he said. “(It’s) whether not we’re willing to give up location data, whether or not we’re willing to let governments or phone companies track our location and store our location via Bluetooth, in exchange for some help in identifying how the virus spreads, and limiting its spread.”

That’s a big problem, Thompson said, because as “we go through a second wave, and as we go through a response, there’s going to be moments where we have to choose between safety versus privacy, and that’s a big choice.”

On a personal level, the pandemic has brought swift, discordant change to multiple areas of Thompson’s life.

“There’s the question of, ‘How do I manage the staff of Wired?’” he said. “We’ve gone entirely remote. There’s the question of, ‘How do we deal with the new economic realities in journalism?’ There’s the question of me personally — I have three children who don’t have school or camp, and I live with two grandparents who are at high risk for coronavirus.”

It’s the little things that keep him going, despite these radically different realities.

“I try to structure my days to do the best I can with running Wired, and to do the best I can with raising my children,” he said.  

This program is made possible by “The Lincoln Ethics Series” funded by the David and Joan Lincoln Family Fund for Applied Ethics & The Winifred C. Dibert Fund for Chautauqua.

Amid turmoil, Aaron Bryant asks how we can preserve history in real time in lecture

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How will the conflicts of our time be reflected in history books 10 years from now? What about 30?

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What signs, symbols, texts or objects will tell our stories? Who gets to decide that?

Well, Aaron Bryant, for one. 

“We’re very much committed to, at our museum, committed to being a conduit for voices and we just provide a platform for people to share their stories,” said Bryant in a June 2020 interview with Scripps National Correspondent Stephanie Stone. 

The museum to which Bryant is referring is the National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian Institution, where Bryant works as a curator of photography and visual culture.

“Our museum isn’t just about the past, it’s about the present moment and looking towards the future,” he told Stone. “How does history help to inform where we are and where we hope to be for generations to come?”

At 10:45 a.m. EDT Friday, July 17, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, Bryant will seek to answer that question through his lecture titled, “Preserving History In Real Time.” Virtual attendees of the lecture can submit questions at any time for a live Q-and-A after the program. Questions can be sent via the submission portal at www.questions.chq.org from any mobile or desktop browser, or on Twitter, using #CHQ2020.

Part of the challenge for museum curators like Bryant in the year 2020 is how to take advantage of the vast cornucopia of digital photos being taken by protestors and demonstrators. 

“How do we collect cell phone photographs as well as videos of people who are participating in demonstrations or are a part of some transformative event, how do we do that digitally?” Bryant said in his Scripps interview. “Think about a document maybe 10 to 20 years ago. Would you be able to access that document today, floppy disks for example, so if we collect digitally what’s the best way to archive what would be an artifact and how would people access it in the future?”

In a June 2020 interview with NPR, Bryant said he believes that, whether it’s recorded digitally or not, “we live history every day of our lives.”

That’s true for demonstrators taking part in the Black Lives Matter protests across the country, including in front of the White House. 

Bryant said he traveled to Washington, D.C. from Baltimore in order to help document the fence surrounding the White House, which had been converted by protestors into a makeshift exhibit of protest art.

“So we thought it was most important for us to come down here to make sure that 50, 100, 200 years from now, this moment is not forgotten, these voices aren’t forgotten and these stories can be shared for generations,” he told NPR. “And the message that’s on the signs — we can’t forget the message because they represent the voices of the people who helped to shape this history.”

This program is made possible by the Barbara and Herb Keyser Fund.

PBS President Paula Kerger to discuss new project, the redefining of what is means to be an American

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Lin-Manuel Miranda ended his esteemed musical Hamilton with “Who lives, Who dies, Who tells your story?” For Paula Kerger, that series of questions is where her newest story begins.

“I love Hamilton just as much as the next person, because I think it shows us that the importance of authentic media is to pay attention to not only the stories themselves, but the people who have lived those stories,” Kerger said. “If we ever want to get to a place of having an understanding of one another, we need to start listening more — a lot more.”

Kerger, president and chief executive officer of PBS, will speak about “American Portrait” in conversation with Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill at 10:45 a.m. EDT Thursday, July 16, on CHQ Assembly’s Video Platform with a lecture on the Week Three theme, “Art and Democracy.”

“American Portrait” is a national storytelling initiative aimed to define what it means to be an American. To accomplish that, PBS and its partners have gathered photo, video and text submissions from an array of Americans across the nation. The effort also includes stories from PBS Digital Studios that will stream as a companion miniseries, a documentary series inspired by user submissions, live event experiences and educational materials for classrooms across the country. Last off-season, Chautauquans who attended the Winter Village were among the first to engage in this project, with PBS representatives on the grounds to encourage community members to record their own stories.

“‘American Portrait’ was envisioned as being an opportunity, post-election, to get a snapshot of America by getting people to talk about their own individual experiences,” Kerger said. “We proposed questions such as, ‘When I leave my house I feel …’ and, ‘I never thought …’ to have them fill in the blanks.”

