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Lecture Platform



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Each weekday during the Chautauqua season (June 26-August 29, 2010) at 10:45 a.m., the Amphitheater stage becomes a platform for distinguished scientists, authors, educators and other experts in such fields as national and international affairs, arts and humanities, business and the environment. Ideas and opinions are exchanged in an open, challenging atmosphere, and Chautauqua's knowledgeable audiences have the opportunity to participate in question-and-answer sessions at the conclusion of the lectures.


Theme: Roger Rosenblatt and More Friends
Week One - June 28-July 2

In a reprise of 2008’s “Week 3”, Chautauqua’s most popular week ever, Roger Rosenblatt returns with even more friends for another week-long conversation and celebration of the literary arts. Humor, pathos, new worlds are here to explore, with some of today’s most prominent authors, interviewed by a master at getting to the heart of the story.

MON 28
Jim Lehrer

TUE 29
Alice McDermott
WED 30
Alan Alda

THU 1
Anne Fadiman

FRI 2
Marsha Norman



Monday, June 28
Jim Lehrer
executive editor and anchor, "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer"

Jim Lehrer

Jim Lehrer, executive editor and anchor of “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” the Emmy Award-winning PBS news show, is author of 19 novels, two memoirs and three plays. His most recent novel, Oh Johnny, was published in April 2009.

Mack to the Rescue, published in April 2008, is the seventh in Lehrer’s successful series of novels featuring a fictional lieutenant governor of Oklahoma. Other recent novels include Eureka, The Phony Marine, No Certain Rest and The Special Prisoner. Lehrer’s plays include "Chili Queen," "Church Key Charlie Blue" and "The Will and Bart Show." His memoirs are We Were Dreamers and A Bus of My Own.

Lehrer’s long-term partnership with Robert MacNeil began in 1973 when they provided continuous live coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings, broadcast on PBS. In 1975, the half-hour “Robert MacNeil Report” premiered with Lehrer as the Washington correspondent. Over the next seven years, “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report” won more than 30 awards for journalistic excellence. The 1995-96 season marked the 20th year of their journalistic odyssey, as well as MacNeil's departure and Lehrer's stewardship of the program in its current incarnation. MacNeil and Lehrer have both been inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

Lehrer has served as a frequent moderator of nationally televised presidential debates in the last five presidential elections.

Tuesday, June 29
Alice McDermott
author, Charming Billy and After This

Jim Lehrer

In an illustrious career spanning three decades, acclaimed author Alice McDermott has earned two Pulitzer Prize nominations and numerous other awards. She was a 1998 Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle author for Charming Billy, which won the National Book Award for fiction. Her latest novel, After This, a Pulitzer finalist, has been widely praised for its sparing but poignant portrait of a Long Island family’s struggles to deal with the death of its eldest son in Vietnam.

McDermott’s fifth book, Child of My Heart, was a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, one of Book Magazine’s Ten Best Novels of 2002 and a nominee for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Charming Billy was honored with the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. McDermott’s other novels are At Weddings and Wakes, A Bigamist’s Daughter and That Night, her other Pulitzer finalist.

McDermott’s articles, reviews and stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Redbook, Ms. and Commonweal. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and the 2008 Corrington Award for Literature. Currently, she is the Richard A. Macksey Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Wednesday, June 30
Alan Alda
actor/writer/director

Alan Alda

Alan Alda has the distinction of being nominated for an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy—as well as publishing a bestselling book—all in the same year (2005). His Emmy nomination was for his role on NBC’s “The West Wing.” His Tony nomination that year was for his role in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's “Glengarry Glen Ross.” On film that year, Alda appeared in Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator,” for which he received an Academy Award nomination and for which he was also nominated for a British Academy Award.

Alda has earned international recognition as an actor, writer and director. His films include “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Everyone Says I Love You,” “Flirting With Disaster,” “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” “And The Band Played On,” as well as “The Seduction of Joe Tynan,” which he wrote, and “The Four Seasons,” “Sweet Liberty,” “A New Life” and “Betsy’s Wedding,” all of which he wrote and directed.

Alda played Hawkeye Pierce on the classic television series “M*A*S*H,” and wrote and directed many of the episodes. His 33 Emmy nominations include performances in 2009 for “30 Rock,” in 2006 for “West Wing” (winning his 6th Emmy), and in 1999 for “ER.”

In 1994 Alda was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. He hosted the award-winning series Scientific American Frontiers on PBS for 11 years, interviewing leading scientists from around the world. In January 2010, he will host the PBS series “The Human Spark,” in which he will interview dozens of scientists, searching for answers to the question: What is it that makes us human? Alda was presented with the National Science Board’s Public Service Award in 2006 for his efforts in helping to broaden the public’s understanding of science.

On Broadway, he has appeared as the physicist Richard Feynman in the play “QED.” He starred in the first American production of the international hit play “ART.” In addition to his nomination for “Glengarry,” he was also nominated for the Tony Award for his performances in Neil Simon's “Jake’s Women” and the musical “The Apple Tree.”

His first memoir Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I’ve Learned became a New York Times bestseller, as did his second: Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.

Thursday, July 1
Anne Fadiman
author, essayist, editor, teacher

Anne Fadiman

Anne Fadiman is an award-winning author, essayist, editor and teacher. Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which chronicles the intersecting experiences of a Hmong child with epilepsy, her family, and the medical community of Merced, Calif., won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award.

As the inaugural Francis Writer in Residence, Yale University’s first endowed appointment in nonfiction writing, Fadiman serves as both a professor in the English department and a mentor to students considering careers in writing or editing.

Her best-selling essay collection Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader is a book entirely about books — from the purchasing of them, to the reading of them, to the handling of them (always write in the margins; go ahead and crack the spines; pay no mind if you drop crumbs between the pages; shelve American literature alphabetically by author, English literature chronologically).

For seven years Fadiman edited The American Scholar, the venerable literary quarterly. Her essays and articles have appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker and The New York Times, among many other publications. She has won National Magazine Awards for both reporting and essays. She is the editor of both the 2003 edition of The Best American Essays and Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love. An essay collection, At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays, was published in 2007.

Friday, July 2
Marsha Norman
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

Marsha Norman

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman is the co-director of the Playwrights Program at The Juilliard School, where she has served on the faculty since 1994. She was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Hull-Warriner, and Drama Desk awards for 'Night Mother; 1992 Tony Award and Drama Desk Awards for The Secret Garden; John Gassner Medallion, Newsday Oppenheimer Award, and the American Theater Critics Association Citation for Getting Out.

Norman’s other plays include Third and Oak: The Laundromat, The Poolhall, The Holdup, Traveler in the Dark, Sarah and Abraham, Loving Daniel Boone, and Trudy Blue. Her published work includes Four Plays and a novel, The Fortune Teller. Television and film credits include Face of a Stranger, starring Gena Rowlands and Tyne Daley. She has received grants and awards from NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She serves on council of the Dramatists Guild.


Theme: The Ethics of Leadership
Week Two - July 5-9

What constitutes leadership? When one is designated a “leader,” what are the particular obligations of leadership? How are these responsibilities expressed in ethical terms? Does ethical leadership imply social responsibility? Is leadership different age to age? In our annual Applied Ethics exploration, we will examine leadership from the points of view of business and politics, education and sports, from those who make headlines and from those who lead by following.

