IDEAS Special Issue 2016

Summer at Aspen

A wise crack.

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W H AT E V E R Y O U R V I S I O N , W E ’ L L F I N D T H E V I E W.

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From the Pass to Pyramid, Red Mountain to Reudi, Sopris to Stillwater, when you know the kind of life you want to live, we’ll find you the perfect place to live it.

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970 925 8088

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CONTENTS

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30 76

29

21

DEPARTMENTS 6

| W H AT I S T H E I N ST I T U T E ?

13 | A R O U N D T H E I N ST I T U T E

The Institute launches the Paepcke Society; Salinas and

Nathanson Scholars head to Aspen; Wye Fellows balance science with the humanities; Project Play gets kids moving; Negin Farsad makes white people laugh; the United State of Women lands in Washington; and much more.

30 | A S P E N S E C U R I T Y F O R U M : G LO B A L

At the Aspen Security Forum: Global in London, FBI Director

James Comey spoke about the digitalization of terrorism.

70 | FAC E S

Behind the scenes at the Institute’s events.

80 | INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

Aspen Institute México hosts political and economic forums in Mexico City and Monterrey; Aspen Institute Romania and Kyiv team up for a regional focus on Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine; and Aspen Institute Kyiv holds its official launch event.

82 | FAC TS

Get to know the Institute’s programs.

96 | CO N N E C T W I T H U S

Contact our program directors; get in touch on social media.

100 | PA R T I N G S H OT

There’s no such thing as bad weather in Aspen.

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T HXX E JOURNAL OF IDEAS 66 | DESTINATION UNKNOWN The 2016 election cycle has been unprecedented—upending conventional wisdom, bucking trends, and at times defying belief.

Social media, extreme voices on cable TV, and intractability in Congress have all polarized the electorate and made politics seem like a blood sport rather than a platform for civil action. And when fear and resentment drive the conversation, we all lose.

It’s no wonder more and more Americans consider themselves independents. Dan Glickman looks at what the major parties need to do to resonate with voters—rather than drive them away.

68 | O N E P E R S O N , O N E VOT E , N O B A R R I E R S Ever since the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act, the United States has experienced renewed interest in electoral systems. While some states are experimenting with automatic or online registration to increase voters’ ballot access, many others are throwing up barriers—from strict voter-ID laws to a dearth of polling places—that prevent easy voting access.

But Michael Klein says there’s a single, simple solution: a new amendment to the Constitution.

70 | YO U R B R A I N O N B A B I E S New neuroimaging studies reveal the potent changes that occur in new parents’ brains that propel them to care for their infants—often at the expense of their own well-being. But such a fundamental reorganization of adult brain behavior is also a time of distinct vulnerability. Some parents may have the opposite reaction to these changes—and respond poorly, get overwhelmed, or become depressed. Sarah Enos Watamura explores how new science could help those adults by igniting their parenting brains.

© John Dolan

How Will You Shape the Future?

M A J A D U B R U L JEWELRY 325 East Hopkins, Aspen | www.majadubrul.com

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CONTENTS

F E AT U R E S 32 | IDEAS IN ASPEN

The 12th annual Aspen Ideas Festival saw some of the world’s most dynamic intellects gather at the Institute’s Aspen Meadows campus for ten days of discussion, humor, music, art, technology—and even sex. The festival started off with Spotlight Health, which showcased the most exciting developments in health, wellness, and brain science before Ideas turned to topics like criminal-justice reform, the 2016 election, Brexit, academia, the refugee crisis, and race. And that’s not to mention superheroes and extraterrestrials.

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56 | IN ACTION

For four years, the newly renamed Resnick Aspen Action Forum has brought together hundreds of determined and creative leaders from across the Aspen Global Leadership Network and the planet and given them heavy doses of inspiration and support—and secured specific promises from each participant to do nothing short of change the world. Alison Decker visits this year’s Forum, whose theme was Leading Toward Justice and which featured remarks by Bryan Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative.

Many of the 2016 action pledges addressed justice—from breaking up lawless gangs in Latin America to establishing a truth and reconciliation collaborative focused on America’s history of slavery.

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60 | CALL SECURITY

The Aspen Security Forum is the country’s premier platform to discuss threats to the United States. Officials including White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, CIA Director John Brennan, and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson examined internet radicalization, the surge in European terrorism, Russian cyberattacks, and nuclear foes. Zach St. Louis goes behind the scenes and finds that with national threats dispersed across many mediums, conducted in secret, and often with no particular state backing, it is critical that intelligence agencies and policymakers work together on security policy.

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ON THE COVER

62 | “THROUGH THE LENS OF HUMANITY”

Howard and Sheri Schultz led a public conversation about the roles of compassion and principle in leadership.

The Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, explained how a coffee company could have a conscience. And Sheri Schultz described the responsive-giving model she has created for the Schultz Family Foundation, which is as strategic as it is generous.

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Summer at Aspen

Clockwise from top left: John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Drew Gilpin Faust, Susan Rice, Caitlyn Jenner, DeRay Mckesson, Joe Biden, Newt Gingrich, Loretta Lynch, Laura Bush, Bryan Stevenson, Christine Lagarde

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Dan Bayer

WHAT IS THE ASPEN INSTITUTE?

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues. The Institute has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, and on the Wye River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It also maintains offices in New York City and has an international network of partners.

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EDITOR'S LETTER

WALTER ISAACSON President and Chief Executive Officer ELLIOT F. GERSON Executive Vice President, Policy and Public Programs; International Partners NAMITA KHASAT Executive Vice President, Finance and Administrative Services; Chief Financial Officer; Corporate Treasurer ERIC L. MOTLEY, PHD Executive Vice President, Institutional Advancement;Corporate Secretary

– Corby Kummer

Roman Cho

Summer is a time of discovery at Aspen. Of new people whose interests and commitments parallel yours. Of new collaborations you want to be part of. Of disciplines you never thought might capture you—neuroprosthetics, Pluto, or dark matter and dinosaurs. And summer brings new voices to the most urgent clefts in society.

My Aspen moment came one night crossing campus: I noticed a cluster of telescopes in Anderson Park, looking like an installation of mysterious vehicles from another planet.

People hovered around them as if hailing friendly aliens. Instead everyone was looking at the cosmos with an astronomy group, experimenting with time-lapse photography that lit the campus only by energy traveling across light years. The pictures glowed with an otherworldly perspective that would have enthralled Maxfield Parrish or Hieronymus Bosch. As soon as it had come, the gathering vanished, the telescopes folded and rolled away, the enthusiasts back through the night landscape, united by a new view of the world.