We are finding more similarities than we are differences,” Kerger said. “Having people talk about their personal experiences about their families and their lives allows others to see what brings us together, which then allows for a space of unity.”

Though inspired in part by a musical that tells the historic tale of Alexander Hamilton, the project has shifted to tell more modern-day narratives, including ones about COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. Kerger said while it’s a “race to keep up,” some aspects have remained consistent.

“We are finding more similarities than we are differences,” Kerger said. “Having people talk about their personal experiences about their families and their lives allows others to see what brings us together, which then allows for a space of unity.”

More than 200 years after America’s founding, its citizens are still bearing witness to significant, life-shaping and history-making events.

“It’s important for us to be able to look back at this part of our history,” Kerger said. “As someone who lived through 9/11, I know memory changes everything about a moment.”

Kerger, who lectured at Chautauqua once before in 2013, said the conversations she is having for the project mirror those that “happen every year at Chautauqua.” She was originally going to give a solo presentation, but upon recommendation from Hill, decided last-minute to have a conversation with him instead.

“I think he wanted to get in front of an audience and capture some of the conversations we have been having about the intersection of art and democracy for such a long time already,” she said. “I think when you’re in conversation, the topic goes into a richer space.”

Even with the dozens of submissions she has received so far for “American Portrait,” Kerger knows she doesn’t have all of the answers to her questions yet. However, her hope is that the exchange with Hill will fill some of the “empty spaces” in the current American discourse.

“I feel like people are hungry for conversation right now and I think they are paying more attention than ever before,” Kerger said. “American values are shifting and people are reevaluating everything that’s important to them — we need to seize this moment to reach those people.”

This program is made possible by the Berglund-Weiss Lectureship Fund.

Tricia Rose brings Ivy League understanding of racism to the people in “What I’ve Learned Telling the Story of Systemic Racism”

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Born in 1960s’ Harlem and raised in the Bronx, Tricia Rose said her acute awareness of the inequality she saw in reality played out every time she watched kids’ movies.

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“I’ve always had a deep alignment with the underdog, even in Disney movies,” Rose said.

Rose’s work at Brown University intersects at creative storytelling, social justice and inequality, and her most recent project, How Structural Racism Works, is on brand. The public information academic project provides public access to how systemic racism happens in theory and in daily life.

Rose’s Chautauqua lecture, What I’ve Learned Telling the Story of Systemic Racism provides background on this academic endeavor. The lecture will be released at 10:45 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, July 15, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. The audience will be able to submit questions at questions.chq.org or on Twitter with #CHQ2020.

Rose serves in multiple leadership positions at Brown University as Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies, associate dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives, and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. She received an undergraduate degree in sociology from Yale University and her Ph.D. from Brown University in American studies. She serves on boards for the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change and Black Girls Rock, Inc.

She has written several books on the intersection between race and culture, including Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, which was the first academic treatment of the field of hip-hop.

“It’s a weird predecessor for this work (I’m doing now), but it’s a storytelling genre of music that upends stories,” Rose said.

Rose has also written Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy, a collection of oral narrative stories, and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop-And Why It Matters, a followup on the field she founded with her first book.

Rose said her current project is not just about revealing data, but also about revealing the stories people tell about themselves and others.

“For everyday people, the difference between a myth and a story is sometimes nothing,” Rose said.

Myths and stories in any form, through music, culture or art, can also inspire people.

Rose doesn’t care for “indulgent” music when there is “music, art and culture that take human dignity and suffering seriously.”

In the context of 2020, Rose sees the current expression of this suffering in the form of political action — sparked by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police and various incidences of murders recorded on camera — has two sides.

“It has been a challenging year emotionally, physically and psychologically,” Rose said.

But in the midst of tragedies, the national and global response reached a size that no one expected.

“It’s an opportunity to make some meaningful progress, or even tip the whole thing over into something new,” Rose said.

This program is made possible by The Edith B. and Arthur E. Earley Lectureship.

Ford Foundation President Darren Walker to give lecture on art, social justice, philanthropy

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With $600 million, one person can buy 198,675,496 meals. Or, they could attend a public, in-state college for 13,636 years. They could purchase 17,647 brand-new cars or 2,608 median-priced homes in the United States. To most people, $600 million is something they will never see. But, to Darren Walker, it is the amount of money the Ford Foundation will distribute in just one year.

The arts are an essential component of our democracy. Artists have the power to help us reimagine a more just society,” Walker said. “Right now, they are on the front lines with protestors fighting for equality and dignity. The arts can lead us forward, help our communities heal, and bring us together to bridge real divides. Now, in this time of unprecedented crisis, is the time to invest in and support the arts and artists.”

Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, sees his role in philanthropy as a way to remedy class disparities in the world. It is a way to give resources, and even a voice to those in need. To Walker, philanthropy is social justice.

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At 10:45 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 14, on CHQ Assembly, Walker will speak about how philanthropy and social justice fit into the week’s theme of “Art and Democracy.” 

“The arts are an essential component of our democracy. Artists have the power to help us reimagine a more just society,” Walker said. “Right now, they are on the front lines with protestors fighting for equality and dignity. The arts can lead us forward, help our communities heal, and bring us together to bridge real divides. Now, in this time of unprecedented crisis, is the time to invest in and support the arts and artists.”

The Ford Foundation has awarded grants to a number of arts-based projects since Walker became president in 2016, including to the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, Ballet Hispánico, Mississippi Museum of Art, and more.

In his leadership, Walker has worked to specifically support artists from marginalized or underrepresented communities in the art world. According to The New York Times, Walker sold the Ford Foundation’s blue chip art collection to purchase hundreds of works from female artists and artists of color. 

Walker serves on the boards for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the National Gallery of Art, Carnegie Hall, and more. Walker co-chairs the New York City Mayoral Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers. 

Matt Ewalt, Institution vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, said that Walker’s philanthropic history and interest in art made him a great fit to speak at the Institution.

“Through his leadership at the Ford Foundation, and the investments of the foundation toward advancing human dignity, Darren Walker continues to demonstrate how the arts connect us and challenge us to be and do more, to demonstrate why we must invest in the arts, and, ultimately, to make clear how the arts are critical to our democracy,” Ewalt said. 

This program is made possible by the Dr. Edwin Prince Booth Memorial Fund. 

Anna Deavere Smith to use blend of lecture, theater to explore issues of social inequality

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Anna Deavere Smith believes in not casting people aside, especially when it comes to students in the nation’s public schools. 

“A lot of things that a (Black, brown or Native American) kid might do in school that a white kid would do, too, would be called mischief,” said Smith, a nationally renowned playwright and actress, in a February 2018 interview on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “Poor kids get pathologized and sent to jail. It really starts with expulsions and suspensions. That cycle of mass incarceration destroys communities and families and everything else.”

Notes from the Field, a 2015 one-woman play written and performed by Smith, is based on issues surrounding race, class and America’s school-to-prison pipeline, and uses more than 200 interviews Smith conducted with students and teachers caught up in the pipeline as its framework.

“My plays usually start with outrage and then they go to a sort of mourning, and then they usually end up with love or forgiveness,” she told Maher. “I play Congressman John Lewis; he ends the play. After this whole play of seeing violent acts … I try to bring it all home with acts of courage.”

One such courageous act that Smith highlighted was that of Bree Newsome Bass, a Black activist who was arrested after climbing a flagpole to remove a Confederate flag in 2015.

“I think to tell the stories of this country you have to tell it through the voices of many people, not just one race and not just one gender,” she said on “Real Time.”

Smith will continue exploring elements of her own artistic expression, as well as addressing the issues of the current moment, in her lecture titled “Community, Character, Diversity” at 10:45 a.m. EDT on Monday, July 13, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. Her presentation opens a week centered on the theme of “Art and Democracy.”

“In her singular art form, Anna Deavere Smith demonstrates the power of art and artmaking as a catalyst for change,” said Vice President and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education Matt Ewalt. “Professor Smith will open our week reflecting on the theme of art and democracy through her unique blend of lecture and theater, exploring issues of racism and social inequality in ways only possible through her art.”

Though a live performance on the Amphitheater stage is not possible, as it was for Smith in the past, her lecture will take place virtually.

“We’ve provided Professor Smith with the theme and a ‘studio in a box,’ as she’ll film her presentation at her home in Los Angeles and then join us live for a moderated Q&A,” he said.

This program is made possible by the Boyle Family Lectureship Fund & the Lewis Miller Memorial Fund.

Derek Thompson of ‘The Atlantic’ to discuss the future beyond COVID-19 pandemic

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For Derek Thompson, landing a job at The Atlantic was “like winning the lottery. I was so lucky, and remain lucky. The Atlantic is a uniquely wonderful place to be able to think and write about the world.” 

Thompson joined The Atlantic in 2009, during the economic recession that ushered in Barack Obama’s time at the White House. That first year, Thompson wrote about government spending and the tanking labor market. Now, 11 years later and with one book behind him, a new catastrophe has focused his reporting — that of COVID-19. 

Thompson will highlight his vision of post-pandemic life in his lecture titled “How COVID-19 is Reshaping Our World,” at 10:45 a.m. EDT on Friday, July 10, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform

“(Thompson) is doing some remarkable work for The Atlantic right now,” said Vice President and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education Matt Ewalt. “When we originally confirmed the lecture, we were interested in the themes he explores in his book Hit Makers … (but) over the past few months, as the world changed, his work in particular on COVID-19 provided an opportunity for us to pivot and close our week and ask: What does the future look like post-COVID?”

