Journalist Calvin Tomkins observed that the art world has a Before and an After, and the pivot is Thelma Golden. He wrote that when Golden “was a young curator in the '90s, her shows centering Black artists were unprecedented. Today, those artists are the stars of the art market.” Even before she became Director and Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Golden transformed the possibilities for Black artists, and brought the rest of us into her world. In this session, Thelma and her friend and colleague, Glenn Lowry, the longtime Director of the Museum of Modern Art, will discuss how they have worked together– and separately– to bring more people of color into the museum world and how that has changed what we see and how we see it.

Join us for drinks & hors d'oeuvres in the Geier Oval, outside the Davis Center for Human Ecology.

Join us for coffee and tea in the event tent prior to the morning session

Former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins and mRNA vaccine developer Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire put themselves on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic, using their special access to communities of faith and color to build trust in vaccine science. At the White House, in community health clinics, and in countless media appearances, including with Washington Post associate editor Frances Stead Sellers who joins them here, they sought to counter misinformation and explain decision-making in public health. Now, as Collins leaves his lab at the embattled NIH and Corbett-Helaire builds hers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, they look back on the pandemic and how well prepared it left the country, and a new generation of scientific leaders to tackle emerging microbes that could present equal or greater challenges to humanity.

David Rubenstein has made a study of successful leadership. In his books and podcasts, he explores the world’s highest performing leaders and shares keen insights about what qualities shaped their rise. His popular podcast, The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations, highlights leadership through the personal and professional choices of the most influential people in business. In his book, The Highest Calling, Rubenstein chronicles the journeys of the presidents who have defined America as it exists now, what they envision for its future, and their legacy on the world stage. Join us as he speaks with Marie Arana—author most recently of LatinoLand (2024), as well as Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story and Bolivar, and the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress—on what great leaders have in common. Rubenstein and Arana are collaborating on a new television show about authors and their ideas, America’s Book Club, scheduled to premiere on C-SPAN this fall.

Join us for drinks & hors d'oeuvres in the Geier Oval, outside the Davis Center for Human Ecology.

Join us for coffee and tea in the event tent prior to the morning session

Charles Sumner was a household name in his era. Friends with Charles Dickens, de Tocqueville, and Emerson, the abolitionist and civil rights crusader was called “a colossus holding his burning heart in his hand” by Henry Longfellow. Sumner coined the phrase, “equality before the law” in an argument before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 1849. He was an advisor to Lincoln and an ally of Frederick Douglass. In his new biography, Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation, Zaakir Tameez brings back, in living color, the nearly forgotten statesman’s achievements, such as his role in helping ordain the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Dorothy Wickenden, author of The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights, will talk with Tameez about the ideas that remain relevant to a nation still divided over questions of race, equality, democracy, and constitutional law.

In December of 1972, Jean McConville, a widow and mother of 10 living in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was kidnapped and disappeared. In 2013, Delours Price, the first woman to join the Irish Republican Army in the early '70s as a front line soldier, died in a suburb of Dublin. Their stories are intertwined and revealed by the acclaimed investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe in his book, Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, winner of National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. Keefe will speak with his longtime editor at The New Yorker, writer Daniel Zalewski, about the moral complexity of living in the times of The Troubles, and how he may have solved the mystery of who killed Jean McConville.

The Northern Ireland Conflict was a 30-year period of political and sectarian violence primarily between Catholic nationalists demanding Northern Ireland be part of the Irish Republic and Protestant unionists insisting it remain governed as part of the UK. Over 3,500 were killed during “The Troubles”, which lasted from 1968 to 1998. Former Senator George Mitchell was asked to chair the negotiations between the warring factions and did so “mostly by listening,” he has said. These talks successfully ended with an agreement of the parties signed on Good Friday, 1998. Senator Mitchell will talk about his time as US Envoy to Northern Ireland, and the skills politicians need today to compromise, find common ground, and restore democracy.

