2025 Season Speakers, Topics, and Biographies
Week 1
Johnathan Rosen
Photo by Tali Rosen
Jonathan Rosen is the author, most recently, of The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, which was named a top ten book of the year by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate and People Magazine, and was chosen by Barack Obama as one of his Favorite Books of 2023. The Best Minds was also a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize.
Rosen is also the author the novels Eve’s Apple and Joy Comes in the Morning, and two additional non-fiction books: The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds and The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature. His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and numerous anthologies. He created the culture section of the Forward newspaper, which he edited for ten years, and created and edited the Jewish Encounters series of short biographies and histories published with Schocken-Random House. He is a consulting editor for The Free Press, an internet-based media company.
June 23 3:30 pm The Best Minds
June 24 12:30 pm Madness and Imagination
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 long time participant of AEI’s Election Watch series and an adviser to the Continuity of Government Commission.
Ornstein has been involved in political reform for decades, particularly campaign finance, election reform, and House and Senate reform. He has also played a part in creating the Congressional Office of Compliance and the House Office of Congressional Ethics. He was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, and was a member of its Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. In June 2020, that commission issued 31 recommendations for strengthening democracy in the report Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century, including reform to political institutions, investment in civil society, and transforming our political culture. His many books include The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track and the New York Times bestseller It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism, both with Thomas Mann. His most recent book, an instant New York Times and Washington Post best seller, is One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet-Deported, with Mann and EJ Dionne.
June 25 12:30 pm. Coping With Tyranny: Where Do We Go From Here?
Week 2
David Bernstein
A passionate advocate of the free expression of ideas and the state of Israel, David Bernstein is the founder of the North American Values Institute (NAVI), previously the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV), which opposes radical ideologies and supports liberal values in and out of the Jewish community, and author of Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews. He is also a co-founder of the Institute for Liberal Values, a consortium of like-minded organizations supporting liberal principles. He is past President and CEO of Jewish Council for Public Affairs and former executive director of the David Project. He spent 13 years at the American Jewish Committee in senior roles. David is a Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and a Strategic Advisor for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM). He is a prolific speaker, podcaster and writer, having written hundreds of opinion pieces in the Jewish and general press.
June 30 3:30 pm "Woke" Antisemitism": How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews
July 1 12:30 pm. Antisemitism in K-12 Education: What it is? What to do about it?
Phil Lerman
Phil Lerman is the former national editor of USA Today and producer of several TV shows, including the long-running America's Most Wanted. He has been coming to Chautauqua for more than 20 years, and has performed at the standup Comedy Night at the Chautauqua Women’s Club Center for several years. He also teaches a very popular course on Leonard Cohen every summer as part of Special Studies.
July 2 12:30 pm. Alan Sherman
Week 3
Yair Rosenberg
Yair Rosenberg is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers the intersection of politics, culture, and religion, and writes the Deep Shtetl newsletter. Previously a senior writer at Tablet Magazine, he has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, and his work has received awards from the Religion Newswriters Association and the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies. He has testified in the U.S. Congress about antisemitism, and has covered everything from national elections in America and Israel, to observant Jews in baseball, to the translation of Harry Potter into Yiddish. In his spare time, he composes original Jewish music and creates bots that troll anti-Semites on Twitter. His latest projects include, "Antisemitism, Explained," a video series about anti-Jewish prejudice, and Az Yashir, an album of new shabbat music.
July 7 3:30 pm: The End of American Exceptionalism on Antisemitism: The Structural Shifts Behind the Resurgence of Anti-Jewish Prejudice
July 8 12:30 pm: Einstein and the Rabbi: The Untold Story of the Physicist's 20-Year Friendship with Rabbi Chaim Tchernowitz, and Their Conversations About the Talmud, Zionism, and God
Week 4
Lisa Leff
Lisa Moses Leff is Director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is also Professor of History at American University. An expert on French Jewish history, her books include Colonialism and the Jews; The Archive Thief ; and Sacred Bonds of. Professor Leff has also served in leadership roles in the historical profession, including as President of the Society for French Historical Studies, as a board member of the Association for Jewish Studies, and as an elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research.
July 14 3:30 pm: The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust
July 15 12:30 pm: France and the Jews: History of a Love/Hate Relationship
Richard Gitlin
Richard Gitlin practiced international law as one of the preeminent experts in the world on fixing financially distressed multinational companies and countries. Richard is the founder and president of The Nagen Project, a non-profit organization focused on ensuring that our families, our children and grandchildren, can lead safe lives as Jews in North America.