Ewalt says that the shift in lecture content occurred almost simultaneously with the shift that Chautauqua Institution underwent to go online. 

“One of our first questions was about weekly themes that we’d confirmed a year and a half ago. We could have set the themes aside,” he said, “but instead, we realized that our current moment brought even more urgency” to these topics. COVID provided a new lens to view the chosen themes, as was the case with Thompson’s lecture.

“Whatever the true cause for our failure (to combat COVID-19),” Thompson wrote in a recent op-ed, “when I look at the twin catastrophes of this annus horribilis, the plague and the police protests, what strikes me is that America’s safekeeping institutions have forgotten how to properly see the threats of the 21st century and move quickly to respond to them.” Thompson’s lecture will envision not only this failure, but a glimpse of what could exist beyond that failing.

Thompson’s writing on economics and pop culture long intrigued Chautauqua Lecture Series planners like Ewalt, and the original plan was for Thompson to discuss these underlying currents. “Yet it’s a testament to his work,” said Ewalt, “that we find ourselves shifting from a lecture that likely would have been lighter, to a really serious examination of the longer ramifications of COVID-19 on our way of life.” 

Thompson said he loves “writing about the invisible forces that move the world,” and that economics is “not the only one.” 

Ewalt said that the lecture, which closes Week Two’s theme of “Forces Unseen: What Shapes Our Daily Lives,” is a good note to end on. 

“(Thompson’s) is not the only lecture that will address COVID,” he said, “but it’s a good way to close the week and look to the future.”

This program is made possible by The Reginald and Elizabeth Lenna Lectureship in Business and Economics.

Joan Donovan To Talk About Media Manipulation and Online Extremism

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Donovan

After the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019, many news agencies reported on the shooter’s philosophies, rather than the victims’ stories. The attacks were streamed live on Facebook, and social media platforms were roundly criticized for not reacting fast enough to stop the spread of that material.

For Joan Donovan, whose work focuses on online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns, the platforms’ responses meant that “we need to rethink what it means to talk about these issues,” as she told Global News. “We need to shift the conversation to understanding exactly how much Islamophobia is on all of these major broadcast platforms, and we need to listen to the stories of people who are getting harassed and silenced because they’re talking about their religion or sexuality online.”

Donovan is the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and leads The Technology and Social Change Project. At 10:45 a.m. EDT Thursday, July 9, she will present her lecture, “On Media Manipulation and Online Extremism,” on CHQ Assembly. This will be the fourth presentation in Week Two’s theme for the Chautauqua Lecture Series: “Forces Unseen: What Shapes Our Daily Lives.” After the lecture, Shannon Rozner, chief of staff and vice president of strategic initiatives for Chautauqua, will serve as moderator for a live Q-and-A. 

Donovan and the TaSC team also produce the “Meme War Weekly” newsletter and the “BIG, If True” webinar series. The prior discusses “political messaging that comes from the wilds of the internet,” such as how the alt-right uses the internet to spread their manifestos. The latter brings in experts in communication, cybersecurity and other fields to delve into how misinformation is spread across different platforms.

“At a time in which disinformation regarding COVID-19 is prevalent,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, “and at the same time we see the impact of rumor and speculation that Black Lives Matter demonstrations are being orchestrated by ‘antifa,’ Dr. Donovan’s voice is even more critical for our understanding what forces are at work and how we as individuals navigate this landscape.”

Donovan recently spoke with the Associated Press about the shift that many “ReOpen” Facebook groups have undergone in recent weeks; previously a breeding ground for COVID-19 disinformation and conspiracy theories, those groups are now attacking protesters in the Black Lives Matter movement. 

“Unless Facebook is actively looking for disinformation in those spaces, they will go unnoticed for a long time, and they will grow,” she told the AP. “Over time, people will drag other people into them, and they will continue to organize.”

This program is made possible by The Robert Jacobs Memorial Lectureship Fund.

Black List founder Franklin Leonard to outline how unseen forces in Hollywood lead to box-office hits that shape society

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“Spotlight.” “Argo.” “The King’s Speech.” “Manchester by the Sea.” Aside from all being Oscar Award-winning movies, they all have another thing in common: They never would have made it to the box office without Franklin Leonard’s Black List.

Leonard, founder and CEO of the Black List, will speak at 10:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday, July 8, on CHQ Assembly’s Video Platform with a lecture on the Week Two theme, “Forces Unseen: What Shapes Our Daily Lives.”

Leonard grew up in West Central Georgia, a self-described movie junkie and “Black nerd of the Deep South.”

“I have always loved movies,” Leonard said. “It was my primary social outlet, in part because I didn’t have much of a social life when I was a kid. My dad was in the army, so I moved about every 11 months for the first eight years of my life. Movies were everywhere though — movies were consistent.” 

