Friday, April 5th, 7:30 PM at Hotchkiss School
Dr. Richard Haass will be interviewed by Brian Ross.
Dr. Richard Haass, a veteran diplomat and respected scholar of international relations, is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also senior counselor with Centerview Partners, an international investment banking advisory firm. He previously served as CFR’s president for twenty years, in the State Department under Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, at the White House under George H.W. Bush, and at the Pentagon under Jimmy Carter. He was US envoy to the Cyprus negotiations and the Northern Ireland peace process, and after 9/11 was US coordinator for the future of Afghanistan. Dr. Haass is the author or editor of fourteen books on American foreign policy, one book on management, and one on American democracy. His latest book, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens, was published by Penguin Press in January 2023 and became a New York Times best seller. He also authors a weekly newsletter, Home & Away, available on Substack. A Rhodes Scholar, Dr. Haass holds a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College, the masters and doctorate of philosophy degrees from Oxford University, and numerous honorary degrees. He is the recipient of the State Department's Superior Honor Award, the Presidential Citizens Medal, and the Tipperary International Peace Award. Dr. Haass, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island, lives with his wife in New York City.
For a sneak preview of Richard Haass, listen to this Ezra Klein podcast from March 1 called “The Wars in Gaza and Ukraine Have Changed. America’s Policy Hasn’t”.
Friday, March 8th, 7:30 PM at Housatonic Valley Regional High School
Thom Shanker and Andrew Hoehn interviewed by Alex Ward, former editorial director at NYTimes Books
Authors Andrew Hoehn and Thom Shanker address the major security challenges facing America--from adversarial superpowers--to emerging threats like pandemics, cybersecurity, and climate change. Weaving expert analysis with exclusive interviews, the authors argue that the U.S. must pivot from a military system focused on deterrence and global operations to life and money saving strategies that keep America safe.
Thursday, February 8th at 7:00 PM, via Zoom
Biden described his meeting with Xi at the APEC Summit as the “most constructive and productive” since he came to office. But what can the U.S. really expect? Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program, will discuss the next phase in US-China relations. Her latest book on Asia-Pacific geopolitics is US-Taiwan Relations: Will China's Challenge Lead to a Crisis, (Brookings Press, April 2023).
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2023 7:30 PM
Housatonic Valley Regional High School
Dr. James Shepherd, a faculty physician at Yale University, will lead a forum on how the world must confront infectious diseases in the 21st century. Dr. Shepherd has spent the last two decades as an infectious disease specialist, including in Africa and India treating HIV, TB, and managing public health systems and disease outbreaks. He is also a farmer in Sharon, CT, growing hops for local brewers and raising cows and sheep. With his broad experience as a doctor and a farmer, Dr. Shepherd provides a unique perspective on epidemics, the changing environment, and the place of our species amongst the community of animals, plants, and pathogens.
Friday, October 27, 2023, at the Housatonic Valley Regional High School, 7:30 PM
News about artificial intelligence technology, AI, soared into board rooms and social media this Spring when chip maker Nvidia surprised Wall Street with quarterly sales of over $7 billion, a year-over-year jump of 64%. AI chips are designed to perform tasks faster and more efficiently than humans, including generating ideas and text for plotlines and stories. Mary Rasenberger, Chief Executive Officer of the Authors Guild, will discuss how generative AI is impacting and will impact the writing profession and the future creation of literary works. What will the writing life look like in 2030? Will there be one? How will AI change publishing and what gets published?
Prior to joining the Authors Guild, Mary was an attorney specializing in intellectual property, media, and technology with special expertise in copyright law. She counseled authors and artists, as well as publishing, media, entertainment, and internet companies in digital rights, infringement, licensing, litigation, and enforcement.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2023 7:00 PM
The Sharon Playhouse
Brian Ross, who has had an illustrious 40-year career as as an investigative journalist, most notably as the Chief Investigative Correspondent for ABC News from 1994 to 2018, will facilitate a panel including Kurt Andersen, an American author of novels and nonfiction as well as television and theater, and John Coston, editor of the Lakeville Journal, will discuss the importance of maintaining the truth in all news media platforms. Playwrights Jeremy Kareken and David Murrell will explain how facts become twisted into fiction in their critically acclaimed Broadway play "The Lifespan of a Fact" about the high-stakes world of publishing, on stage at the Playhouse from September 29-October 15.
Housing is rapidly becoming less affordable for residents in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut and the surrounding region, making it difficult for those who work in local businesses, schools, and nonprofits to find a home. This forum will explore how towns and local organizations can expand housing affordability while balancing other important issues, including land conservation. Discussion will focus on building a unifying process that merges the imperative for housing solutions with long-term commitments to conservation and preservation of open spaces.
The forum will be facilitated by Steve Rosenberg, co-convener Hudson Valley Affordable Housing & Conservation Strategy, formerly of Scenic Hudson.
Panelists include Jocelyn Ayer, Litchfield County Center for Housing Opportunity (LCCHO); Michael Polemis, Chair, Land Trust Alliance; and Gordon Ridgway, First Selectman, Cornwall, CT.
As part of the event, the Foundation for Community Health, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, and its Fund for the Northwest Corner will announce the launch of a new grant program, in partnership with Litchfield County Center for Housing Opportunity. These grants are for organizations in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut to foster multi sector collaborations on housing. The grant program aims to build public will to move housing initiatives from concept to reality by engaging with a range of community groups, including employers, conservation organizations, educators, faith communities, and economic development committees.