MON 5
David Brooks

Sponsored by Glenn & Ruth Mengle Foundation
TUE 6
David Boren
WED 7
Cheryl Dorsey
THU 8
David Westin, Nancy Gibbs
FRI 9
Joseph Riley



Monday, July 5
David Brooks
senior editor, The Weekly Standard

David Brooks

David Brooks became an op-ed columnist for The New York Times in September 2003. He has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, and he is currently a commentator on “The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.” He is the author of Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense.

Brooks joined The Weekly Standard at its inception in September 1995, having worked at The Wall Street Journal for the previous nine years. His last post at the Journal was as op-ed editor. Prior to that, he was posted in Brussels, covering Russia, the Middle East, South Africa and European affairs. His first post at the Journal was as editor of the book review section, and he filled in for five months as the Journal's movie critic.

He is also a frequent commentator on National Public Radio, CNN’s Late Edition and the “Diane Rehm Show.” Brooks is the editor of the 1996 anthology Backward and Upward: the New Conservative Writing.

Tuesday, July 6
David Boren
former Oklahoma governor and U.S. senator

David Boren

David Boren served Oklahoma as governor and U.S. senator for 20 years and spent nearly three decades in elective politics before becoming the 13th president of the University of Oklahoma in 1994. Chautauqua favorite David McCullough, a renowned historian and author, described his presidency at OU as the “most transformative” of any he has seen.

As Oklahoma’s governor from 1974 through 1978, Boren promoted key educational initiatives that have had an enduring impact on Oklahoma. Established during his tenure were the Oklahoma Arts Institute, the Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program, and the Oklahoma Physicians Manpower Training Program, which provides scholarships for medical students and medical personnel who commit to practice in underserved rural areas.

During his time in the U.S. Senate from 1979 to 1994, Boren served on the Senate Finance and Agriculture Committees and was the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Boren also chaired the special 1992-93 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, which produced proposals to make Congress more efficient and responsive by streamlining congressional bureaucracy, reducing staff sizes and reforming procedures to end legislative gridlock. He left the Senate in 1994 with an approval rating of 91 percent.

Under Boren’s leadership, the University of Oklahoma has developed and emerged as a “pacesetter university in American public higher education,” with 20 major new programs initiated since his inauguration. They include establishment of the Honors College, the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West, a new expository writing program for freshmen modeled on the program at Harvard, an interdisciplinary religious studies program, the Artist-in-Residence Program, the International Programs Center and the Faculty-in-Residence Program, putting faculty family apartments in student residence halls.

A graduate of Yale University, Boren was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a master’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University, England. He also holds a law degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Law.

Wednesday, July 7
Cheryl Dorsey
president, Echoing Green

Cheryl Dorsey

An accomplished social entrepreneur with expertise in health care, labor issues and public policy, Cheryl Dorsey was named president of Echoing Green in May 2002. She is the first Echoing Green Fellow to lead this global nonprofit, which has awarded more than $28 million in start-up capital to over 450 social entrepreneurs worldwide since 1987.

Dorsey received her education at Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges where she earned a degree in history and science in 1985. In 1992, while training to be a pediatrician at Harvard Medical School, she received an Echoing Green Fellowship. With it, she launched the Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit that provides basic health care and outreach services to at-risk residents of inner-city Boston neighborhoods.

As a public policy innovator, Dorsey served as a White House Fellow from 1997 to 1998 as special assistant to the secretary of labor, advising the Clinton administration on health care and other issues. She was later named special assistant to the director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, where she helped develop family-friendly workplace policies and spearheaded the labor secretary’s pay equity initiative. Most recently, she was appointed vice-chair of the president’s Commission on White House Fellowships.

Dorsey was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” in 2009 by US News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. She has received numerous other awards and honors for her commitment to public service, including the Robert Kennedy Distinguished Public Service Award.

Thursday, July 8
David Westin
president, ABC News

David Westin

As president of ABC News, David Westin oversees all editorial and business aspects of the news division. Westin has led ABC News since 1997; he previously appeared on Chautauqua’s lecture platform in 2007 to discuss “The Media and News: Applied Ethics.”

During his tenure, Westin has guided several award-winning, division-wide reporting efforts, including “ABC 2000,” the 24-hour broadcast from around the world that brought in the new millennium, ABC News’ coverage of 9/11, its coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the series “Iraq: Where Things Stand,” and extensive reports on health and wellness issues, including lung cancer, breast cancer, the pharmaceutical industry and health care in America. In addition, ABC News has partnered with Time magazine to produce series on global warming, traffic and obesity, and with USA Today to report on pain, living longer and loose nukes.

Under Westin’s leadership, ABC News became the first American news organization to broadcast live from North Korea, to broadcast live from the Potala Palace in Tibet, to broadcast a regularly scheduled morning program in high definition, and to provide high-definition coverage of a presidential State of the Union address. In 2008 ABC News became the first broadcast network in history to air debates among presidential candidates in primetime during a primary season when it aired back-to-back Republican and Democratic debates on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.

Westin holds bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Michigan.

Nancy Gibbs
executive editor, Time

Nancy Gibbs

Nancy Gibbs is Time’s executive editor, having been promoted in March 2010 by managing editor Rick Stengel. Named by The Chicago Tribune as one of the ten best magazine writers in the country, she is the author of more than 100 Time cover stories and regular essays and profiles.

Gibbs was Time’s lead writer on virtually every major news event from the Oklahoma City bombing to Columbine to Hurricane Katrina, and won the National Magazine Award for her coverage in the black-bordered special edition about Sept. 11, 2001. When the news is quiet, she has focused on stories and essays exploring the intersections of religion, values and politics.

A frequent guest on radio and television talk shows on ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS, Gibbs co-authored The Preacher and the Presidents, a book about Billy Graham which served as the basis for her 2007 Chautauqua lecture. Her writing is included in The Princeton Anthology of Writing, Best Political Writing 2004 and numerous writing textbooks. She has twice served as the Ferris Professor at Princeton, where she taught a seminar on “Politics and the Press.”

Gibbs graduated from Yale summa cum laude with honors in history, and has a degree in politics and philosophy from Oxford, where she was a Marshall scholar.

Friday, July 9
Joseph Riley
mayor, Charleston, S.C.

Joseph Riley

The longtime mayor of Charleston, S.C., Joseph Riley is widely considered one of the most visionary and highly effective governmental leaders in America. First elected mayor in December 1975, he is serving an unprecedented ninth term.

Under Riley’s leadership, Charleston has increased its commitment to racial harmony and progress, achieved a substantial decrease in crime, experienced a remarkable revitalization of its historic downtown business district, built the beautiful Waterfront Park, developed nationally acclaimed affordable housing and experienced unprecedented growth in size and population. Riley has led a city government with an impressive record of innovation in public safety, housing, arts and culture, children’s issues, the creation of parks and other public spaces, and economic revitalization and development. Charleston is recognized as one of the most livable and progressive cities in the United States.

Riley served as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 1986-87 and currently serves on its executive committee. Nationally acclaimed for his leadership, vision and impressive list of accomplishments, Riley has received numerous awards and commendations, including the first President’s Award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2000 and the South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Humanities in 2005. He has also won several awards for exemplary contributions to urban development and design.