One thing sticks out about the hundreds of movies he watched back then: A lack of representation; the absence of Franklin Leonards in a sea of Steven Spielbergs and Michael Bays. 

“It never, ever occurred to me that I could work in the film industry,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone who had. There were no models for it, or anyone who looked like me or came from where I came from.”

After graduating from Harvard with a degree in social political theory, Leonard would take a job in communications, moving on to write a weekly column for the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. After his third post-grad job as a business analyst for a management consulting firm, he would make a “hard right turn” into Los Angeles in 2003, working as a motion picture literary assistant. 

“I wasn’t happy with the work I was doing right out of college, so I decided to just let myself go full force into what I had always had a passion for,” Leonard said.

His first decade in Hollywood would include stretches at John Goldwyn Productions, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella’s Mirage Enterprises, Universal Pictures, Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company, Appian Way Productions, where he worked as a script reader. 

“My job, really, was finding good material that we could turn into movies,” he said. “I always felt like I was doing a very bad job at that and needed a more efficient process to do it better.” 

Enter the Black List — a list of producers’ favorite unproduced screenplays and the main unseen force Leonard will hone in on during his lecture — which started with an idea so “obvious,” he said, he couldn’t believe it didn’t already exist. All it took was a series of emails in 2005, in which Leonard would ask producers and peers to give him great screenplays they had read but ultimately passed on. He put those results into a pivot table and the first Black List was created.

While the idea seemed simple, the results proved the concept filled a gap in the industry. That first list in 2005 included “Juno,” the first Fox Searchlight film to surpass $100 million at the box office, and Academy Award-nominated “Lars and the Real Girl.” Since then, Leonard has published the Black List annually as a survey of over 250 film executives on the best screenplays they’ve read that have yet to be produced. 

“I have always hoped the list has provided greater access to talented writers in the industry and I also hope it has allowed the industry to better recognize the contribution of writers to the value chain of a movie,” he said. “I think that prior to the Black List and even still, the aggregate contribution of writers remains grossly undervalued, which is something I plan to include in my talk.”

The numbers and awards that Black List selections have accumulated throughout the years raises an important question: If the movies on the list are consistently successful, why do they get passed off initially?

“The assumptions that Hollywood makes about what kind of movies are commercially viable are not automatically accurate,” Leonard said. “Hollywood is an opaque industry, very much by design. I worry about overexplaining that in my lecture, but it is really important for people to understand the system in which movies exist.”

The system is complicated, he said. It’s not enough to feature a Black lead or queer character. To Leonard, box-office hits like “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians” do not directly indicate the industry is changing its ways. In his words, these films are continuations of a truth about inclusion, not an up-and-coming trend.

“Movies about people of color, about women, about the queer community, have always been just as likely to make money as movies about straight white men,” Leonard said. “The issue was not their ability to make money — the issue was the people making decisions about both whether they could or how they should be supported in the marketplace.” 

Ultimately, Leonard believes what is seen on the big screen has “a great deal of unseen forces” that affect a viewer long after a film is finished. According to him, movies change the way people “see the world” around them. 

“There are many unseen forces that go into the things that we see, and those things catalyze unseen forces that have great consequences for our lives,” he said. “What we see determines how we see the world. The failures the industry has historically had on a number of fronts have defined the way most of us see the world, and the consequences of that in every aspect of our lives can be catastrophic.”

What kind of consequences?

“Literally every single cultural failure that we are experiencing right now,” Leonard said.

This program is made possible by The Crawford N. and May Sellstrom Bargar Lectureship In Business and Economics & the Robert S. Bargar Memorial Lectureship.

Former police chief and member of Obama-era task force Cedric Alexander to speak on police reform and systemic racism

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Alexander

In a time that many consider one of great unrest, Cedric Alexander hopes to build trust and community through systemic reform.

Alexander will discuss systemic racism and the need for police reform in the United States with Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill to open Week Two of the Chautauqua Lecture Series, centering on the theme “Forces Unseen: What Shapes Our Daily Lives.” The lecture will be available at 10:45 a.m. EDT Monday, July 6, on CHQ Assembly.

Alexander is the former chief of police in DeKalb County, Georgia, former president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and former member of President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. He is also the author of In Defense of Public Service: How 22 Million Government Workers Will Save Our Republic, his recently released book on what he calls “the fourth branch” of the government — the sector of government workers throughout the country — which he plans to discuss during his lecture. 

A strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, Alexander considers the current moment an especially important time for police reform. 

“We have an environment where people of color in this country do not feel safe as it relates to the police,” Alexander said. “It is painful for me to hear that.”

He plans to address this issue during his discussion with Hill, and looks forward to the opportunity to start dialogue. 

“We need to listen to citizens when they tell us they feel unsafe,” Alexander said. “It is important that we start to rebuild the trust and legitimacy of the police.”