SAM WATERSTON, award-winning actor in theater, film, and television, also is Chair of the Board of Oceana—since 2001, the largest global advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the world's oceans. He will discuss the state of the world’s oceans and various efforts to make them healthier and more abundant, while addressing climate change. Waterston will describe some of the policy approaches and victories in countries that govern much of the world’s marine life. Through collaborative efforts, Mexico, Brazil, and Belize have agreed to publish vessel tracking data for their commercial fishing fleets; California has enacted the boldest plastic pollution reduction policy in the nation; and Spain has created a new waste law that curbs ocean-polluting single-use plastics. Oceana is participating in global efforts to reduce carbon pollution by acting to prevent the expansion of offshore drilling that can also have devastating impacts on marine ecosystems and wildlife.
You know about his success as an actor. Come hear about Sam Waterston's leading role in saving our oceans.
Tuesday, March 28 at 7pm via Zoom
Carol Browner has had a lifelong commitment to securing environmental and public health protections, working in the private sector and serving two presidents, a governor and two senators.
As Director of President Obama’s White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Browner oversaw the coordination of environmental, energy, climate, transport, and related policy across the U.S. federal government. From 1993 through 2001, Ms. Browner served as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Clinton, securing clean air and safe drinking water protections. She also served as Secretary of Environmental Regulation in Florida launching a large ecological restoration of the Everglades. Browner was able to secure science-based public protections while allowing private business flexibility to achieve high standards.
Presently Browner is a Senior Counsel at the law firm of Covington and Burlington LLP helping clients navigate climate change policy. She also serves on the board of Bunge Limited, a multinational agribusiness corporation, and is Board Chair of of the League of Conservation Voters. Ms. Browner previously served as Senior Counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategic advisory firm, and was a founding principal of The Albright Group. She splits her time between the Green Mountains of Vermont and Washington DC.
Vivian Garfein, member of the Salisbury Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission, and former Central Director of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection will interview Carol Browner.
This documentary is an intimate portrait of Setsuko Thurlow, who was pulled from a fiery building after the first atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. The experience shaped her future life as she kept a pledge she made to her classmates who perished that no one would experience such a fate again.
Yale Law School’s Akhil Reed Amar returns to the Salisbury Forum to discuss the origins of America’s Constitution in the late eighteenth century, and the link between this document and the jurisprudential earthquake that occurred at the end of the 2021 Supreme Court term in landmark cases involving abortion, guns, and religion.
Straight from the stage of NPR’s wonderfully funny weekly quiz show “Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me,” Roy Blount, Jr. will entertain and regale the Salisbury Forum audience with his unique style of American storytelling.
This year The Lakeville Journal is marking its 125th anniversary of continuous publication as a weekly newspaper serving northwest Connecticut, the southern Berkshires, and eastern New York. To help celebrate this extraordinary achievement, the Salisbury Forum has organized a panel of media giants to discuss “The Future of American Journalism,” including Brian Ross, Marty Baron, Subrata De, and John Coston.
Marie Yovanovitch is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University. Previously, she served as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (2016-2019), the Republic of Armenia (2008-2011) and the Kyrgyz Republic (2005-2008).
Thomas Shapiro is the David R. Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. Professor Shapiro's primary interest is in racial inequality and public policy.
Jeff Jarvis is Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Jarvis is a national leader in the development of online news, blogging, the investigation of new business models for news, and the teaching of entrepreneurial journalism. He writes an influential media blog, Buzzmachine.com.
Jonathan Safran Foer is a novelist known for Everything Is Illuminated (2002), Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), Here I Am (2016), and for his non-fiction works Eating Animals (2009) and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019). He teaches creative writing at New York University.
Sherry Turkle is a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She is the author of six books, including Alone Together and the New York Times bestseller Reclaiming Conversation.
Nicole Perlroth covers cybersecurity and digital espionage for The New York Times.
Erik Edstrom is the author of Un-American: A Soldier's Reckoning of our Longest War. He graduated from West Point in 2007. He was then deployed to Afghanistan, where he served as an infantry platoon leader.
Catherine Freije was a Harvard Virology Ph.D. candidate in the Sabeti lab from 2016-2020 and developed CRISPR-based technologies for diagnosing and treating RNA virus infections.
Steven Johnson is co-host of “Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer,” a four-part PBS series premiering on May 11 and the author of the companion book being published the same day by Riverhead Books. He is the author of twelve previous books, including Enemy of All Mankind, Farsighted, Where Good Ideas Come From, and The Ghost Map. He is host of the 2014 PBS series “How We Got To Now” and the podcast “American Innovations.”
Jerry Saltz is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for New York magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for The Village Voice, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2018 and was nominated for the award in 2001 and 2006.
Bonnie Glaser is the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
David Pogue was the New York Times weekly tech columnist from 2000 to 2013. He’s a five-time Emmy winner for his stories on CBS News Sunday Morning, a New York Times bestselling author, a five-time TED speaker, and host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS.
Veteran New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik talks about liberal democracy, its strategy for survival, and its risks of extinction.
Casper ter Kuiie is a Harvard Divinity School Innovation Fellow and author of The Power of Ritual. He is also the co-founder of startup Sacred Design Lab, described as “a research and design consultancy working to create a culture of belonging and becoming.”
Kurt Andersen's new book is Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History, a companion volume to his prize-winning 2017 New York Times bestseller Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed bestselling novels True Believers, Heyday, Turn of the Century and (with Alec Baldwin), You Can't Spell America Without Me.
William C. Rhoden is an American sports journalist and author, who formerly worked as a columnist for the New York Times from 1983 until his retirement in 2016.
The Salisbury Forum is offering a special “webinar” with one of our most popular speakers, Douglas Tallamy. His topic is very timely with recent headlines about three billion fewer birds in North America, global insect declines, and the impending extinction of one million species world wide.
Video recording available