2025 Season: June 21–August 24, 2025
Follow this page for program announcements and updates to plan your next Chautauqua experience.
Week One • June 21–28, 2025
Themes of Transformation: Forces Shaping Our Tomorrow
We live in a state of flux. Down to our very cells, transformation is constant and unavoidable, and in this anthology week we resist the comfort of stasis to confront the trends, discoveries and challenges that are molding our future landscape. We’ll consider our own role in the changes around us: Are we catalysts or mere reactionaries?
- What are the current forces of transformation and change in the summer of 2025? Why do these forces elicit both feelings of cultural instability and loss, as well as the thrill of new opportunities?
- Are we, in fact, living in an era of rapid, unprecedented transformation? What can the bellwethers of the past portend for what is to come?
- As we identify the current forces transforming our lives, how do we then use that insight to confidently navigate the future?
Through insightful, interdisciplinary case studies, Chautauqua will bring together social scientists, economists, changemakers and futurists to examine the impact of transformation on us, our communities and our world.
Week Two • June 28–July 5, 2025
Comedy Now: A Week Curated with Lewis Black
In Partnership with the National Comedy Center
Longtime friend of Chautauqua and National Comedy Center Advisory Board Member Lewis Black, the celebrated comedian known for his trademark acerbic style, helps curate a laugh-inducing and thought-provoking week dedicated to the craft and practice of comedy.
- Comedians are some of our most steadfast defenders of free speech — how does this manifest in an era of “woke” culture? Where is the line, when must it move, and who decides?
- The comedy world is more dynamic than ever before, with new formats, platforms, and voices emerging to speak to audiences with vast and varied perspectives. How have the most innovative, novel artists in this landscape carved out a space for their art, captured an audience, and pushed the craft forward?
- We’ll consider how genres, styles and content have been evolved and perfected to meet modern tastes and sensibilities — and what has outright disappeared or been actively rejected. Are these all positive developments?
In a week also featuring a live performance based on Lewis’s popular podcast “The Rant is Due,” the sharpest voices across comedy generations come together at Chautauqua to help us explore these critical questions and others — if we can hear them over the laughter.
Confirmed lecturers:
Lewis Black, celebrated standup comedian and actor, “Inside Out 2”
Week Three • July 5–12, 2025
Art in Action: Building Community Through the Arts
Chautauqua has long offered a cross-fertilization of art forms, bringing together art makers and art lovers in community — and increasingly it serves as an incubator for new, exciting work, providing a window into the process of creative experimentation and excellence.
- Why do we create, and how is art a part of the everyday?
- What are the dual roles and responsibilities of the artist and the audience, both in the moment and beyond? When is there more to say about a work that has captured our imagination?
- What do works of art tell us about cultural, political, and social ideas and/or ideals?
This week aims to connect impactful artistic experiences with a deeper understanding of artistic meaning and process from the makers themselves.
Confirmed lecturers:
George Saunders, author, Lincoln in the Bardo
Week Four • July 12–19, 2025
The Future of the American Experiment
A Week in Partnership with American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution
Chautauqua brings two of America’s most highly regarded think tanks together on its historic lecture platform for a series of discussions on the issues driving the national discourse.
- What is the state of our democratic republic today? What does our history and our present foretell about the future of the American experiment and our standing in the world?
- What now constitutes the “American dream,” and how can we make it accessible to all who wish to achieve it?
- How can Americans find common ground on our most urgent challenges following a bruising national election and continued partisan division? Where are there green shoots of hope?
AEI and Brookings experts show the way, in the Chautauqua tradition of sharing diverse and divergent perspectives in smart, good-faith conversation.
Confirmed lecturers:
Robert Doar, president, American Enterprise Institute
Cecilia Elena Rouse, president, Brookings Institution
Week Five • July 19–26, 2025
Innovation in Capitalism: How to Meet 21st-Century Challenges?
Twenty-five years into the 21st century — and in light of world-shaking events that define recent history such as Big Tech’s emergence as the dominant industry, global conflicts, financial collapses and a deadly pandemic — this week we put our finger on the pulse of the global economy, and especially the American capitalist system.
- Where are we seeing encouraging trends, persistent challenges, and potential future headwinds and tailwinds?
- What are the best predictions for the fast-approaching seismic impact of artificial intelligence in increasingly capable forms? How are leaders in elected office, business and elsewhere preparing?
- How is the capitalist system in America positioned within the evolving global economy?
Our expert lecturers will us their best assessment of the state of play today, what the next 75 years hold, and how America — and all Americans — can be best positioned to continue to succeed and lead in the 21st century.
Week Six • July 26–August 2, 2025
The Global Rise of Authoritarianism
In its 2021 Freedom in the World assessment, the nonprofit Freedom House noted a sharp acceleration the previous year in a global decline of democracy, an effect of what it characterized as decades-long trend of rising authoritarianism. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that a median of 31% of respondents across 24 different nations are supportive of military rule or an authoritarian leader; while most still see representative democracy as a good means of governance, authoritarianism has stronger support in middle-income countries the world over.
- In this week, we travel across the globe to nations where authoritarian regimes hold or are gaining power to understand: How? Why?
- How do the systems of authoritarian rule differ? What are the factors in a particular country’s demographics or circumstances that determine which system is most effective in building or maintaining power?
- What lessons or preventative measures can be gleaned from countries or regions that have rejected the rise of authoritarianism, or that have emerged into democracy having deposed an established authoritarian regime? In those places, what wounds or scars remain?
Week Seven • August 2–9, 2025
Kwame Alexander and Friends
Honoring a shared mission to change the world through the power of storytelling, award-winning author, poet, producer and educator Kwame Alexander returns to the Amphitheater stage to lead a series of heart-to-heart conversations on making a positive difference in our world.
- Across five captivating mornings, the Amphitheater stage transforms into Kwame’s “living room,” in a variety of formats where deep and insightful conversations will unfold.
- Together, Kwame and his guests will explore the courage needed to succeed and fail, the role of education, business, and the arts in enhancing societal well-being, and how we build community (and why it matters).
Kwame’s 2023 Amphitheater lecture quickly established a connection between the author and the Chautauqua community, leading to his current role as the Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and inaugural Writer in Residence — that shared love will be evident throughout this inspiring week at Chautauqua.
Confirmed lecturers:
Kwame Alexander, author, Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances; Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and inaugural writer in residence, Chautauqua Institution
Week Eight • August 9–16, 2025
The Middle East: The Gulf States’ Emerging Influence
Building on a decades-long legacy of thoughtful and informative programming focused on the Middle East, Chautauqua in this week focuses specifically on the increasingly influential states that border the Persian Gulf, including members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Iran and Iraq.
- We’ll seek to understand the histories, demography and economies of the Gulf states, how they are ruled or governed, and their relationships to each other and the broader Middle East — and especially in the context of ongoing conflicts including Israel-Palestine. How are these nations preparing for a future of declining dependence on oil?
- How and why are the Gulf states exerting political and economic influence in other regions of the world, and especially here at home, including in somewhat surprising spaces such as sports and culture?
Week Nine • August 16–24, 2025
Past Informs Present: How to Harness History
We know the saying “those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it,” but what can be said about how history is told (or not told) that informs and influences the present moment for those living it? History is, of course, the past; but it is also the description of that past. History is a story.
- If history is a story, what do those stories mean, and how can those stories be edited or reinterpreted to serve different purposes, even purposes at odds?
- We consider history as science, as art, as philosophy — how do fields including politics, industry and faith impact how we interpret history?
- How does what we know of the past influence the way we draft our own histories for the future?