Alexander has appeared in front of Congress several times to testify on facial recognition technology and crime mapping, among other topics. He has been an outspoken advocate for the creation of a national database of “police officers who have stepped out of bounds,” as well as more intensive police training and accountability. 

In 2014, Obama created the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, to which he appointed Alexander. White House officials said the group’s creation was part of an effort by the Obama administration to strengthen trust between law enforcement and citizens, something Alexander has spent much of his career supporting. 

“The police is the community and the community is the police,” Alexander said. “It is the responsibility of the government on all levels to create legislation and begin reforms to rebuild this community.”

This program is made possible by the June and Albert Bonyor Lectureship Fund.

Geoffrey Kemp and Barbara Bodine to address water scarcity in Middle East

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Kemp & Bodine

As the world experiences climate change, countries in the Middle East face a looming issue that offers no perfect solution: water scarcity. 

“The Middle East faces numerous climate problems, but none is more troubling than the scarcity of freshwater,” said Geoffrey Kemp, senior director of Regional Security Programs at the Center for National Interest and former security advisor to President Ronald Reagan. “Water is more valuable than oil, and has never been more relevant than it is today.”

Kemp will be joined by Ambassador (ret.) Barbara Bodine, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University for a discussion on climate change and water scarcity in the Middle East at 10:45 a.m. EDT Friday, July 3, on CHQ Assembly for the annual Middle East Update. The presentation will be followed by a Q-and-A session where viewers can share their inquiries. 

Bodine plans to share her first-hand experience of life in the Persian Gulf region to illustrate this issue for an American audience. Bodine served as the United States ambassador to Yemen from 1997 to 2001. She knows first-hand the role that water plays in not just daily chores, but in culture.

“(Water) has always had a particular venerate in Middle East culture,” Bodine siad. “It is a gift from God. A lot of the Quran talks about the water given to man by God. They also consider it a common good: Water belongs to no person.”

Most Middle East countries lack a freshwater source. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have turned to their Persian Gulf access to extract salt from seawater in a process called desalinization as a substitute for freshwater. However, Bodine said that this process is not sustainable in the long run. 

“They are on a vicious cycle, because the thing about desalination plans that people don’t think about is when you have to desalinate water, what do you do with the salt? What they do is they dump it right back into the Gulf,” Bodine said. “They turn around and desalinate that water, and they dump salt back in.”

Some countries turn to freshwater aquifers in underground pockets. But, much like fossil fuels, these water supplies will one day run dry. Additionally, Bodine said the cost of oil to run the machinery to access the water begins to add up. 

Yemen is uniquely impacted by this water crisis. Since the beginning of a civil war in 2014, much of the country’s infrastructure has been reduced to rubble by airstrikes and armed conflict. A reported 80% of the population is highly vulnerable to the effects of war such as waterborne illness, famine, and most recently the spread of COVID-19.

Since the conflict began, the Yemeni people have struggled with access to clean water. In recent years, unclean water led to the largest outbreak of cholera in recorded history. This, among other factors, has led to the UN declaring the societal state of Yemen the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world

Bodine pointed out that the country’s population is more concentrated in the mountain highlands as opposed to the coastline, in contrast to Saudi Arabia and UAE that have major urban centers on the Gulf. The process of desalinating Gulf water is, therefore, not cost effective for this nation. Bodine said that unlike their neighbors, Yemen does not have the seemingly endless pool of resources to carry out aquifer water production. 

“Yemen is a totally different case (than other Gulf states) with a large population, no natural water — apart from aquifers — and a civil war,” Kemp said. “Yemenis have to keep digging down into the ground to get water from historic aquifers. It comes to the surface, and much of it is used for agriculture. The deeper they go, the more expensive it is for the oil they have to import to manage these wells. And at some point, they will run out (of water).”

While Middle Eastern countries lack access to freshwater, climate change presents the risk of sea levels rising and destroying much of these countries’ assets. Much of this land is at sea level, leaving it susceptible.

“If you look at all the major cities like Jeddah, Kuwait City, on and on — they are all right smack dab on the coast,” Bodine said. “(Their location has) an advantage for desalination, and a marked disadvantage if sea levels rise.”

Bodine said that as salt water rises, it contaminates the soil around it — so even as it retreats, the soil is too salty for agriculture. If the gulf waters rise too far, it will infiltrate major urban centers and the institutions that define these countries: financial centers, industrial centers, and locations of dense populations. 

Climate change has already affected the region with a rise in natural disasters. In 2015, Yemen was hit back-to-back with two tropical cyclones

“Just to compound it further, as climate changes, rain changes. Rain patterns, weather patterns, cyclone patterns, drought patterns — this can all have an impact elsewhere, which will reverberate back to the Middle East,” Bodine said. 

With pressures on basic needs, Middle East nations risk conflict with each other, or within. Take the Arab Spring, Bodine said.