July 16 12:30 pm: We Are Not Fighting Discrimination. We Are Fighting Elimination.
Week 5
Jamie Metzl
Jamie Metzl is one of the world’s leading authorities on the implications of the intersecting AI, genetics, and biotechnology revolutions and how governments, corporations, organizations, and individuals can ride the wave of these unprecedented transformations to build their best possible futures.
A technology and healthcare futurist and geopolitical expert, he is the author of the international bestseller, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, the sci-fi thrillers Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata, and his latest book, Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World.
Jamie is the Founder and Chair of the global social movement, OneShared.World, a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, a faculty member of NextMed Health, and a Singularity University expert. Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations in Cambodia. In 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing.
A former partner in a global private equity firm, Jamie helped establish and serves as Special Strategist for the WisdomTree BioRevolution Exchange Traded Fund and sits on the advisory boards of Genomic Prediction, Harvard Medical School Preventive Genomics, the Lake Nona Impact Forum, NextMed Health, the Dubai Future Forum, and Walmart’s Future of Retail Policy Lab. He is also the Honorary Global Investment Ambassador of the Seoul Metropolitan Government.
Called “the original COVID-19 whistleblower” for his groundbreaking efforts calling for a full investigation into pandemic origins, Jamie was the lead witness in the March 2023 US congressional hearings on COVID-19 origins. He appears frequently on national and international media, his work has been featured by 60 Minutes, the New York Times, and most major media outlets across the globe, and his syndicated columns and other writing on science, technology, health, politics, and international affairs appear regularly in publications around the world. His short story “A Visit to Weizenbaum” was made into the 2021 short film Source Code. Jamie is a founder and board Co-Chair of the national security organization Partnership for a Secure America and a board member of the American University in Mongolia and Parsons Dance. He previously served on the boards of HIAS, Park University, and the International Center for Transitional Justice, and has been an election monitor in Afghanistan and the Philippines and advised the government of North Korea on the establishment of Special Economic Zones.
Jamie is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former White House Fellow and Aspen Institute Crown Fellow who holds a Ph.D. from Oxford, a JD from Harvard Law School, and is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University.
July 21 3:30 pm: Beyond the Blue Zones: What the Revolutionary Science of Human Life Extension Means for You
July 22 12:30 pm: AI from Mount Sinai? Might AI help foster a new global consciousness?
Week 6
Suzanne Nossel
Suzanne Nossel, stepped down at the end of 2024 as CEO of PEN America. She is author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All (and Is Free Speech Under Threat (She is a member of the 22-member global Oversight Board that adjudicates sensitive questions of content moderation for Meta platforms. During her time at PEN America Nossel oversaw a 10-fold expansion in the organization's budget, and grew its reach, programs and impact. She built the New York-based organization into a national and international force for free expression and open discourse. She is a leading voice on free expression issues in the United States and globally, writing, speaking and being interviewed frequently for national and international media outlets. Her prior career spanned government service and leadership roles in the corporate and nonprofit sectors. She has served as the Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch and as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. During the first term of the Obama Administration, Nossel served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, where she led U.S. engagement in the United Nations and multilateral institutions, on human rights and humanitarian issues. During the Clinton Administration, Nossel was Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where she was the lead negotiator in settling U.S. arrears to the world body. During her corporate career, Nossel served as Vice President of U.S. Business Development for Bertelsmann and as Vice President for Strategy and Operations for the Wall Street Journal. Nossel coined the term “Smart Power,” which was the title of a 2004 article she published in Foreign Affairs Magazine and later became the theme of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure in office. Nossel is a featured columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and has published op-eds in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times, and dozens of other outlets, as well as scholarly articles in Foreign Affairs, Dissent, Democracy, and other journals. Nossel is a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
July 28 12:30 pm Free Speech and Anti-Semitism
David Greenberg
David Greenberg is a professor of History and of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. His latest book, John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster, 2024), has been called “panoramic and richly insightful” (Brent Staples, The New York Times) and a biography that “captures Lewis’s life, achievements, and times with heart-stopping precision” (Booklist). A Guggenheim Foundation, NEH, and Cullman Center fellow, Greenberg is the author or editor of several books on American history and politics including Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (2003) and Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency (2016). Formerly acting editor of The New Republic and columnist for Slate, he now writes regularly for Politico, Liberties, and many other scholarly and popular publications. He holds a PhD in history from Columbia University and a BA from Yale and lives with his family in Manhattan.