That's what happens every summer at the Institute. In our first commemorative Summer at Aspen edition, you’ll find the vast scope of Institute events, including the signature Aspen Ideas Festival and Spotlight Health. The Resnick Aspen Action Forum brought rising leaders together to discuss extending their success to those who most need their imagination and ability. The Aspen Security Forum gathered experts to examine global threats, particularly from cyberattacks and online radicalization. And when Sheri and Howard Schultz accepted the Institute’s Public Service Award for their work with “opportunity youth” and veterans, the couple encapsulated what draws people to Aspen.

“I love this place,” Lifetime Trustee Leonard Lauder said at the summer board meeting, where he, Lester Crown, William Mayer, and Ann Korologos reviewed challenging moments in Institute leadership. “Each one of us felt we owned it, and it was part of us.” I hope this issue will give you ample evidence of why so many people who come to the Institute feel the same way.

PETER REILING Executive Vice President, Leadership and Seminar Programs; Executive Director, Henry Crown Fellowship Program RAJIV VINNAKOTA Executive Vice President, Youth & Engagement Programs CINDY BUNISKI Vice President, Administration; Executive Director, Aspen Wye Campus JAMES M. SPIEGELMAN Vice President, Chief External Affairs Officer; Deputy to the President EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND PUBLISHER Corby Kummer EXECUTIVE EDITOR Sacha Zimmerman MANAGING EDITOR Alison Decker ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Douglas Farrar SENIOR EDITORS Jean Morra, Tarek Rizk ASSISTANT EDITORS Arica VanBoxtel, Keosha Varela DESIGN DIRECTOR Katie Kissane-Viola CREATIVE DIRECTOR Paul Viola EDITOR EMERITUS Jamie Miller MANAGING DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS Pherabe Kolb CONTACT EDITORIAL ideas.magazine@aspeninstitute.org ADVERTISING Cynthia Cameron, 970.948.8177, adsales@aspeninstitute.org GENERAL The Aspen Institute, One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20036 202.736.5800, www.aspeninstitute.org BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIRMAN: James S. Crown BOARD OF TRUSTEES Madeleine K. Albright, Paul F. Anderson, Mercedes T. Bass, Miguel Bezos, Richard S. Braddock, Beth A. Brooke-Marciniak, William D. Budinger, William Bynum, Stephen L. Carter, Troy Carter, Cesar Conde, Katie Couric, Andrea Cunningham, Kenneth L. Davis, John Doerr, Thelma Duggin, Arne Duncan, Michael D. Eisner, L. Brooks Entwistle, Alan Fletcher, Corinne Flick, Henrietta H. Fore, Ann B. Friedman, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Mircea Geoana, David Gergen, Antonio Gracias, Patrick W. Gross, Arjun Gupta, Jane Harman, Hayne Hipp, Mark Hoplamazian, Gerald D. Hosier, Robert J. Hurst, Walter Isaacson, Natalie Jaresko, Salman Khan, Teisuke Kitayama, Michael Klein, David H. Koch, Satinder K. Lambah, Laura Lauder, Yo-Yo Ma, Frederic V. Malek, James M. Manyika, William E. Mayer*, Bonnie P. McCloskey, David McCormick, Anne Welsh McNulty, Diane Morris, Karlheinz Muhr, Clare Muñana, Jerry Murdock, Marc Nathanson, William A. Nitze, Her Majesty Queen Noor, Jacqueline Novogratz, Olara A. Otunnu, Elaine Pagels, Carrie Walton Penner, Margot L. Pritzker, Peter A. Reiling, Lynda Resnick, Condoleezza Rice, James Rogers, Ricardo Salinas, Anna Deavere Smith, Michelle Smith, Javier Solana, Robert K. Steel*, Shashi Tharoor**, Laurie M. Tisch, Giulio Tremonti, Roderick K. von Lipsey, Vin Weber, Michael Zantovsky *Chairman Emeritus **On Leave of Absence LIFETIME TRUSTEES CO-CHAIRMEN: Berl Bernhard, Ann Korologos* LIFETIME TRUSTEES Keith Berwick, James C. Calaway*, William T. Coleman, Jr., Lester Crown, Tarun Das, William H. Donaldson, Sylvia A Earle, James L. Ferguson, Richard N. Gardner, Alma L. Gildenhorn, Jacqueline Grapin, Irvine O. Hockaday Jr., Nina Rodale Houghton, Anne Frasher Hudson, Jérôme Huret, William N. Joy, Henry A. Kissinger, Leonard A. Lauder*, Robert H. Malott, Olivier Mellerio, Elinor Bunin Munroe, Sandra Day O’Connor, Hisashi Owada, Thomas R. Pickering, Charles Powell, Jay Sandrich, Lloyd G. Schermer, Carlo Scognamiglio, Albert H. Small, Andrew L. Stern, Paul A. Volcker, Leslie H. Wexner, Frederick B. Whittemore, Alice Young *Chairman Emeritus

The Aspen Institute sets high standards to ensure forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and economically viable manner.

This issue was printed by American Web on recycled fibers containing 10% postconsumer waste, with inks containing a blend of soy base. Our printer is a certified member of the Forestry Stewardship Council, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and additionally meets or exceeds all federal Resource Conservation Recovery Act standards

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Expand your horizons … consider Missouri Heights

With dramatic views of Mt. Sopris and the surrounding mountains, Missouri Heights offers the western lifestyle of wide-open spaces, grasslands, lots of pinyon and juniper, plus plentiful wildlife. Yet you are only minutes away from Willits Town Center, Basalt and Carbondale, where you will find Whole Foods, great shopping, restaurants, and good schools.

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Building a smarter threat defense.

Partnering with industry leaders, government agencies, and global law enforcement, Intel Security oers systemic threat lifecycle defense through applied integration, automation, and orchestration.

Learn more at intelsecurity.com.

Intel and the Intel and McAfee logos are trademarks of Intel Corporation or McAfee, Inc. in the US and/or other countries. Copyright Š 2016 Intel Corporation.

AROUND THE INSTITUTE Play Ball! Or Tennis, or Soccer, or Hockey, or…

The Sports & Society Program’s “State of Play 2016” report examined the waning role of physical activity and sports in the lives of young people. What’s more, the program is doing something about it—starting with a major event, the Project Play Summit (see page 20). aspeninstitute.org/sports-society

Casual participation, like pick-up games, dropped among youth ages 6 to 12.

Only 1 in 5 children from homes

The number of youth, ages 6 to 12, who are active in sports fell from 30.2% in 2008 to

26.6%

with less than $25,000 in income are active at a healthy level.

in 2015.

Between 2014 and 2015, volleyball, baseball, basketball, soccer, gymnastics, ice hockey, and lacrosse all experienced drops in the percentage of kids who played those games, in any form, at least once.

23% of youth, ages 5 to 16, say “playing a computer game with friends is a form of exercise.”

43.8%

The percentage of football coaches who have received training in concussion management.