Born in Charleston, Riley attended The Citadel and the University of South Carolina School of Law. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives for six years before becoming Charleston’s mayor.


Theme: From Asia to the Middle East: Energy, Capital and Conflict
Week Three - July 12-16

Considering the geographic expanse from Asia to the Middle East, this week will examine the exchange and flow of capital, oil, and natural gas between India and China on one hand, and the Middle East as represented by the Arab gulf and Iran on the other. We will ask how tensions in Pakistan and Afghanistan, peace-making efforts from Turkey, and the Arab-Israeli conflict influence diplomacy in this huge area of the world where great wealth and greater conflict coincide.

MON 12
Geoff Kemp
TUE 13
Aaron David Miller
WED 14
Husain Haqqani
THU 15
Vali Nasr

FRI 16
Minxin Pei



Monday, July 12
Geoff Kemp
director of Regional Strategic Programs, Nixon Center

Geoff Kemp

Geoff Kemp is the director of Regional Strategic Programs at the Nixon Center. Prior to his current position, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he served as director of the Middle East Arms Control Project.

Kemp served in the White House during the first Reagan administration and was special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council staff.

In the 1970s, Kemp worked in the Department of Defense in the Policy Planning and Program Analysis and Evaluation Offices and made major contributions to studies on U.S. security policy and options for Southwest Asia. In 1976, while working for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he prepared a widely publicized report on U.S. Military Sales to Iran. His writing has also appeared in The National Interest.

Kemp received his doctorate in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Oxford University. His newest book, The East Moves West: India, China and the Growing Asian Presence in the Middle East, will be released this spring by Brookings Institution Press.

Tuesday, July 13
Aaron David Miller
Public Policy Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Aaron David Miller

Aaron David Miller joined the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as a Public Policy Fellow in January 2006. For the prior two decades, he served at the Department of State as an adviser to six secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the Senior Adviser for Arab-Israeli Negotiations. He has received the department’s Distinguished, Superior and Meritorious Honor awards.

Miller received his doctorate in American Diplomatic and Middle East History from the University of Michigan in 1977 and joined the State Department the following year. During 1982 and 1983, he was a Council on Foreign Relations fellow and a resident scholar at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. In 1984 he served a temporary tour at the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan. Between 1998 and 2000, Miller served on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. After leaving the State Department, Miller served as president of Seeds of Peace from January 2003 until January 2006. Seeds of Peace is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance reconciliation and coexistence.

Miller has made numerous appearances on CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX News, PBS, National Public Radio, the BBC, CBC, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera. He has been a featured presenter for the World Economic Forum in Davos and Amman, The City Club of Cleveland, Chatham House, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University, Columbia University, New York University and the University of California, Berkeley, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The International Herald Tribune.

He authored his fourth book, The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, in 2008. Miller’s other books include The Arab States and the Palestine Question: Between Ideology and Self Interest, The PLO and the Politics of Survival and The Search for Security: Saudi Arabian Oil and American Foreign Policy, 1939–1949.

Miller is also serving as the 2010 Scholar in Residence and will conduct invitation-only morning seminars throughout Week Three in addition to the morning lecture.

Wednesday, July 14
Husain Haqqani
Pakistan Ambassador to the United States

Husain Haqqani

Currently Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani has a wide range of experience as a journalist, diplomat, and adviser to three Pakistani prime ministers, including the late Benazir Bhutto. He came to the U.S. in 2002 as a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., and as an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Haqqani acquired traditional Islamic learning as well as a modern education in international relations. His journalism career started with work as East Asian correspondent for Arabia — The Islamic World Review during the turbulent years following the Iranian revolution. During this period he wrote extensively on Muslims in China and East Asia and Islamic political movements. Later, as Pakistan and Afghanistan correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, he covered the war in Afghanistan and acquired a deep understanding of militant Islamist Jihadi groups.

Haqqani has contributed to numerous international publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Foreign Policy and The Financial Times. He regularly comments on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Islamic politics and extremism on BBC, C-SPAN, CNN, NBC, Fox News and ABC, and has written and spoken extensively on U.S. relations with the Muslim world. His book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, was published in 2005 and has sold more copies than any other book on Pakistan in the last decade.

On leave of absence during his ambassadorship, Haqqani is an associate professor and a former director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University.

Thursday, July 15
Vali Nasr
senior adviser to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Vali Nasr

The senior adviser to the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Vali Nasr is an Iranian-American political commentator and scholar of contemporary Islam. Known for his view that wars within Islam will shape the future, Nasr has testified before Congress and has advised the president and vice president regarding sectarian violence in Iraq. He is the author The Shia Revival, Democracy in Iran and The Islamic Leviathan.

Nasr has taught at the University of San Diego and the Naval Postgraduate School, and is currently a senior fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard and professor of international politics at Tufts University. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Nasr has been published in Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, Time, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. He is an editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Islam and has appeared on CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report.”

Born in Iran, Nasr and his family immigrated to the United States following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Nasr received his bachelor’s degree from Tufts in 1981 and a master’s from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1984. He earned his doctorate in political science from MIT in 1991.

Nasr replaces previously announced Richard Holbrooke.

Friday, July 16
Minxin Pei
senior associate, China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Minxin Pei

Minxin Pei is the senior associate in the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In June 2009, he was named the Tom and Margot Pritzker Professor of Government and Roberts Fellow and director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Recognized as a leading expert on issues relating to China, Pei’s research focuses on democratization in developing countries, economic reform and governance in China, and U.S.-China relations and has been published in many edited books and journals, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Modern China and China Quarterly. He also is a frequent commentator on “BBC World News,” “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and National Public Radio, and his commentary has appeared in major newspapers such as Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek International and The International Herald Tribune.

Pei is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (1994) and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (2006).

Prior to his position at the Carnegie Endowment, Pei taught politics at Princeton University for six years. He earned his master’s degree and doctorate in political science from Harvard University.


Theme: Nuclear Power & Nuclear Weapons: The Right to Have & to Hold
Week Four - July 19-23

Building on some of the primary components of Week Three, this week will investigate the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the increasing use of nuclear power as a source of energy. With particular attention paid to Asia, the Middle East, and Russia, we will examine the front-end investment required to develop nuclear power, and the international challenges implicit in its use. We will learn more about the nations who currently have nuclear capacity, how the concerns about nuclear waste check the development of beneficial applications, and what controls are available and necessary to secure the future of the planet.

MON 19
Sam Nunn
TUE 20
Graham Allison
WED 21
James Rogers
THU 22
Molly Williamson
FRI 23
Joseph Cirincione



Monday, July 19
Sam Nunn
co-chairman, CEO, Nuclear Threat Initiative

Sam Nunn

Former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He served as a United States Senator from Georgia for 24 years (1972-1996) and is retired from the law firm King & Spalding.

Nunn attended Georgia Tech, Emory University and Emory Law School, where he graduated with honors in 1962. After active duty service in the U.S. Coast Guard, he served six years in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. He first entered politics as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1968.

