See what’s streaming on CHQ Assembly this November! 

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CHQ Assembly’s November 2023 Lineup 

In November, we’re highlighting the 2023 Summer Assembly theme “Can the Center Hold? – A Question for Our Moment.”  

We can think of “the center” as the middle in political and economic terms: furthest from the edges of society and a place of status quo, moderation and balance. We also use center in reference to a physical space where a community comes together — to worship, to heal, to support one another. And “center” can mean the center of one’s being, the place one seeks in quiet moments of reflection. Join Chautauqua’s lecturers Bill Kristol, Eboo Patel, Angela Garbes, Laurel Braitman, Dr. Ulysses W. Burley III, Norman Ornstein, Wendy Cadge, Danielle Lang, Walter Russell Mead, Timothy McMahan King, Lydia Kang, Emily Esfahani Smith, and Dr. Darshan Mehta as they consider who and what defines the center of society and why — or if — the center should be preserved. 

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Notable Lectures

Bill Kristol

 

For three decades, Bill Kristol has been a leading participant in American political debates and a widely -respected analyst of American political developments. Having served in senior positions in the two presidential administrations, Kristol understands government from the inside; as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, he has studied American politics and society from the outside. Now a founding director of Defending Democracy Together, an organization dedicated to defending America’s liberal democratic norms, principles, and institutions, Kristol — who last spoke in the Amphitheater in 2002, when he delivered that summer’s Chautauqua Lecture — opens Chautauqua’s week on “Can the Center Hold? — A Question for Our Moment.” 

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Eboo Patel

 

Eboo Patel is a civic leader who believes that religious diversity is an essential and inspiring dimension of American democracy. Named “one of America’s best leaders” by U.S. News and World Report, Eboo is Founder and President of Interfaith America, the leading interfaith organization in the United States. Under his leadership, Interfaith America has worked with governments, universities, private companies, and civic organizations to make faith a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division. 

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Norman J. Ornstein

 

Norman J. Ornstein is a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he has been studying politics, elections, and the U.S. Congress for more than four decades. He is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and does a weekly podcast called “Words Matter” with Dr. Kavita Patel. He is also a longtime participant of AEI’s Election Watch series and an adviser to the Continuity of Government Commission. During Chautauqua’s discussion of “Can the Center Hold? — A Question for Our Moment,” he will discuss the latest research on what is tearing at the centers of democracy and community in American life, and offer some strategies and recommendations to strengthen the country’s institutions and civic culture. 

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Emily Esfahani Smith 

 

Drawing from more than 100 interviews, and years of research into positive psychology, neuroscience and philosophy, Emily Esfahani Smith has discovered a more enriching way to live a good life: through the search for meaning. It’s the subject of her compelling and acclaimed book The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters, called “persuasive” and “elegant” by The Wall Street Journal, and “a life-transforming experience” by Susan Cain. Smith closed the Chautauqua Lecture Series’ examination of whether the center can hold with a message on centering the self and the importance of creating meaning in our own lives. 

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Lydia Kang

 

Winner of the 2022 Nebraska Book Award in the category of Nonfiction Popular History, Patient Zero is the second nonfiction book by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen. 

Watch all these lectures and more, exclusively on CHQ Assembly.