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AROUND THE INSTITUTE

SITE-SEEING: ASPEN’S NEW WEBSITE social-media abilities, and commenting processes have been enhanced and upgraded. It’s a more interactive and user-friendly experience. The website was created in partnership with Firstborn, a New York City-based strategic-design and technology agency. “We have an exciting new way to share and show off the best of our work,” says Aaron Myers, the Institute’s director of digital strategy, “and introduce the broadest possible audience to our experts and the wide range of programming at the Institute year-round.” Head to aspeninstitute.org to see the new look of the Institute’s online presence, and explore the new features yourself. We suggest starting with aspeninstitute.org/magazine.

Steve Johnson

The Institute’s new flagship website launched in June at aspeninstitute.org. The redesigned site, which took more than a year to complete, features a modern, minimal aesthetic, inspired by the Bauhaus style the Institute has embraced ever since Herbert Bayer designed the Aspen Meadows campus. You’ll see more images and videos.

You’ll find helpful summaries of our events. You’ll read the work of Institute experts. “The launch of this website marks an important milestone,” Institute CEO Walter Isaacson says. “The ability to creatively and effectively share our ideas with a worldwide audience—and engage with them in conversations that matter—is the natural evolution of our mission.” The site’s search functions,

In August, the Institute inaugurated the Elizabeth and Walter Paepcke Society to honor our most generous benefactors—those whose lifetime giving exceeds $1 million. This is the highestlevel recognition available to donors, and inclusion is permanent. Membership is limited to individual donors and their family foundations. The Institute joins renowned organizations like the Smithsonian, Kennedy Center, National Gallery of Art, and Shakespeare Theatre, all of which have giving societies named for their founders. The Paepcke Society signals a new era at the Institute, one in which many of America’s top philanthropists are investing in our mission as never before. A plaque listing Paepcke Society members was unveiled in the Walter Paepcke Memorial Building in Aspen on August 4. “If my father had an idea,” Antonia Paepcke DuBrul, one of the couple’s two daughters, said at the ceremony, “you heard about it, dreamt about it, and heard about it some more. He had persistence coming out of his ears.

But he knew that was how ideas got turned into reality.” aspeninstitute.org/paepcke-society

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DuBrul

C2 Photography

INTRODUCING THE PAEPCKE SOCIETY

Great

leaders strive to create

a

better place to live.

A great realtor

does much the same.

Carrie Wells VISION, INNOVATION, LONGEVITY. Those are a few of the qualities of a great resort. Likewise, a great Realtor.

Which probably explains why Carrie Wells is currently Top 7 in the world for Coldwell Banker and has been the leading Coldwell Banker broker in Colorado for over seventeen years. She has the dedication needed to help you find your Aspen dream, and the tenacity necessary to turn that dream into a reality.

If you’re interested in Aspen, give Carrie a call.

She’s dedicated to creating a space where your spirit can flourish.

Carrie Wells

•

970.948.6750

Coldwell Banker Mason Morse Real Estate 514 East Hyman Avenue • Aspen carrie@carriewells.com www.carriewells.com IDEAS

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AROUND THE INSTITUTE

WORK SMART

Photos courtesy Ricardo Salinas/Marc and Jane Nathanson

Millions of Americans are looking for stable and secure jobs. At the same time, employers report difficulty finding skilled workers. How can the nation address these gaps—and help job-seekers, employers, and the economy as a whole? One solution: regional partnerships among businesses, nonprofits, community colleges, and governments. When regional partnerships look specifically at industry’s needs and combine the expertise of diverse groups to address employment needs, they have an immense potential to help job-seekers find opportunities and employers find skilled workers. In 2015, the Economic Development Administration, part of the Department of Commerce, chose the Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative to lead the Communities that Work Partnership, a project to accelerate effective regional partnerships nationwide. AspenWSI, together with FutureWorks, a group of experts in regional economic growth and competitiveness, observed the on-the-ground experiences of seven regional partnerships. They include partnerships in Dalton, Georgia; San Francisco, California; Houston, Texas; Washington, DC; New York City; Phoenix, Arizona; and Buffalo and Niagara Falls, New York. Soon, AspenWSI and FutureWorks will release publications outlining key lessons from the Communities that Work Partnership. aspenwsi.org/communities-that-work Top: Ricardo Salinas and scholars. Below: The Nathansons and scholars.

Penny Pritzker

SCHOLARS FIRST

Photo courtesy of LyondellBasell

Ricardo Salinas met with the second class of Salinas Scholars at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The Ricardo Salinas Foundation Scholarship Fund increases Latino participation at Institute events, roundtables, and seminars. The scholarship doesn’t just impact recipients; it enriches everyone in their orbit, who benefit from the scholars’ new ideas.

Also this summer, Trustee Marc Nathanson and his wife, Jane Nathanson, met the first class of Nathanson Public Diplomacy Scholars.

The scholarship enables young leaders working in public diplomacy to attend Institute seminars and events in order to support those who have committed their professional lives to strengthening cross-cultural understanding.

ON MY BEDSIDE TABLE Writer Dani Shapiro is now a member of the Aspen Words Creative Council, a newly formed group of literary and publishing professionals who help support and broaden Aspen Words’ reach throughout the world’s literary community. She has been a featured speaker at the Winter Words author series, a faculty member at the Aspen Summer Words writing conference and literary festival, and a panelist at the Aspen New York Book Series. Of course, Shapiro is most famous for being the best-selling author of the memoirs Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion, and of five novels, including Black & White and Family History. Her new book, Hourglass, will be published in spring 2017. But what books does she have on her bedside table? aspenwords.org

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Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf Sleepless Nights, Elizabeth Hardwick The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir Essays After Eighty, Donald Hall A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, Jack Kornfield Poor Man’s Feast, Elissa Altman Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner

On Behalf of the Economic Opportunities Program’s Workforce Strategies Initiative, Congratulations to the Communities that Work Partnership Fellows!

Rosalyn Boxer, Arizona Commerce Authority David Hedberg, Cox Communications Trevor Stokes, Arizona Commerce Authority Sandra Watson, Arizona Commerce Authority Steve Zylstra, Arizona Technology Council Liz Callahan, Buffalo Niagara Partnership Clotilde Dedecker, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Dennis Elsenbeck, National Grid Cara Matteliano, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Laura Smith, Buffalo Niagara Partnership Maria Whyte, Erie County Executive Office Mindy Aronoff, Bay Area Video Coalition Christopher Donnelly, San Jose Workforce Investment Board, Work2Future Jeff Fanselow, CBS Corporation John Halpin, City and County of San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development

Peter Beard, Greater Houston Partnership Allatia Harris, San Jacinto College Linda O’Black, United Way of Greater Houston Mike Temple, Gulf Coast Workforce Solutions Veronica Avila, National Domestic Workers Alliance Irene Jor, New York Domestic Worker Coalition Linta Varghese, Hand in Hand Haeyoung Yoon, National Employment Law Project Chuck Bean, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Jim Dinegar, Greater Washington Board of Trade Adam Ortiz, Prince George’s County Department of the Environment Doug Siglin, Anacostia River Initiative, Federal City Council Louis Fordham, J+J Flooring Group Kathryn Hornsby, Technical College System of Georgia Deana Perry, Northwest Georgia Regional Commission Barbara Ward, Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce

Learn more about the Communities that Work Partnership, Fellows, and forthcoming learning publications from the Workforce Strategies Initiative website: www.aspenwsi.org/communities-that-work/.