Join us for drinks & hors d'oeuvres in the Geier Oval, outside the Davis Center for Human Ecology.

Join us for coffee and tea in the event tent prior to the morning session

With humor and courage, the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny began writing his memoir shortly after being poisoned in Serbia by the FSB, the successor to the KGB. Navalny was Vladimir Putin’s main adversary and most outspoken critic. He survived the attempt on his life, but refused to stay in the West where he was recuperating. The 47 year-old opposition leader flew back to Russia to fight on and was immediately arrested. “‘Do not be afraid, do not give up’, was his constant refrain, and he refused to betray his own counsel and principles,” writes David Remnick in The New Yorker. Navalny finished his autobiography from a jail cell in the Polar Wolf penal colony, once part of the Soviet Gulag system. He died there July 26, 2024. Remnick and Craig Kennedy, historian and Russia expert, will discuss the life and legacy of Alexei Navalny, and the supreme sacrifice he made in the name of a free Russia.

Join us for coffee and tea in the event tent prior to the morning session

The largest living land animals, elephants live in matriarchal societies where multiple family groups live together.  The oldest matriarch is always the leader and her wisdom, learned throughout her long life, serves to protect the health, well-being, and survival of the herd.  As a keystone species, elephants have a significant, and oversized, impact on their environments, creating habitats and resources that benefit other species. At the same time, elephant and human interests can come into conflict. 

Winnie Kiiru is a founding member of Women for the Environment Africa, an organization that inspires and supports female leaders to remedy the gender imbalance in leadership in African environmentalism and conservation. She is also a widely admired wildlife biologist, international leader in conservation, and advocate for people-centered conservation. President Sylvia Torti will speak with Kiiru about her research, matriarchal leadership, and her own "path breaking" role in protecting them from extinction. What can elephants teach us about communal living, conflict resolution, resilience and adaptability? How are elephant families and human communities and culture interconnected? 

David Hogg turned 25 in April and, by then, the politician and activist has already founded not one, but two nonprofit organizations: March for Our Lives and The Leaders We Deserve. In February, he was voted in as vice chair of the DNC, the youngest in history and the first member of GenZ. Hogg is a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and his activism started there. He helped organize and amplify the 2018 gun violence protests and marches calling for sensible gun controls. Together with his sister Laura Hogg, he wrote the book Never Again: A New Generation Draws the Line. Hogg will speak with Hannah Pingree, the youngest woman ever elected both majority leader of the Maine House of Representatives and Speaker of the House, about getting young progressive people in office.

Join us for drinks & hors d'oeuvres in the Geier Oval, outside the Davis Center for Human Ecology.

Join us for coffee and tea in the event tent prior to the morning session

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being hailed as revolutionary, with world-changing applications in every sector from human health to e-commerce, finance, and transportation. But as the technology grows more sophisticated, the alarm bells about potential dangers—deep fakes, market volatility, weapons automatization, and uncontrollable self-aware AI—grow louder. To counter these threats are leaders in the field of human-centered AI—an approach that centers human needs and values, and help enterprises responsibly build, adopt, procure, and use AI at scale. That is the mission of CredoAI, a San Francisco-based company founded by Navrina Singh. She will speak with the CEO of The Atlantic, Nick Thompson, about creating a future in which humans can thrive.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin has written brilliantly about US presidents who led our nation through times of great turmoil in the 19th and 20th centuries: Abraham Lincoln, and both Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt. However, in the latter part of the 20th century, she and her husband, writer and political advisor, Richard "Dick" Goodwin, knew, covered, and counseled many others in real time—men like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, and especially Lyndon Johnson. Historian Ted Widmer will discuss with Kearns Goodwin her latest book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, about some of the most dramatic crises in our nation's history and the people who led the country through them.

Join us for drinks & hors d'oeuvres in the Geier Oval, outside the Davis Center for Human Ecology.