During his tenure in the U.S. Senate, Nunn served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He also served on the Intelligence and Small Business Committees. His legislative achievements include the landmark Department of Defense Reorganization Act, drafted with the late Senator Barry Goldwater, and the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which provides assistance to Russia and the former Soviet republics for securing and destroying their excess nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Nunn has continued his service in the public policy arena as a distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech and as chairman of the board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

Tuesday, July 20
Graham Allison
director, Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs, Harvard

Graham Allison

Graham Allison is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

As “Founding Dean” of the modern Kennedy School, under his leadership, from 1977 to 1989, a small, undefined program grew twentyfold to become a major professional school of public policy and government.

Dr. Allison has served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan. He has the sole distinction of having twice been awarded the Department of Defense's highest civilian award, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, first by Secretary Cap Weinberger and second by Secretary Bill Perry. He served as a member of the Defense Policy Board for Secretaries Weinberger, Carlucci, Cheney, Aspin, Perry and Cohen.

Dr. Allison's first book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971), was released in an updated and revised second edition (1999) and ranks among the best-sellers in 20th century political science with more than 400,000 copies in print. His latest book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, is now in its third printing and was selected by The New York Times as one of the “100 most notable books of 2004.”

Wednesday, July 21
James Rogers
chairman, president and CEO, Duke Energy

James Rogers

Jim Rogers is chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of Duke Energy, which merged with Cinergy in April 2006. Before the merger, Rogers served as Cinergy’s chairman and chief executive officer for more than 11 years. Prior to the formation of Cinergy, he joined PSI Energy in 1988 as the company’s chairman, president and chief executive officer.

Rogers has served as deputy general counsel for litigation and enforcement for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC); executive vice president of interstate pipelines for the Enron Gas Pipeline Group; and as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.

In the course of his career, Rogers has served more than 50 cumulative years on the boards of Fortune 500 companies. He is past chairman and ex officio member of the executive committee of the Edison Electric Institute and current chairman of the Institute for Electric Efficiency. He serves as a member of the board of directors and the Executive Committee of the Nuclear Energy Institute, and is a board member of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO). Rogers also serves on the boards of the Business Roundtable, the National Coal Council, the National Petroleum Council and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Rogers is chairman of the Edison Foundation and co-chair of the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency and the Alliance to Save Energy. He is a board member and vice chairman of the Executive Committee of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Rogers is also a member of the Honorary Committee of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE) and has testified 21 times on energy and environmental policies before congressional committees.

Rogers was honored with EnergyBiz magazine’s 2009 CEO of the Year EnergyBiz KITE Award (Knowledge, Innovation, Technology, Excellence) and was inducted into the inaugural Energy Efficiency Forum Hall of Fame by the U.S. Energy Association and Johnson Controls Inc. In 2007, he was named the energy industry’s CEO of the Year by Platts. The Jan. 5, 2009, edition of Newsweek named Rogers to The Global Elite list, “The 50 Most Powerful People in the World,” saying, “The CEO of Duke Energy could make dreams of renewable power a reality.” Rogers attended Emory University and earned a bachelor of business administration and a juris doctor degree from the University of Kentucky.

Thursday, July 22
Molly Williamson
scholar, Middle East Institute

Molly Williamson

Currently a scholar with the Middle East Institute, Molly Williamson retired from the Foreign Service in 2007 with the rank of Career Minister, having served six presidents.

From 2005 to 2008, Williamson was the senior foreign policy adviser to the Secretary of Energy, with global responsibilities at the nexus of foreign policy and energy policy. Prior to that, Williamson served as U.S. interim ambassador in Bahrain, and was assigned to special projects regarding Israel/Palestine, Iraq, and the United Nations.

Williamson has held posts within the departments of Commerce, State and Defense, having been engaged in advancing U.S. trade relations, peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, and in drafting U.S. policy on crises in Rwanda and Somalia and nuclear tests in South Asia. She has had numerous postings in the Middle East, including Chief of Mission and Consul General in Jerusalem during the Madrid Peace Process (1991-93), which culminated in the Oslo Accords.

A native of California, Williamson has been awarded two Presidential Service Awards, the Secretary of Energy’s Exceptional Service Award, Department of Commerce Performance Award, the Secretary of Defense’s Service Award, and 14 awards from the Department of State.

July 23
Joseph Cirincione
president, Ploughshares Fund

Joseph Cirincione is President of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He previously served as Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress and Director for Nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. He teaches at the graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Mr. Cirincione worked for nine years in the U.S. House of Representatives on the professional staff of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Government Operations. He is the author of hundreds of articles on nuclear weapons issues, the producer of two DVDs, a frequent commentator in the media, and he appeared in the recent films Countdown to Zero and Why We Fight. He has held positions at the Henry L. Stimson Center, the U.S. Information Agency and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.


Theme: Picture This: Photography
Week Five - July 26-30

In collaboration with Kodak and George Eastman House, this week will celebrate the history of photography, its contribution to and relationship with surrounding culture, its place in the art world, and its reflection of technological innovations that have reshaped the industry. We will meet photographers practicing their craft, and SEE this nexus of art, science, culture, biography, and history.

MON 26
Steve McCurry
TUE 27
Ed Kashi
WED 28
Steve Sasson
THU 29
Margaret Geller
FRI 30
Billy Collins



Monday, July 26
Steve McCurry
photographer

Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry, a winner of many of photography’s top awards and a member of the Magnum Photos photography cooperative since 1986, is recognized universally as one of today’s finest image-makers. Best known for his evocative color photography, McCurry, in the finest documentary tradition, captures the essence of human struggle and joy. Many of his images have become modern icons; his June 1985 National Geographic cover photo, “Afghan Girl,” is often described as the most recognizable photo in the world today.

A graduate of Pennsylvania State University, McCurry worked at a newspaper for two years before leaving for India to freelance. It was in India that he learned to watch and wait on life. “If you wait,” he realized, “people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view.”

His career was launched when, disguised in native garb, he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion. When he emerged, McCurry had rolls of film sewn into his clothes and images that, when published around the world, were among the first to show the conflict there. His coverage won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise. McCurry is the recipient of numerous other awards, including Magazine Photographer of the Year, awarded by the National Press Photographers’ Association.

His work has been featured in every major magazine in the world and frequently appears in National Geographic. McCurry is driven by an innate curiosity and sense of wonder about the world and everyone in it. He has an uncanny ability to cross boundaries of language and culture to capture stories of human experience.

A high point in his career was the rediscovery of the previously unidentified Afghan refugee girl. When McCurry finally located Sharbat Gula after almost two decades, he said, “Her skin is weathered; there are wrinkles now, but she is as striking as she was all those years ago.”

The author of many books, McCurry published his most recent, The Unguarded Moment, in 2009.

Tuesday, July 27
Ed Kashi
photojournalist

Ed Kashi

Ed Kashi is a photojournalist dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. Along with numerous awards, including honors from Pictures of the Year International, World Press Foundation, Communication Arts and American Photography, Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide, and his editorial assignments and personal projects have generated six books.

Kashi’s latest book is Three, a June 2009 project presented in a triptych format that draws upon his vast supply of images created over 20 years searching for “visual connections, visual language, visual poetry of three.” Kashi has shot many National Geographic cover stories, including June 2009’s “The Christian Exodus from the Holy Land,” which featured his intimate photographs focused on the plight of today’s Arab Christians.