YOU ARE NOT JUST ANYONE

© 2016 DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY

WEB ID: 134995

YOUR HOUSE SHOULD REFLECT THE SAME

JILL SHORE | 970.948.6121 | jill.shore@elliman.com 630 East Hyman Ave. | Suite 101 | Aspen, CO 81611 | 970.925.8810 ELLIMAN.COM/COLORADO

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AROUND THE INSTITUTE

Photos Courtesy of Judith Price

HISTORIC IMAGINATION AT WYE

Houghton House

For the Wye Fellows, a constant intellectual challenge is to reconcile the persuasive ideas from one talk with the persuasive ideas from another. The full variety of programming can be as demanding as it is enriching. That was certainly the case this year, when two nationally recognized voices represented two different worldviews.

In March, 35 of the Aspen Wye Fellows were given a private White House briefing with US Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith. The Fellows drove from the Institute’s Wye campus on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to meet with Smith, who was also the former vice president of Google and CEO of PlanetOut. Smith discussed the evolution of technological innovation and collaboration in the United States in recent decades, including the administration’s efforts to create a technologically savvy government infrastructure to rethink education in the high-tech age, and enlist some 70 countries in open and collaborative technological innovation.

Smith also talked about the need to train qualified employees to fill the nation’s 5.5 million new technology jobs. The United States can do this, she said, by providing entrepreneurs and technology startups with venture capital that encourages them to transform education and create a new generation of STEM-oriented employees: a culture of creative innovation will ensure a robust US economy in a competitive globalized world.

Then in May, US Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities William Adams talked to the Aspen Wye Fellows about the value Adams of historical knowledge. “It’s a

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symbol of the nation’s commitment to its national heritage,” he told them. Adams called the humanities a “strategic imperative” for the United States and lamented their recent decline in the world and in education in particular as many people question their “usefulness” in a technology-driven world. He warned that losing the humanities in education solely for the sake of economic outcomes would be intellectually catastrophic and not at all in the nation’s interest. “One of the reasons we’re going to regret it,” Adams said, “is because the democratic political life that we have in this country—and the political culture that we need in order to have a democratic political life—must include historical, philosophical, and cultural underpinnings.” When education denies students the richness of a full expression of historical and cultural life, he said, they are also robbed of what it means to truly know the world.

The two presentations prompted a meaningful discussion among the Wye Fellows about how to blend the sciences and the arts so that minds are enriched, participatory democracy and the marketplace of ideas are valued, and America continues to grow economically and technologically. There are no easy answers, but there are certainly important discussions to be had—and the Wye Fellows are doing their part.

The Fellows are intellectually curious Eastern Shore residents who take part in unique dialogues with world leaders. They participate in an extensive yearly program on the Wye River campus, monthly events in Washington, and opportunities to join the Institute’s summer events in Aspen, Colorado.

For more information about the Wye Fellows program, contact Judith Price, Wye River campus manager, at judy. price@aspeninstitute.org.

SOF LEADERSHIP FUND The Society of Fellows Leadership Fund is an endowed scholarship that brings leaders from diverse backgrounds to Aspen Institute programs and events.

With gifts of all sizes, generous friends are enabling us to discover, inspire, and nurture the leaders who are shaping our society’s future.

PLEDGE YOUR GIFT TODAY www.aspeninstitute.org/campaign

We are grateful to these friends for their support of the SOF Leadership Fund: Kay Allaire Ken Aponte Kathleen and John Buck Alfred Campos Nancy and Clint Carlson Kelly Close Bunni and Paul Copaken Cornelia and Richard Corbett Penny and Jim Coulter Jane and Marshall Crouch Sean Dalesandro Alex Dell Jane Phillips and William H. Donaldson Nanette and Jerry Finger Susan and Richard Finkelstein Henrietta H. and Richard L. Fore Paul Gillow Jan and Ron Greenberg Sheila and Patrick W. Gross Casady M. Henry Juliane Heyman Nike Irvin Dorothy Jacobs Mary and Thomas Allen James Kathleen and Warren Jones Ann P. and Stephen M. Kaufman Ann and Tom Korologos Stanley Kritzik Joan C. Lebach

Leonard Levie Marlene and Frederic V. Malek Stephen Marcus Mary and Garrett Moran Morgridge Family Foundation Eric L. Motley Stephanie and Michael Naidoff David L. Nevins Craig Newmark Ann K. and William A. Nitze Patricia M. Papper Hensley and James Peterson Aaron and Dorothy Podhurst Anne and Arnold Porath Rodan Family Philanthropic Fund Linda and Jay Sandrich Nicole Avant and Ted Sarandos David Solomon Curt Strand Evelyn and Barry Strauch Eleanor and John Sullivan Chloe C. Tabah Phyllis Taylor Susan and Richard Ulevitch Jennifer Causing and Peter Waanders Monique Clarine and Ralph Wanger Barbara Bakios-Wickes and Steven Wickes Wyndham Hotel Group

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Photos by Laurence Genon

AROUND THE INSTITUTE

GAME CHANGE The Project Play Summit emphasized health, inclusion, and equal access to sports across the nation.

Picture an idyllic American summer. Does it include evenings playing tag with friends in the front yard until the fireflies come out? Or maybe long, hot afternoons at the basketball court with kids from the neighborhood?

That isn’t the state of summer—or the state of play—in America anymore, said First Lady Michelle Obama at the 2016 Project Play Summit in May, hosted by the Institute’s Sports & Society Program as part of their Project Play initiative. “Either you can’t play outside because it’s unsafe, or you’re the only kid playing outside because everybody else is overspecialized,” she said. “[Kids] don’t even have the concept of play.”

During her featured session at the Summit, Obama; her brother, Craig Robinson, of ESPN, and his colleague Michael Wilbon reflected on their childhoods on Chicago’s South Side and on the importance of making sports affordable and accessible to youth across the United States. Obama called for quality athletic opportunities for every child, regardless of zip

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code or family income. “How much are we willing to invest in the kids in our society?” she asked. “So many communities are becoming play deserts, but in wealthy communities, there is a wealth of resources … The disparities are amazing to me. Are we saying that some kids are worthy of investment, and then there are millions of others who aren’t?”

Launched in 2013, Project Play is reimagining US sports culture by putting health and inclusion at the core of its values.