“There were many root causes to the Arab Spring, but one of them was that there had been some significant droughts around the world. The cost of food, particularly basic foodstuffs like wheat and rice, shot up dramatically,” Bodine said. “You do a significant change in the cost of food, and you have political instability. 

Many Middle Eastern people flee their homes because of food scarcity and the insecurity of basic need, and Bodine said that is why many seek refuge in places like Europe.

“Just as our folks during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl — what did they do? They picked up and moved,” Bodine said. “It’s not different any place else in the world that water becomes a driver of instability, of migration, of political conflict.”

Kemp noted that the issue of climate change and water scarcity is present, but not immediately dire. 

“No country, not even Yemen, faces an imminent depletion of fresh water to the point where people won’t have it. It’s a long-term problem,” Kemp said. “But, the longer the problem remains unaddressed, the more expensive it will be to fix, particularly in a crisis, as climate change gets worse.” 

Both Kemp and Bodine hope to further the audience’s understanding of the Middle East through this year’s MEU. They hope to give a nuanced look at issues inflicting the region, as opposed to the views Bodine said many Americans have.

“We tend to reduce the various components of the Middle East to very simple, almost cartoonish ideas of who they are and what they are and how they are connected to us, and how we are connected to them,” Bodine said. “To come away with a better appreciation of how it’s all interwoven would be the message I hope people would come away from the talk having heard.”

This program is made possible by Beverly and Bruce Conner Endowment for Education & The Ethel Paris and Theodore Albert Viehe Lectureship.

Christiana Figueres to stress the urgency of climate change response in a COVID world

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Figueres

Long before Christiana Figueres spearheaded the 2015 Paris Agreement as U.N. Executive Secretary for the U.N.’s Climate Change Convention, she was a teenager admiring Costa Rica’s endangered golden toad in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. She hoped to bring her kids to see the toad one day.

She never had a chance. Her second daughter was born the same year the last golden toad was seen in 1989

The rare toad’s extinction shook Figueres into action to reverse humans’ effect on the environment.

“If I have witnessed an extinction in my short lifetime,” Figueres said, then there must be a higher rate of extinction than she initially thought.

Figueres will discuss how the global coronavirus pandemic has compounded the need to address climate change solutions — solutions that are within reach — during a special presentation for the Chautauqua Lecture Series. Titled “The State of Global Environmental Action,” it will be broadcast at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday, July 2, on CHQ Assembly’s Virtual Porch. She will be in conversation with Tom Rivett-Carnac as co-founders of their joint enterprise Global Optimism, which drives civilians and leaders alike to see and act on positive mindsets toward reversing climate change. Rivett-Carnac also served as Figueres’ special advisor while she served as executive secretary.

Both the time and location for the program have changed; according to Vice President and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education Matt Ewalt, this move gives Chautauquans more opportunity to engage with Figueres following her conversation filmed earlier this week with Rivett-Carnac, and accommodates both speakers’ time zones. Figueres is based in Costa Rica and Rivett-Carnac is in London.

Figueres had grown up attending political events with her parents, who were major political leaders in Costa Rica. Her father, three-time President José Figueres Ferrer, served three terms in the presidency while her mother, Karen Olsen Beck, served in the Legislative Assembly and as Costa Rican ambassador to Israel.

Figueres’ own career began in 1982 as minister counselor at the Costa Rican Assembly in Bonne, Germany, thanks to her educational background and ability to speak German. She later moved into the role of director of international cooperation in Costa Rica’s Ministry of Planning, and was named chief of staff to the Minister of Agriculture.

In 1995, she moved to the United States and served in Costa Rica’s climate change negotiating team while founding the nonprofit Center for Sustainable Development of the Americas that same year. She created opportunities for Latin American countries to actively participate in the Climate Change Convention by creating national climate change programs in Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, while also working to ensure each program’s establishment. She also advised governments and private companies alike on climate-related business decisions.

In 2001, National Geographic magazine awarded her with the Hero for the Planet Award.

She wasn’t done.

In 2010, she was elected Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She led the construction of the first Paris Agreement in 2015, which called for all signing countries to counter the expected 2 degrees Celsius global rise in temperature by reducing emissions in their own countries by 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Figueres’ stamp is still all over the Paris Agreement. “Affordable, scalable solutions are now available to enable countries to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies,” states the United Nations’ description for why the Paris Agreement is still an ongoing priority.

Figueres said these solutions are already in motion.

“The world is decarbonizing,” Figueres said. “This technology is dropping in price without the volatile prices like the gas sector has. It’s so much more user-friendly, it’s less risky and will continue to grow. It’s not going to be stopped by politics.”

The current U.S. administration pulled out of the most recent version of the Paris Agreement in November 2019. To date, the United States is the only country to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. A month prior to the U.S. withdrawal, the BBC reported that the United States and Brazil had pledged a $100m (£80m) biodiversity conservation fund for the Amazon led by the private sector, which was coupled with a prioritized agreement to actually promote private-sector development in the Amazon. At the time this was reported, over 80,000 fires had erupted throughout the Amazon that year.