Another of Kashi’s innovative approaches to photography and filmmaking produced the “Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook,” which premiered on MSNBC.com in December 2006. Using stills in a moving image format, this creative and thought-provoking form of visual storytelling has been shown in many film festivals and as part of a series of exhibitions on the Iraq War at the George Eastman House. Also, an eight-year personal project completed in 2003, Aging in America: The Years Ahead, created a traveling exhibition, an award-winning documentary film, a website and a book which was named one of the best photo books of 2003 by American Photo.

Kashi has done documentary work on the Protestant community in Northern Ireland, self-published in a book titled The Protestants: No Surrender. In the mid-1990s, he spent several years documenting the lives of Jewish settlers in the West Bank; a photograph from this essay received an award in the World Press Photo 1995 contest.

In 2002, Kashi and his wife, writer and filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The non-profit company has produced numerous short films and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues.

Kashi replaces previously announced Paolo Pellegrin.

Wednesday, July 28
Steve Sasson
retired Eastman Kodak Company engineer

Steve Sasson

Digital photography pioneer Steve Sasson is a retired Eastman Kodak Company engineer and winner of multiple honors from consumer electronics groups and photographic societies. After graduating in 1973 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., Steve joined Eastman Kodak as an electrical engineer working in an applied research laboratory. He engaged in a number of early digital imaging projects, among which was the design and construction of the digital still camera and playback system in 1975.

Sasson continued to work throughout the 1980s in the emerging field of digital photography, receiving over 10 key digital imaging patents. In 1989, he led the development of the first prototype megapixel electronic digital camera utilizing DCT compression that stored images to flash memory cards. In the 1990s, Sasson developed one of the first photographic-quality thermal printing systems, derivatives of which are still in use in self-service imaging kiosks around the world today.

Sasson was born and raised in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, N.Y. Throughout high school, he had an intense interest in electronics and collected all manner of discarded televisions and radios from around the neighborhood so he could salvage electronic components for his home projects. With these parts and those purchased on his frequent trips to “Radio Row” in Manhattan, Steven designed and built radio receivers, stereo amplifiers and transmitters in his basement. He obtained his amateur radio license as a teenager and further challenged his parents by putting up large antennas on the roof of the family’s rather small row house in Brooklyn.

Before retiring in 2009, Sasson served as a project manager in the Intellectual Property Transactions group at Kodak.

Thursday, July 29
Margaret Geller
senior scientist, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Margaret Geller

Margaret Geller is a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., and a pioneer in mapping the nearby universe. Her current research interests include the structure of the Milky Way galaxy and the distribution of dark matter in the universe. Her long-range scientific goals are to discover what the universe looks like and to understand how it came to have the rich patterns we can observe today.

Geller made two award-winning documentary films about her work: Where the Galaxies Are and So Many Galaxies... So Little Time. These films contain the first animations of flights through the universe based on scientific observations.

A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, who earned her Ph.D. at Princeton, Geller is a past recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and also has received the Newcomb-Cleveland Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Klopsteg Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the Magellanic Premium of the American Philosophical Society. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Friday, July 30
Billy Collins
former United States poet laureate

Billy Collins

Former United States poet laureate Billy Collins has published eight collections of poetry, the last three of which — Nine Horses, The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems and, most recently, Ballistics — have broken sales records for poetry. The typical Collins poem opens on a clear and hospitable note but soon takes an unexpected turn; poems that begin in irony may end in a moment of lyric surprise. Collins sees his poetry as “a form of travel writing” and considers humor “a door into the serious.” His appearance with Roger Rosenblatt on the 2008 lecture platform opened one of Chautauqua’s most popular weeks ever.

A New York Public Library “Literary Lion,” Collins’ work has appeared in a variety of periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review and The American Scholar. He has also published a collection of haiku, titled She Was Just Seventeen, and edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. Collins was the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2006, and edited Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds, with paintings by David Allen Sibley.

Included among the many honors Collins has received are fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has also been awarded the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize and the Levinson Prize — all awarded by Poetry magazine. In October 2004, Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry.

Collins was appointed United States poet laureate in 2001 and served in that capacity until 2003. He served as New York’s poet laureate from 2004 to 2006. Currently, Collins is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, as well as a senior distinguished fellow of the Winter Park Institute at Rollins College.


Theme: Excellence in Public Education
Week Six - August 2-6

Our nation’s founders believed that high-quality public education is a requirement for a robust and functioning democracy. This week will examine current efforts that are dramatically improving the performance of public education in the United States. Specifically, we will look at the impact of talented and motivated superintendents, leadership training for principals, trends in teaching teachers, and innovations in curricula. We will discuss the responsibilities, interactions, and support from national, state, and local government leaders, parents and grandparents, and local community groups. We’ll leave with a better understanding of what is required and what is working, and what each of us can do to fulfill the goal of greater academic excellence for students in our schools.

MON 2
Linda Darling-Hammond
TUE 3
Barbara Bowman
WED 4
Jonathan Schnur
THU 5
Randi Weingarten
FRI 6
Mark Roosevelt



Monday, August 2
Linda Darling-Hammond
co-director, School Redesign Network at Stanford University

Linda Darling-Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education. Her research, teaching and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.

From 1994 to 2001, Darling-Hammond served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. In 2006, this report was named one of the most influential affecting U.S. education and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s 10 most influential people affecting educational policy over the last decade. She recently served as the leader of President Barack Obama’s education policy transition team.

Darling-Hammond has worked with dozens of schools and districts around the nation on studying, developing and scaling up new model schools — as well as preparation programs for teachers and leaders — that enable much greater success for diverse students. She has also worked with civil rights and community-based organizations to leverage changes in state and local level policies and to create practices that promote greater equity in educational opportunity and access for traditionally underserved students. For this work, she has been awarded, among others, the Charles W. Eliot Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education, the Asa G. Hilliard Award for Outstanding Achievement in Racial Justice and Education Equity, the Founder’s Award from the National Commission on African American Education, the Woman of Valor Award from Educational Equity Concepts, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Having written more than 300 journal articles, Darling-Hammond is author or editor of 16 books, including The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs and Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do, co-written with John Bransford. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and her doctorate in urban education (with highest distinction) from Temple University.

Tuesday, August 3
Barbara Bowman
founding faculty, Erikson Institute

Barbara Bowman

Barbara Bowman is one of three faculty founders of Erikson Institute, the nation’s premier graduate school in child development, and served as president of the institute from 1994 to 2001. She is the Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Development.

She is an authority on early education, a national advocate for improved and expanded training for practitioners who teach and care for young children, and a pioneer in building knowledge and understanding of the issues of access and equity for minority children.

Bowman is chief early childhood education officer for the Chicago Public Schools. She is past president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and has served on numerous boards, including the High Scope Educational Foundation, the Institute for Psychoanalysis, Business People in the Public Interest, the Great Books Foundation, the Chicago Public Library Foundation, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Among the honors she has received are the Voices for Illinois' Children Start Early Award; Chicago Association for the Education of Young Children Outstanding Service to Children Award; Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education; and the National Black Child Development Institute Leadership Award. She has been awarded honorary degrees from Bank Street College, Roosevelt University, Wheelock College, Dominican University, Governor's State University, and Lewis University.