The initiative gathers leaders from across eight sectors that touch the lives of children—community recreation groups, national sport organizations, policymakers and civic leaders, education, parents, public health, business and industry, and tech and media.

At the Summit, some of the featured leaders included top figures like Mary Davis, the CEO of the Special Olympics International; Tab Ramos, the youth technical director of the US Soccer Federation; Bennet Omalu, the chief medical

examiner for San Joaquin County, California; Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, the president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and Billie Jean King, the founder of the Women’s Sports Foundation. All Summit speakers talked about the current shape of sports and play in the United States, from activities for people with disabilities to mitigating the risk of concussions in highimpact sports.

The Project Play Summit sessions also informed the Sports & Society Program’s newest report, “State of Play: 2016,” which came out in June. The report provides an annual snapshot of the creative ways different groups are serving children and communities through sports.

In addition to incorporating insights from Summit speakers, the report examined data from the crowd by using Microsoft Pulse’s instant-polling software to ask them about sports today.

“State of Play: 2016” looked at national data, too.

According to the report, the percentage of youth who are physically active through sports fell, even though sports participation among six- to 12-year-olds rose slightly. Federal support for recreation infrastructure grew, but gaps in access to sports in low-income areas became more pronounced. Major sports organizations are also beginning to promote the idea that kids should diversify their activities and play more than one sport,

you can’t play outside because it’s unsafe, or you’re the only “Either kid playing outside because everybody else is overspecialized...

[Kids] don’t even have the concept of play. ” — Michelle Obama

but the number of team sports the average child played fell. And in 2015, only 25 percent of youth sports coaches were women.

There has been no growth in the percentage of women’s coaches in recent years.

That’s something Billie Jean King wants addressed.

She encouraged the audience to remember women when thinking about sports accessibility. “We don’t have enough women coaches,” she said. “Don’t forget about the girls and the women: we are half of the population.” King also stressed the ways that sports make communities safer—such as by keeping restless kids occupied with something good for them, an issue that is addressed in “State of Play: 2016.”

“We’re excited to offer this report to a wide variety of constituencies, from parents to policymakers to sports leaders who have an interest in getting kids off the couch without running them into the ground,” said Tom Farrey, executive director of the Sports & Society Program. “It’s one-stop shopping for understanding the landscape of youth sport today.”

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AROUND THE INSTITUTE

LAND & LOVE, IN PERPETUITY

Farsad

“Growing up, I longed to be Mexican,” Iranian-American comedian Negin Farsad told an audience for an Arts Program roundtable in Washington, DC, in June. “They had icons like Cesar Chavez, and they had Ranchero music, and they had every restaurant in town. They had a really recognizable culture—and they were brown.” Growing up in Palm Springs, Farsad was in a tiny minority of Iranians in her school. Her teachers couldn’t pronounce her name, and one even called her Noodle.

“That’s not even the right stereotype; we’re a rice-based people.” Farsad, who calls herself a social-justice comedian, was on hand to discuss her recent memoir, How to Make White People Laugh. Her standup and her writing attempt to prove that deep-seated prejudices about race and religion can be as effectively challenged with humor as they can be with activism. “There are a few rules for social-justice comedy,” Farsad said. “First, it’s nonpartisan. It’s not about politics; it’s about justice. Second, it’s warm and inviting. And third, it’s sneaky.” aspeninstitute.org/arts

Steve Johnson

RADICAL MUSLIM COMEDY

Dan Bayer

Gilchrist Berg provided a generous gift to establish a permanent conservation easement on an untouched parcel of meadow around the Aspen, Colorado, campus in honor of his wife, Amy Margerum Berg, a former Institute executive vice president. By placing a conservation easement on this 13.5 acres, Berg’s generous gift will ensure that the land remains undeveloped in perpetuity. The easement was negotiated in coordination with the Institute, with the expert assistance of the Conservation Fund and will be managed by the Aspen Valley Land Trust. Berg chose to name the property “Amy’s Meadow.”

Kelly meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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“The Aspen Institute is a better place because of Patrick Kelly,” Walter Isaacson wrote in February. The Aspen community had just lost a dear friend and colleague: Patrick Kelly, who served as a key Society of Fellows team member for more than seven years. At just 38, Kelly was an energetic, happy presence committed to bringing new voices to the Aspen Meadows campus. In honor of his deep connection to his work, the Institute established the Patrick Kelly Symposia Scholars Fund so that college students and diverse leaders can come to Aspen and attend moderated discussions about current events. Patrick’s wife, Collins Kelly, started the fund with her own generous gift, but it was quickly followed by gifts from staff and Society of Fellows members who loved Patrick.

Jane and Marshall Crouch, David Newberger, and Clare Muñana all pledged especially generous gifts. With nearly $185,000 already, the goal is to reach $250,000 and permanently endow the fund. This spring, the Institute welcomed its inaugural Patrick Kelly Scholar, Theodore Roosevelt Johnson—a speechwriter to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—for the seminar “Role and Requirements of the American Presidency, Then and Now,” moderated by American University’s Allan Lichtman and Harvard University’s Harvey Mans. It was exactly the kind of timely, dynamic discussion Kelly would have loved to pull together. aspeninstitute.org/sof

Photo courtesy of Kelly family

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AROUND THE INSTITUTE

VOICES FOR THE VOICELESS Each Aspen Words event in its annual Winter Words series featured authors whose work gives expression

Juan Felipe Herrera, the first Latino US

MacArthur Fellow and artist Alison

poet laureate, read his bilingual poem

Bechdel gave voice to an entirely

“Borderbus,” from his Notes on the

different American experience in her

Assemblage, in which he describes the

graphic novel, Fun Home. The book is a

powerfully exposes

experience of immigrants bound for a

lesbian coming-of-age story, which was

US detention center. The son of migrant

subsequently turned into a Tony Award-

otherwise marginalized

farmworkers, Herrera’s words radiate

winning musical starring Beth Malone,

compassion at a divisive moment in

who was featured alongside Bechdel at

groups.

American history.

Winter Words. In a poignant conclusion

to the silenced and

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to the conversation, Malone sang a song from the Broadway play.

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The voices in Adam Johnson’s writing

Pulitzer Prize winners Geraldine

Using her experience as a young Latina

range from North Korean defectors

Brooks and Tony Horwitz explore

immigrant growing up in Chicago,

to a Stasi prison warden to a UPS

characters from the footnotes of history

Sandra Cisneros wrote her best-selling

deliveryman in post-Katrina New

in their books, many of which were

novel, The House on Mango Street.

Orleans. The 2015 National Book Award

influenced by their previous careers as

Cisneros discussed what it means

winner, for Fortune Smiles, described

war correspondents. “I’m looking for

to straddle two different cultures,

the importance of fiction that tells

the voids,” said Brooks, whose latest

thanking audience members for being

stories on behalf of silenced individuals:

novel is The Secret Chord. “I love the

“ambassadors for communication

there is often not enough information to

stories where the historical fact seems

and understanding of people unlike

tell stories accurately in nonfiction form.

implausible.”

yourselves.”