But Figueres is not worried about any individual country’s politics dragging down global progress.

“You cannot debate science. The only thing that will change is the granularity in science,” Figueres said. Political sway in individual countries like the United States “doesn’t change where we’re heading.”

Figueres did note that parts of the United States still ally with the rest of the world.

“(Within the United States), states, especially in the east and west, truly do understand what’s going on,” Figueres said. “Sixty percent of the U.S. economy continues to decarbonize. The private sector understands that this is a difficulty in the White House, but it is not a permanent feature.”

In the meantime, Figueres said that the European Union and China, while implementing climate change response needs into existing economic goals — like China’s Belt and Road initiative (also known as the New Silk Road) — are leading international efforts for funding solutions, and consider climate change to be an economic crisis of its own. The focus is on creating long-lasting jobs, products and services that respond to climate change response needs.

Figueres said the international community will do whatever it takes to fulfill those needs, and are “borrowing trillions of dollars to make it happen. And these countries have no intention of paying (back the debt). Future generations are going to be saddled with this debt. And if this generation is going to saddle this debt, it better be one that’s worth it for your future.”

This program is made possible by The Walter L. & Martha Tinkham Miller Fund.

Katharine Wilkinson to Discuss Questions of Climate Change, What it Means to be Human on a Changing Planet

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During President George W. Bush’s second term, Katharine Wilkinson noticed people were talking past each other, not to each other, about climate change — even when they shared a lot of the same concerns.

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Wilkinson

As she grappled with this, she found others with a similar attitude though the The Evangelical Climate Initiative Launch. This organization had bought a full page ad in The New York Times that stated, “Our commitment to Jesus Christ compels us to solve the global warming crisis,” and it was signed by many high-profile evangelical leaders.

“I just was like ‘Where did this come from?’” Wilkinson said. “I had been thinking about this intersection, but it totally surprised me.”

The ad motivated her to continue studying evangelical engagement on climate change, eventually getting a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford and writing Between God and Green: How Evangelicals Are Cultivating a Middle Ground on Climate Change, which delved into the relationship between modern religion and the climate change movement. 

For her lecture at 10:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday, July 1, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, she wants to grapple with questions like what it means to be human on a changing planet; how society can be radically reshaped to come back into balance with the planet’s living system; and how the task at hand — her lecture title is “How to Reduce Greenhouse Gases” — can be addressed rapidly. Her lecture is part of Week One: “Climate Change: Prioritizing Our Global and Local Response.”

“In a lot of ways, the lecture is kind of my effort at mapmaking, as sort of a cartography of this moment that we find ourselves in. … I think (these times) can be really confusing and really hard to make sense of,” she said.

Wilkinson’s climate change journey began when she was 16 and spent a semester living in the woods at The Outdoor Academy in the Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina. As one of 25 students, she awakened to the challenges facing the planet, and learned what it meant to be part of the solution.

“I kind of carried that fire in the belly back home to Atlanta (and) with me through high school, and then I got even more deeply engaged in both study, (and) also activism as an undergraduate student,” Wilkinson said. “It just kind of kept snowballing from there.”

As an undergraduate, she majored in religion, and two of her professors also taught in her field and environmental studies. The intersections in her college classes between religion and the environment excited Wilkinson.

“My undergraduate adviser actually had a (saying) that specialization is for insects,” she said. “And I have kind of been a hopeless interdisciplinary on my winding path.”

This winding path brought her to research the connection between climate and gender, and the realization that the impacts of climate change are not gender-neutral. Wilkson said that women and girls, particularly those of color, those who are indigenous or who live in poor, rural areas, are impacted first and worst by climate change. Women and girls are more likely to die, be injured in a natural disaster, or be vulnerable to sex trafficking; and often bear the burdens of gathering firewood, water and growing food. 

In addition to her work with gender and religion, Wilkinson also works on researching the connection with leadership and climate change. Wilkinson said that transformational leadership comes from women and girls in the climate movement.

She is co-editing an anthology of writing by women climate leaders, to be released in September, titled All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. Contributing writers include a diverse group — from strategists and scientists to teenage activists and grandmothers from across the United States.

“It’s this wonderful kind of patchwork quilt,” Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson and her co-editor, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, are including poetry and visual art in the anthology as well, to connect readers to the climate crisis both emotionally and spiritually.

“We need to have ways to come to this topic with our heads, but also with our hearts and, and ultimately with our hands,” Wilkinson said. “It’s a collection that is super accessible and also really welcoming. Because, to change everything, it’s going to take everyone. And we really need the largest and strongest team possible.”

This program is made possible by the David and Wendy Barensfeld Lectureship.

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