Wednesday, August 4
Jonathan Schnur
co-founder and chief executive, New Leaders for New Schools

Jonathan Schnur

Jonathan Schnur is co-founder and chief executive of New Leaders for New Schools, a non-profit organization devoted to driving high levels of learning and achievement for every child by attracting, preparing and supporting the next generation of outstanding principals for the nation's urban schools.

Schnur has led the development of the organization's strategy, management team and board, core values, partnerships and fundraising. From September 2008 to June 2009, he took leave from New Leaders for New Schools, serving as an adviser to Barack Obama's Presidential campaign, a member of the Presidential Transition Team, and a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Schnur has served as special assistant to Secretary of Education Richard Riley, President Clinton's White House associate director for educational policy, and senior adviser on education to Vice President Al Gore. He developed national educational policies on teacher and principal quality, after-school programs, district reform, charter schools and preschools.

Thursday, August 5
Randi Weingarten
president, American Federation of Teachers

Randi Weingarten

Randi Weingarten is president of the 1.4-million-member American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, which represents teachers; paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; higher education faculty and staff; nurses and other healthcare professionals; local, state and federal employees; and early childhood educators. She was elected in July 2008, following 11 years of service as an AFT vice president.

In the months immediately following her election, Weingarten launched major efforts to place education reform and innovation high on the nation’s agenda. In September 2008, Weingarten led the development of the AFT Innovation Fund, a groundbreaking initiative to support sustainable, innovative and collaborative reform projects developed by members and their local unions to strengthen our public schools.

As a member of the AFT executive council since 1997, Weingarten has been involved in every major AFT policy initiative of the last decade. She also served on the AFT executive committee and its democracy committee, and headed the professional compensation committee. She has acted as an emissary for the national AFT in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Weingarten previously served for 12 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, and for 10 years chaired New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee. She worked as a lawyer for the Wall Street firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan from 1983 to 1986. Weingarten holds degrees from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Cardozo School of Law.

Friday, August 6
Mark Roosevelt
superintendent, Pittsburgh Public Schools

Mark Roosevelt

Since his appointment as superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools in August 2005, Mark Roosevelt has pursued an aggressive reform agenda called “Excellence for All.” Four years later, the district has a comprehensive plan to maximize effective teaching that is one of only four such efforts to win support through a highly competitive $40 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Under Roosevelt’s leadership, the district has implemented a nationally recognized program to recruit, train, support and compensate principals as instructional leaders; a new, more rigorous curriculum; and several new school models, including eight “Accelerated Learning Academies” for many of Pittsburgh’s most underserved students. In 2009, PPS became the largest district in Pennsylvania to achieve “Adequate Yearly Progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, meaning the district met all of its targets on high school graduation and academic performance.

Roosevelt is also the founder of The Pittsburgh Promise, a remarkable initiative that has already raised $150 million to guarantee as much as $10,000 per year in college scholarships for all PPS graduates who meet certain academic standards.

Before arriving in Pittsburgh, Roosevelt had established himself as a public-sector change agent with a proven track record in educational reform. As chair of the Massachusetts State Legislature’s Education Committee, Roosevelt co-authored and steered to passage the Education Reform Act of 1993, landmark legislation providing the equitable resources and accountability measures necessary for school improvement.

In 1994, Roosevelt was the Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts.

Roosevelt is a graduate of Harvard Law School and received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College. He has taught political science at Brandeis University, where he was also the director of the Gordon Public Policy Center, and currently teaches a course on the intersection of American history and public policy at the Heinz Graduate School of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.


Theme: Sacred Spaces
Week Seven - August 9-13

What makes space sacred? Legendary religious destinations? Natural or created beauty? Is sacred space defined by what happened there? This week, (in partnership with the World Monuments Fund), we will explore the confluence of religion, architecture, history, geography, and culture. We will learn about the sacred spaces of the Abrahamic traditions, the communal spaces that define civilization, and the sacred in the personal that provides peace amid chaos. Through the ten morning and afternoon lectures, we will visit some of the most important and threatened historically sacred sites of the world.

MON 9
Ken Burns
TUE 10
Evalyn Gates
WED 11
Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
THU 12
Paul Goldberger

FRI 13
Bonnie Burnham



Monday, August 9
Ken Burns
documentary filmmaker

David Brooks

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns returns to Chautauqua Institution during Week Seven’s examination of “Sacred Spaces.” Burns will give Tuesday’s morning lecture on architecture, with an emphasis on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as a special Wednesday evening presentation in the Amphitheater on battlefields, with emphasis on the Civil War.

Burns has been making films for more than 30 years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, he has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made. The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, "More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source."

Burns’ films have won ten Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, and in September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

This fall, PBS broadcast The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Directed and co-produced by Burns, the six-part series focuses on the ideas and individuals that helped propel the parks into existence. Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales – from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska – the heart of the story is nonetheless a story of people from every conceivable background – rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy.

Burns returns to Chautauqua after an evening Amphitheater presentation on The National Parks series during Week Six of the 2009 Season.

Tuesday, August 10
Evalyn Gates
assistant director, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago

Evalyn Gates

Evalyn Gates will take over as executive director and chief executive officer of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on May 17. She currently serves as the assistant director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, an internationally renowned research center for the study of the structure, composition and evolution of the universe from the earliest moments of cosmic history to the present.

As part of the leadership team at the Kavli Institute, Gates has been responsible for the overall management of the center and its key programs, including the prestigious KICP Postdoctoral Research Fellowships. She is also a member of the research faculty in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, with an active program of research in cosmology and particle astrophysics. Prior to joining the Kavli Institute, Gates spent seven years in senior management roles at the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum.

Gates’ book, Einstein’s Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe, was published in 2009 and gives non-scientists a comprehensive look at recent developments that have overturned the understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe and describes the radical new technique that may lead the way to the next great revolution in science.

Gates received her Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics from Case Western Reserve University in 1990, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University before joining the University of Chicago in 1992. She also holds two bachelor’s degrees — in physics from The College of William and Mary and in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve.

Wednesday, August 11
Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
president, Foundation for Landscape Studies

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers is the president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies, a not-for-profit organization that aims to “foster an active understanding of the importance of place in human life.” A resident of New York City since 1964, Rogers was the first person to hold the title of Central Park administrator, a New York City Department of Parks & Recreation position created by Mayor Edward I. Koch in 1979. She was the founding president of the Central Park Conservancy, the public-private partnership created in 1980 to bring citizen support to the restoration and renewed management of Central Park. She served in both positions until 1996.

Rogers is a renowned teacher, lecturer, and writer on the subject of place and the preservation of living landscapes through good design and sound management practices. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of several awards for her work as a writer and landscape preservationist, including the American Society of Landscape Architects’ 2005 LaGasse Medal and the John Burroughs Medal for her book The Forests and Wetlands of New York City (a National Book Award nominee).

Rogers is also the author of Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History, Frederick Law Olmsted’s New York, The Central Park Book and Rebuilding Central Park: A Management and Restoration Plan. She also co-authored East Hampton: A History and Guide. A native of San Antonio, Texas, she earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Wellesley College and a master’s degree in city planning from Yale University.

Thursday, August 12
Paul Goldberger
Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, The New Yorker

Chautauqua favorite Paul Goldberger is the architecture critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine’s celebrated “Sky Line” column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City. He was formerly Dean of the Parsons school of design, a division of The New School. He began his career at The New York Times, where in 1984 his architecture criticism was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism.