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AROUND THE INSTITUTE

AndersonRanch arts center create|change celebrate the

50 ANNIVERSARY TH

summer series THURSDAY, JULY 7

TITUS KAPHAR

THURSDAY, JULY 14

JERRY SALTZ

WEDNESDAY, JULY 20

CONVERSATION with ELEANORE & DOMENICO DE SOLE moderated by NANCY MAGOON THURSDAY, JULY 21

CARRIE MAE WEEMS THURSDAY, JULY 28

LIZA LOU

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2

National Council Special Event* ANN PHILBIN in conversation with CHARLES RAY *To join the National Council, call 970-923-3181, x212

THURSDAY, AUGUST 4

ALEX PRAGER

THURSDAY, AUGUST 11

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GENETIC CODE BREAKERS Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a principal leader of the now-concluded Human Genome Project, looks at pioneering new ways to comprehend diseases like cancer, diabetes, and inflammatory illnesses.

Lander came to the Institute’s Washington, DC, headquarters in April for the Public Health Grand Rounds discussion series, organized by the Health, Medicine and Society Program as well as the Global Health and Development Program to talk “Precision Medicine: The Promise, the Journey, the Future.” The work includes understanding individual genetic variations in humans, the distinctive cellular signatures of diseases, and the mutations underlying illness. “What are the important targets of any disease? The knowledge of what the target is—that’s a public good,” Lander said. And once those discoveries are public, drug makers can take action. They know what part of a body isn’t working and what “needs to be ramped up or ramped down. That’s what pharmaceuticals do; they bind to a protein and turn down or turn up the activity.” aspeninstitute.org/health

USING DIALOGUE TO THAW A NEW COLD WAR Academic and military experts believe that the United States and Russia are on the brink of a military crisis unlike any since the nadir of the Cold War. US and Russian military assets are operating at cross purposes in a Syrian civil war, the United States is sending troops to Eastern Europe to bolster allies worried about Russian intervention, and Ukraine continues to be frozen in conflict between Russian-backed separatists and

critical dialogue

NATO-backed government forces. Meanwhile, bilateral relations between President

SATURDAY, JULY 2

last few years, and the risk of intentional or accidental catastrophe between the two

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nuclear-armed states is a constant danger.

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members of the US Congress, the Russian Duma, and the German Bundestag for

Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama have substantially worsened over the

It is in this context that the Institute’s Congressional Program brought together

The Dynamic Culture of Contemporary Art Making with TOM SACHS & TOM HEALY

a parliamentary exchange in April. The gathering was the first of its kind between

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conversation is more important than the ones between policymakers in nuclear-armed

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American and Russian legislators since sanctions were established in 2014. The Congressional Program provides a platform for dialogue on important issues, and no

dialogue, this program has built relationships and trust between counterparts across the vast gulfs of language, culture, and geopolitics. The Congressional Program plans to continue this dialogue in 2017. aspeninstitute.org/congressional

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AROUND THE INSTITUTE

Photos by Tracey Salazar

Participants take the stage.

WOMEN ON FIRE

The United State of Women Summit turns inspiration into action.

On June 14 at Washington, DC’s Convention Center, lines formed at sunrise and wound around five city blocks. The excitement was for the White House Summit on the United State of Women, a daylong event held in partnership with the Institute and made possible by the Ford Foundation, Goldman Sachs Foundation, Pepsico, Tory Burch, and AOL. Attendees traveled from as far away as India and Afghanistan and as close as Anacostia and Capitol Hill. Why not? The powerhouse lineup of speakers included the president, vice president, first lady, and attorney general, as well as business icons like Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffett. Plus, the audience heard from front-line advocates in the grassroots, policy, and entertainment worlds. It was the place to be.

Today, women comprise more than half of America’s college graduates, electorate, and workforce; they also account for more than 80 percent of consumer-purchasing decisions. Despite this power, barriers—affordable child care, paid sick leave, equal pay—still undermine women’s success.

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The United State of Women Summit examined how to solve these problems and ensure that women and families can advance economically and socially. President Barack Obama affirmed his own commitment, citing his administration’s early action on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and its progress on overtime pay and women’s health.

Below are three of the issues the summit tackled and two new initiatives the Institute will launch.

END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Vice President Joe Biden made a full-throated call for an end to violence against women—a central theme of his “It’s On Us” campaign. Americans must tear down the persistent culture of rape, Biden said, noting this year’s increased focus on college campuses. It’s an issue that’s also close to Mariska Hargitay, an actor on NBC’s Law &Order: SVU, who started the Joyful Heart Foundation to raise awareness of domestic violence and to promote healing.

Obama

Obama and Winfrey

INVEST IN YOUNG WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP Ana Oliveira, the president of the New York Women’s Foundation, invited cities and foundations to help scale up the Young Women’s Initiative—an effort to which her organization and the New York City Council both committed $10 million.

Created by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the initiative will propose programming, policy, and research to close the gaps that girls and women experience in education, health care, fiscal matters, and judicial outcomes. The goal is to create an action plan to inform legislation and funding.

ENGAGE MEN AS ALLIES Quentin Walcott, the co-executive director of CONNECT NYC, and Matt McGorry, an actor on ABC’s How to Get Away With Murder, spoke about their efforts to identify as allies and feminists. They emphasized the importance of male leaders mentoring boys and taking a stand for equal treatment and respect for girls and women. They also challenged their peers to join them as “men who get it.”

Biden

NEXT STEPS AT THE INSTITUTE STRENGTHEN FAMILIES TWO GENERATIONS AT A TIME At the summit, the Institute’s Ascend Program announced a new federal investment, the Strengthening Working Families Initiative, which will help low-income parents access affordable, high-quality child care so they can earn an education, enter training programs, and compete for betterpaying jobs. The effort is founded on the “two-generation” approach: investments that target the needs of children and parents together. Under the initiative, the Department of Labor will support public-private partnerships that bridge workforces and child-care systems. Partnerships will focus on high-demand industries that help families get ahead. The project earned more attention in July, when Aspen hosted the Two-Generation Policymakers Institute, a meeting with issue experts, White House leaders, innovators, and partners like the National Governors Association.

KEEP THE CONVERSATION ALIVE As a lead partner for the United State of Women, the Institute is committed to these critical issues in America and globally.

That’s why we are launching a new initiative: the Aspen Forum on Women and Girls, a series of conversations addressing economic opportunity, education, and entrepreneurship.

Led by Anne Mosle, the executive director of Ascend, and Peggy Clark, the executive director of the Global Health and Development Program, the project launched on International Women’s Day. The United State of Women featured strong, visionary, and ascendant women. But it’s the collective determination and inspiration of women everywhere that is truly igniting change across the world—from Girl Scout meetings and schools to battlefields and boardrooms.