July 29 12:30 pm: The Alliance: John Lewis and Black-Jewish Relations, from the Civil Rights Movement to the Halls of Congress
Jeremy Ben-Ami
Jeremy Ben-Ami
Jeremy Ben-Ami is the President of J Street with a background of deep experience in American politics and government and a passionate commitment to the state of Israel. His political background includes serving mid-1990s as the Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor in the White House to President Bill Clinton and working on seven Presidential and numerous state and local campaigns. He was Howard Dean’s National Policy Director in 2004 and helped manage a Mayoral campaign in New York City in 2001. He has been recognized for his leadership including being named one of 50 “People of the Decade” by Ha’aretz, the influential Israeli daily newspaper, and by the Jerusalem Post, which included him in its list of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the world.
January 29 3:30 pm: Antisemitism as a Political Tool: Protecting Democracy and Dividing our Community
Week 7
Pamela S. Nadell
Professor Pamela Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University. She holds a B.A. from Douglass College, Rutgers University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Her book America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton) won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award’s “Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year.” A National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars award supported her next book Antisemitism, an American Tradition, which will be published by W.W. Norton on October 14, 2025. A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, she consults to the museum planned for the rebuild of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life and productions of the play The Lehman Trilogy. She has testified before Congress three times, most recently as the fourth witness in the December 2023 Congressional hearing with the presidents or Harvard, UPenn, and MIT.
August 4 3:30 pm: America’s Jewish Women
August 5 12:30 pm: Antisemitism, an American Tradition
Week 8
Dr. Aaron Y. Zelin
Dr. Aaron Y. Zelin is the Gloria and Ken Levy Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he also directs the Islamic State Worldwide Activity Map project. Zelin is also a Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University, an Affiliate with the Global Peace and Security Centre at Monash University, and Founder of the widely acclaimed website Jihadology. He is author of the book Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad which was nominated for the Neave Memorial Book Prize in 2020. Zelin’s second book The Age of Political Jihadism: A Study of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was published in August 2023. He is currently working on a third book tentatively titled Heartland of the Believers: A History of Syrian Jihadism.
Zelin’s research focuses on Sunni jihadi groups in the Levant, North Africa, Afghanistan, and the Sahel as well as the trend of jihadi governance, online mobilization, and foreign fighting. He has conducted field research in Tunisia, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel. Zelin has also testified and served as an expert witness in front of Congress and in judicial cases. He has also advised and briefed numerous governments, intelligence agencies, technologies companies, and NGOs all over the world.
August 11 12:30 pm: Understanding the New Syria
August 12 12:30 pm: Gulf States and the New Syria
Week 9
Dr. David Elcott and Rabbi Shira Milgrom
Dr. David Elcott has spent many decades working at the intersection of community building, the search for a theory of cross-boundary engagement, and interfaith and ethnic organizing and activism. Trained in political psychology and Middle East affairs at Columbia University and in Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University, Dr. Elcott formerly served as the National Interfaith Director for the American Jewish Committee and the Taub Professor at the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU. He is now a professor as part of Columbia University's Center for Justice and Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, teaching incarcerated men who are studying for their college degree. Dr. Elcott is the author of A Sacred Journey: The Jewish Quest for a Perfect World and Faith, Nationalism and the Future of Liberal Democracy He is a media commentator who has been heard and published across many continents while representing the Jewish community at the Vatican, in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. His newest book explores the impact of religion on immigration policies around the world.
Rabbi Shira Milgrom reflects a generation of rabbis who passionately create extraordinary encounters with Jewish texts, rituals and traditions that merge the intimate and personal with the grand vision of the Jewish people. She served as rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami for thirty-seven years, building a community of activism, joy and spiritual courage. She is a motivational speaker who offers Jewish meaning in a turbulent world, with a new book to soon be published … “The Seven-Fold Path – A Traveler’s Guide to Jewish Wisdom and a Spiritual Practice.”
Rabbi Milgrom is a graduate of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and has academic training in a wide range of learning. She has been the keynote speaker in major American conferences ranging from young leadership, women and feminism to issues facing the aging and the elderly. She is also the editor of a unique Siddur (prayer book) now used in settings across the continent.
August 18 3:30 pm. Dr. Elcott: Nationalism and the Future of Liberal Democracy: Finding a Jewish Theology of Democracy
August 19 12:30 pm. Rabbi Milgrom: The Sevenfold Path: A Traveler's Guide to Jewish Wisdom and a Spiritual Practice