Goldberger is the author of several books, including Why Architecture Matters and Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture, a collection of his architecture essays, both published in 2009. He lectures widely around the country on the subject of architecture, design, historic preservation and cities, and has taught at both the Yale School of Architecture and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley in addition to The New School.

Goldberger’s writing has received numerous awards, including the President’s Medal of the Municipal Art Society of New York and the Medal of Honor of the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation, awarded in recognition of what the foundation called “the nation’s most balanced, penetrating and poetic analyses of architecture and design.” In May 1996, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani presented him with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission’s Preservation Achievement Award in recognition of the impact of his writing on historic preservation in New York.

Having appeared frequently on film and television to discuss art, architecture and cities, Goldberger is now at work on a program on the architect Benjamin Latrobe for PBS. He has also served as a special consultant and adviser on architecture and planning matters to several major cultural and educational institutions, including the Morgan Library in New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, the New York Public Library and Cornell and Harvard universities. He serves as special adviser to the jury for the Richard A. Driehaus Prize, a $200,000 prize awarded annually for traditional architecture and urbanism.

Goldberger is a graduate of Yale University, and is a trustee of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio; the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C.; the Forum for Urban Design; and the New York Stem Cell Foundation.

Friday, August 13
Bonnie Burnham
president & CEO, World Monuments Fund

Bonnie Burnham, president and chief executive of the World Monuments Fund, joined the organization as executive director in 1985 and was named president in 1996. The World Monuments Fund is a New York-based non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting endangered ancient and historic sites around the world.

Burnham, who holds degrees in art history from the University of Florida and the Sorbonne, previously served as executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research. She has been honored as a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, is a Distinguished Alumna of the College of Fine Arts of the University of Florida, and is the first recipient of its Beinecke-Reeves Distinguished Achievement Award in Historic Preservation. She received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Florida Southern College in 2009.

Burnham has served on the boards of the National Institute of Conservation and the Hearst Castle Preservation Foundation. She is currently on the board of the New York Studio School, a Trustee of the Butler Fund for the Environment, and a member of the United States Commission for UNESCO and the Board of Advocates, College of Design, Construction and Planning, University of Florida.


Theme: Powering the Future
Week Eight - August 16-20

As much of the world embraces the urgency for developing alternative sources of energy, and sources of fossil fuel become less reliable and more expensive, this week will explore the most promising new innovations and technologies currently in development for sustainable, affordable, and renewable power. Speakers this week will address these issues, as well as the science, economics, and politics behind bio-fuels, solar, wind, and clean-coal technology, and the critical role businesses and governments will play in creating a new energy paradigm.

MON 16
Ed Mazria
TUE 17
Habib Dagher
WED 18
Thomas Peterson
THU 19
Mary Nichols
FRI 20
Arvind Subramanian


Monday, August 16
Ed Mazria
architect, author, researcher, educator

Ed Mazria

Ed Mazria is an internationally recognized architect, author, researcher and educator with a long and distinguished career. In 2002, he founded Architecture 2030, a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization with the goal to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by changing the way buildings and developments are planned, designed and constructed.

Throughout his career, Mazria has worked to reshape the national and international dialogue on energy and climate change to incorporate building design. He developed and issued The 2030 Challenge, a measured and achievable strategy to dramatically reduce global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030.

Mazria’s award-winning architecture and planning projects span over a 35-year period, each employing a cutting-edge environmental approach to design. He is a fellow of the Design Futures Council and the author of numerous published works, including the “bible” of solar design, The Passive Solar Energy Book, which is currently in use worldwide. Mazria speaks nationally and internationally on the subject of architecture, design, energy and climate change and has taught architecture at several universities, including the University of New Mexico, University of Oregon, University of Colorado Denver and UCLA.

A winner of many awards for his work in architecture, Mazria most recently received a National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation and the Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Housing.

Tuesday, August 17
Habib Dagher
Bath Iron Works Professor of Structural Engineering, Univ. of Maine

Habib Dagher

Habib Dagher, the Bath Iron Works Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Maine, is the founding director of the AEWC Advanced Structures & Composites Center. Established by the National Science Foundation in 1996, the interdisciplinary AEWC Center is a world leader in the development of cost-effective, high performance hybrid composite materials for construction applications. The center recently received $15 million in funding from the Department of Energy for the development of offshore wind energy off Maine’s coast.

Under Dagher’s leadership, AEWC has grown from four to 40 associated faculty and full-time staff in 10 years and annually employs 150 graduate and undergraduate students from 15 academic departments. The center does contract research for U.S. government agencies and private companies worldwide, generating nearly $10 million annually in external research and development funding.

Dagher has received numerous awards for his work including the University of Maine's Distinguished Maine Professor Award in 1995, the UMaine Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award in 2003 and the 2004 New England Board of Higher Education Excellence Award. He has written over 120 technical publications, chaired national technical committees in the structural/bridge engineering and composite materials fields, and serves on the Science and Technology Advisory Board for Maine Governor John Baldacci.

Dagher received his doctorate in structural engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985. He also holds two master’s degrees in structural engineering and in engineering mechanics.

Wednesday, August 18
Thomas Peterson
founder, Center for Climate Strategies

Thomas Peterson is the founder of the Center for Climate Strategies, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that helps governments and their stakeholders tackle climate change issues by fostering consensus-based actions through collaboration and advanced technical assistance. He is also an adjunct professor of law at Pennsylvania State University School of Law, where he teaches climate law and policy.

Having been involved in the design, facilitation and economic assessment of 15 U.S. state climate action planning initiatives, Peterson previously represented the White House and U.S. Senate in U.S. climate treaty negotiations and national policy development. His professional experience over more than 25 years includes posts as the director of domestic policy for the Center For Clean Air Policy and as an economist with both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Transportation and Air Quality.

Peterson holds a bachelor’s degree in biology with a concentration in economics from the College of William and Mary, a Master of Environmental Management from Duke University and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Thursday, August 19
Mary Nichols
chair, California Air Resources Board

Mary Nichols

Mary Nichols was appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as chairman of the California Air Resources Board in July 2007, returning to the same position she held under Gov. Jerry Brown from 1978 to 1983.

Nichols has devoted her entire career in public and private, not-for-profit service to advocating for the environment and public health. She has previously served as assistant administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation under the Clinton administration, secretary of the California Resources Agency from 1999 to 2003, and director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment.

A graduate of Yale Law School and Cornell University, Nichols was one of California’s first environmental lawyers. She initiated precedent-setting test cases under the Federal Clean Air Act and California air quality laws while practicing as a staff attorney for the Center for Law in the Public Interest.

In her return as chairman, Nichols’ priorities include moving the state’s landmark climate change program ahead, steering the Air Resources Board through numerous efforts to curb diesel pollution at ports and continuing to pass regulations aimed at providing cleaner air for Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.

The California Air Resources Board leads the country in working with the public, the business sector and local governments to protect the public’s health, the economy and the state’s ecological resources through the most cost-effective reduction of air pollution. The board employs roughly 1,200 engineers, scientists and attorneys, with an annual operating budget of more than $750 million.