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Comey

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Miles Willis

ASPEN SECURITY FORUM: GLOBAL

THE SECURITY THREAT HAS GONE VIRAL ISIL expertly uses social media to attract followers and spread terror, and the FBI tries to hack iPhones, scour Twitter, and de-encrypt servers. FBI Director James Comey talks about the new shape of terror.

T

he Institute headed to London in April for the debut of the Aspen Security Forum: Global, an international complement to the more US-focused discussions at the annual Aspen Security Forum. The event convened top-level government officials, journalists, and international-security experts to discuss the world’s gravest threats.

The forum kicked off with a conversation with FBI Director James Comey about why so much of the FBI’s work is now done in cyberspace.

On hacking the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone: I don’t want to pick on Apple. The Justice Department brought litigation as part of the FBI investigation into the San Bernardino attack. It was important to get into the phone to competently investigate a terrorist attack. We should have been fired if we didn’t try to see what was in a terrorist’s phone. But we got to a place where Apple—and I’m not questioning their motives—was not willing to cooperate. In the end, we got into the phone because all the controversy and attention stimulated a bit of an international marketplace for people to figure out how to break into an Apple 5C running iOS 9, the phone the terrorist left behind. Somebody approached us from outside the government and said, “We’ve come up with a solution.” The FBI tested it, and tested it, and tested it, and then we purchased it. Once we knew it would work, we withdrew the litigation. That’s a good thing. First, we got into the phone, which was very important to the investigation.

Second, litigation is not a great way to resolve hard values questions.

But we should continue to talk about it, because all of us share a set of values that are in conflict, and we have to figure out how to resolve privacy and security on the Internet. They’re crashing into each other in terrorism cases and in all the work the FBI does.

On the shift from Al Qaeda to ISIL: Al Qaeda focused on sophisticated long-planned attacks with extensive surveillance and carefully-vetted operatives. In a way, we had come to rely on Al Qaeda’s culture. If Al Qaeda just shot a bunch of people in a restaurant, that would be a loss of face, a confession of weakness. That was the Al Qaeda model. That changed in 2014 and accelerated with ISIL, whose mission was simply to attract people to their caliphate or kill. “Come or kill” was the message: Come or kill. Kill anybody in the name of the Islamic State, or come and become a soldier of the caliphate. That’s the first big change. The second is the way they communicated that message. It made Al Qaeda look like your parents’ Al Qaeda. ISIL crowd-sourced terrorism by pushing out that twin message—especially on Twitter—in a very slick way.

The message was one of ultimate meaning—one that resonated with troubled, unmoored souls. And the message would buzz in their pockets 24 hours a day: Come or kill, find meaning. Then, to make it more complicated, ISIL would find people interested in traveling or killing on their behalf and move them off the open platform of Twitter.

ISIL would move them to a mobile-messaging app, encrypted end to end. So they’re crowd-sourcing terrorism, constantly broadcasting a meaningful message to troubled souls, and when they get one who’s likely to act, ISIL makes him invisible. That’s a totally different model than we’ve ever seen. All of a sudden we had people all over the country moving quickly along the spectrum from consuming to acting. We had to lock up and disrupt the plots of dozens of people—people that Al Qaeda would never have used: drug users, pedophiles, criminals, the mentally ill. The last nine months, however, the number of attempted travelers from the States has been steadily coming down. It could also be that it has finally dawned on people that their so-called caliphate is hell on Earth.

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Summer at Aspen: Aspen Ideas Festival

T

he 2016 festival kicked off with Spotlight Health, a three-day forum on domestic and international health topics that attracted participants from 39 states and 37 countries. “The word is out that Spotlight Health is the health conference to attend,” says Ruth Katz, the director of the Institute’s Health, Medicine and Society Program.

The Institute’s teams begin putting the festival together in September, nearly a year before attendees set foot on campus. By looking at current global events and trends, Institute leaders and staff from The Atlantic organize ten to 12 topic tracks and begin to reach out to potential speakers. “The festival grows and evolves from there,” says Killeen Brettmann, the managing director of public programs at the Institute. “Often, the direction we thought a track would take in September is vastly different in April.

The world changes.” This year was no exception: “Just

brought the speakers of the Festival to a younger audience, including the winners of the Aspen Challenge— teams of high school students who created solutions to pressing issues in their communities—and the Bezos Scholars, 30 high school students and educators from across the United States and the Africa Leadership Academy. Senior Institute staff and affiliates nominate scholars to attend the festival, and special “patron passes” directly fund the program.

This year, patrons supported 300 scholars from across the United States and 30 countries. Each was selected for leadership skills and accomplishments. “Scholarships allow us to bring new voices from all over the world,” says Peggy Clark, executive director of Aspen Global Health and Development. “A young LGBT activist from Nigeria, a community health worker from Colorado, a technology entrepreneur—all of these scholars add life and complexity to the magic that is Spotlight Health.”

Ideas in Aspen

look at the Syrian refugee crisis, or Europe being on edge after a year of terrorist attacks: those issues played a much deeper role in the festival than we first planned for.”

World events change schedules at the last minute, too.

The Brexit vote, for example, occurred just as the festival was starting. That meant rescheduling sessions for Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Secretary of State John Kerry, so they could make impromptu trips to Europe. However urgent their new commitments, both speakers came— and when newsmakers come to the festival, the festival makes news. For example, this year, Attorney General Loretta Lynch had to explain an unexpected social call from former President Bill Clinton.

The festival is always expanding and looking to increase every kind of diversity. The Youth Forum 32

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High-profile events are live-streamed, and audio and video of most sessions are available within days of the festival’s conclusion, bringing Aspen events to the world. And the world is tuning in: a livestream of Secretary Kerry, for instance, reached nearly one million people. Going forward, the festival aspires to hold more events in town in order to connect more deeply with the Aspen community. In addition to reaching new audiences, the Aspen Ideas Festival is linking attendees and speakers by creating new networking opportunities.

“With the Ideas Festival, we open the doors to the Institute,” says Kitty Boone, the Institute’s executive director of public programs. “We’re looking to the future, and with new and different technologies available to us, we’re flinging those doors open even wider.”

Leigh Vogel

At the 12th annual Aspen Ideas Festival, hundreds of the world’s most exciting medical experts, politicians, business leaders, journalists, academics, and artists flooded the Institute’s Aspen campus to discuss the ideas that are changing the planet.

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Summer at Aspen: Spotlight Health Addiction is not a character flaw or a moral failing. It’s a chronic illness, and we have to treat it with skill, urgency, and compassion.”

We’ve had a number of crises: Ebola, Zika, 50,000 children came across the border into the care of HHS. But we need dialogue on the ACA—because that conversation isn’t being had in Washington.”