Friday, August 20
Arvind Subramanian
senior fellow, Peterson Institute for Economics; senior fellow, Center for Global Development

Arvind Subramanian is senior fellow jointly at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development and senior research professor at the Johns Hopkins University. He was assistant director in the research department of the International Monetary Fund, where he worked on trade, development, Africa, India and the Middle East. He has also served at the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Subramanian has written on growth, trade, development, climate change and renewable energy, oil, India, Africa, the WTO and intellectual property. He has published widely in academic and other journals, including the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), Foreign Affairs, World Economy and Economic and Political Weekly. He has also published or been cited in leading magazines and newspapers, including The Economist, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and New York Review of Books. He has been interviewed on PBS’ Charlie Rose Show and is a columnist for India's leading financial daily, Business Standard.

Subramanian’s book, India's Turn: Understanding the Economic Transformation, was published in 2008 . He is co-editor of Efficiency, Equity, and Legitimacy: The Multilateral Trading System at the Millennium with Roger Porter and Pierre Sauvé. An Indian national, he obtained his undergraduate degree from St. Stephens College, Delhi; his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, India; and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford.


Theme: The Supreme Court
Week Nine - August 23-27

This week will offer a historical analysis of the Supreme Court and its most notable Justices while examining the larger issues before the current court, including recent decisions, the agenda, and the process for appointments.

MON 23
Elizabeth Magill
TUE 24
Lisa Blatt
WED 25
Barry Friedman
THU 26
Paul Clement
FRI 27
Adam Liptak


Monday, August 23
Elizabeth Magill
former Supreme Court clerk

Elizabeth Magill

A former Supreme Court clerk, Elizabeth Magill is the academic associate dean at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she also serves as the Joseph Weintraub-Bank of America Distinguished Professor of Law and the Horace W. Goldsmith Research Professor of Law.

Prior to becoming a professor, Magill was a clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She also served as a senior legislative assistant for energy and natural resources for U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad, a position she held until entering law school at Virginia in 1992. Magill earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale.

During 2005-06, Magill served as a fellow in the Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) at Princeton University; she visited Harvard Law School in the spring of 2009. During her LAPA year, Magill’s article “Agency Choice of Policymaking Form” was honored as the year’s top scholarly article by the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association. Her scholarship focuses on administrative law and constitutional law, particularly separation of powers theory and doctrine, and her work has been published in the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the Virginia Law Review.

Tuesday, August 24
Lisa Blatt
partner, head of Supreme Court practice, Arnold & Porter

Lisa Blatt

Lisa Blatt heads appellate and Supreme Court practice at the prominent Washington, D.C., law firm Arnold & Porter. She spent 13 years with the U.S. Department of Justice, where she served as an assistant to the solicitor general. She has argued more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any woman in practice today, prevailing in 27 of 28 cases. She has briefed more than 250 cases in the Court, and her oral advocacy has been cited as exemplary in the Supreme Court clerk’s Guide for Counsel in Cases to be Argued Before the Supreme Court.

After Blatt left the Justice Department in May 2009, she served as a consultant to the Federal Trade Commission, where she advised the offices of the chairman, the general counsel, and the Bureau of Competition on antitrust matters before the Supreme Court, the U.S. courts of appeals and federal district courts. She also argued on behalf of the FTC in an important case involving patent and antitrust law.

Blatt was an assistant general counsel and special assistant to the general counsel at the U.S. Department of Energy from 1993 to 1996. Before working in the public sector, she spent several years working for a private law firm. Blatt also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit during the 1989-1990 term. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas School of Law.

Wednesday, August 25
Barry Friedman
Vice Dean & Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law, New York Univ. School of Law

Barry Friedman

Barry Friedman is the Vice Dean and Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and has taught, written and litigated about the Constitution for 25 years. He recently published his first book, The Will of the People, a historical account of the relationship between popular opinion and the Supreme Court.

In the last 20 years, Friedman has represented pro bono and private clients at every level of the state and federal courts. His cases have dealt with abortion rights, free speech, interstate commerce and state authority.

Friedman has energetically devoted himself to the public interest. He was the affiliate president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, and on the board of the State and Local Legal Center; he also served on the board and executive committee of the American Judicature Society for many years. He presently serves as co-director of the Furman Academic Scholars program, which prepares students for a career in the legal academy.

Friedman is one of the country’s leading authorities on the federal courts and judicial behavior. His work is interdisciplinary, grounded in law, political science and history. He has published over 50 academic articles in some of the country’s leading journals. He co-edited Judicial Independence: An Interdisciplinary Approach and regularly contributes to The New Republic, The New York Times, The American Lawyer and Forbes.com.

Thursday, August 26
Paul Clement
partner, King & Spalding, Washington, D.C.

Paul D. Clement is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of King & Spalding, and head of the firm’s national appellate practice. Mr. Clement served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. Prior to his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for over three years. His more than seven years of service in the Office of Solicitor General is the longest period of continuous service in the Office by a Solicitor General since the Nineteenth Century. He has argued over 50 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, Credit Suisse v. Billing, United States v. Booker and MGM v. Grokster. He also argued many of the government’s most important cases in the lower courts, such as Walker v. Cheney and the successful appeal in United States v. Moussaoui.

Mr. Clement received his bachelor’s degree from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a master’s degree in economics from Cambridge University. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was the Supreme Court editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following graduation, Mr. Clement clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. He went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights, and then as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of King & Spalding, where he headed the firm’s appellate practice. Mr. Clement rejoined the firm in November 2008.

Friday, August 27
Adam Liptak
Supreme Court correspondent, The New York Times

Adam Liptak

Adam Liptak is the Supreme Court correspondent of The New York Times. Since Liptak, a lawyer, joined the Times’ news staff in 2002, he has contributed reporting and analysis on legal matters. He has written the column “Sidebar” since 2007, covering and considering developments in the law. Liptak covered the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor; the investigation into the disclosure of the identity of Valerie Wilson, an undercover CIA operative; the trial of Lee Malvo, one of the Washington-area snipers; judicial ethics; and various aspects of the criminal justice system, notably capital punishment. He was a member of the teams that examined the reporting of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller at the Times.

Liptak first joined the Times as a copyboy in 1984, after graduation from Yale University, where he was an editor of The Yale Daily News Magazine, with a degree in English. In addition to clerical work and fetching coffee, he assisted the reporter M.A. Farber in covering the trial of a libel suit brought by Gen. William Westmoreland against CBS. Liptak returned to Yale for a law degree, graduating in 1988. During law school, he worked as a summer clerk in the The New York Times Company’s legal department. After graduating, he spent four years at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, a New York City law firm, as a litigation associate specializing in First Amendment matters.

In 1992, he returned to the Times’ legal department, spending a decade advising the Times and the company’s other newspapers, television stations and new media properties on defamation, privacy, newsgathering and related issues, and he frequently litigated media and commercial cases. In 1995, Presstime magazine named him one of 20 leading newspaper professionals under the age of 40. In 1999, he received the New York Press Club's John Peter Zenger award for “defending and advancing the cause of a free press.” In 2006, the same group awarded him its Crystal Gavel award for his journalistic work.

Liptak has served as the chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s communications and media law committee, was a member of the board of the Media Law Resource Center and has taught media law at the Columbia University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Business Week and The American Lawyer. He has written several law review articles as well, generally on First Amendment topics.