Dan Bayer

Leigh Vogel

—US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy

—HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell

—US Representative Chellie Pingree

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Ricardo Savi

In Maine, we have the foodsovereignty movement. So if you want to make some jam in your kitchen and then sell it in front of your house, you shouldn’t be hauled to jail.”

Coming Out in the Spotlight

Dan Bayer

Olympic champion and transgender activist Caitlyn Jenner on her mental-health challenges while finding and embracing her identity.

“I did everything to run away from being transgender. That worked for me for many years, but it never went away. Every story in our community is different. We have come a long way, physically, to be able to go from one sex to another. The bigger problem is the psychological side of this. The internet changed the game. When I was a kid, I was alone. Under the age of 21, 41 percent of all trans people attempt suicide.

The mental health of the trans community is the most difficult. I struggled with it all my life, but I had my ways of diversion: the Olympic games, a tremendous family. But I had a double life. For the last two years before I decided to transition, my life was absolute hell. There was only one time where I ever contemplated suicide. It was my low point, but it was the beginning of a turning point. If the worst thing in my life is that I’m trans, I can handle it.”

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Summer at Aspen: Spotlight Health

My Superhuman Experience

“The hardest parts of life can be the most empowering. The first thing you probably noticed about me was my wheelchair. I don’t blame you; we are conditioned to notice differences first. And I am different.

However, I am not just a wheelchair, and I am not just an illness. I am so much more.

Most of all, I am a fighter, and I am proud of the way I fight. No matter what your battles are, we have two choices in life: We can either let our problems defeat us, or we can be empowered by our adversities. I choose the latter. My human experience will never be one of simplicity. It will include pain and sickness, but that is OK. I refuse to let the pain and sickness that was written in my DNA triumph over me. It is important to accept whatever inevitable calamity you are plagued with, and let it build you instead of break you. Each of us contains multitudes. We hold infinities. My fight is daunting and raw and beautiful and important. That is exactly what makes it a powerful force.”

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Dan Bayer

Ellie Wheeler, founder of the Superhero Project, on why it is important to realize that every single person is vastly complicated with a unique human experience.

I have to justify why I don’t stay in my country—why a country that invested thousands of pounds on my education cannot benefit from it. I really want to contribute, but I cannot.

Not because I’ve committed any crime but because of my sexuality.”

Dan Bayer

—Bisi Alimi, activist; founder and director, Bisi Alimi Foundation

Dan Bayer

Dan Bayer

Half of the vaccines in the UNICEF supply system denature before they reach the patient. That’s 1.5 million deaths every year.

We have amazing production facilities, incredible suppliers, and patients who need these vaccines and treatments. But in the middle, we have a reliable access question.

It breaks all the time.

—Marc Koska, founder, The SafePoint Trust

The experience of violence is the highest correlate of disease in women. Violence is associated with depression, obesity, heart disease, substance abuse, and chronic pain.”

—Paula Johnson, president, Wellesley College

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Stand Up and Lead Acknowledge the trauma and repair—that is what reparations is. Reparations might be a seeming overinvestment, but it’s for areas that have been historically and intentionally underinvested in. So in a city like Baltimore, that would mean every child getting a library at birth. That’s reparations.”

—DeRay Mckesson,

Riccardo Savi

civil-rights activist; co-founder, Campaign Zero

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Former GOP presidential nominee Governor Mitt Romney examines American leadership, Donald Trump, and the future of the Republican Party.

“Trump has demonstrated who he is by virtue of what he said to this point. What he says going forward may paper over that, but in thinking about who you want to lead the greatest nation on Earth, the most important single factor is character.

This nation’s leadership is essential to freedom here and around the world. Look what’s happened in Syria: the absence of American leadership has led to hundreds of thousands killed, millions displaced. The absence of American leadership is in part responsible for the Brexit vote. It breaks my heart to see us discussing candidates who are talking about withdrawing from leadership. I’m not talking about military action; I’m talking about soft power and using our influence. We need leaders who will stand up and lead.

Recently, P.J. O’Rourke said, “Hillary Clinton is wrong on every issue, but she’s wrong within the normal parameters.” But I disagree with her on so many things, I can’t possibly vote for her. At the same time, on the basis of temperament and character, I can’t vote for Trump. It’s a matter of personal conscience. Most people recognize that Trump is a departure from traditional Republicans.

The whole party is not forever changed by virtue of his nomination. The party goes on.

I understand the appeal of Donald Trump— and of Bernie Sanders. People are angry; they were promised policies that would make their lives better, and their lives aren’t better. They are looking for acknowledgement that they haven’t been delivered what was promised, and America hasn’t offered them the opportunity, prosperity, and safety they expected. Both Sanders and Trump appeal to that understandable anger.

But I wish, instead of promoting anger, we had promoted inclusiveness.”

Riccardo Savi

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Summer at Aspen: Aspen Ideas Festival The vast majority of the roughly 200,000 women who are currently in confinement could be sent home tomorrow with no threat to public safety.”

—Piper Kerman, Dan Bayer

activist; author, Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison

The Signal and the Universe “There has been overwhelming evidence collected by NASA telescopes that planets similar to ours are very widespread in the universe. Just in our galaxy, there are probably 20 billion planets like ours in a so-called ‘habitable zone,’ meaning there’s liquid water on the surface. And this should be multiplied by 200 billion galaxies in the universe. The numbers are pretty overwhelming for us to conclude that all this real estate was created just for us. With so many possibilities and with 14 billion years of the existence of this universe, there have been plenty of opportunities for life to develop—and probably also intelligent life.

That’s why we are looking for the signals.

If we get the signal, life will not dramatically change: you will continue to write, and I will continue to make investments. But in a subtle way, everything will change—everything.

Because knowing that we’re not alone in the universe—although it cannot be monetized—is the existential question. The most interesting questions are the ones that never lead to any profit. Maybe this is one of them.”

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Riccardo Savi

Yuri Milner, venture capitalist and founder of DST Global, on his quest to find extraterrestrial life.

Left and Center: Nick Tininenko; Right: Dan Bayer

Left: Riccardo Savi; Center: Dan Bayer; Right: Leigh Vogel

Left: Riccardo Savi; Center and Right: Nick Tininenko

Franklin Leonard

Sally Osberg

Mohammed Alaa Ghanem

Jane McGonigal

Nina Totenberg

Priyamvada Natarajan

Adam Foss

Sonita Alizadeh

Paul Singer

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Summer at Aspen: Aspen Ideas Festival We think the First Amendment is so important because they put it first. But actually, it was third. So I think the first two concerns of the members of Congress were: How many members of Congress will there be, and what will their compensation be.”

Market and taste has embraced a much wider variety of artists. That is not matched, however, in staff, board, and institutional structure.”

—Thelma Golden, director and chief curator, Studio Museum

—David Rubenstein,

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Dan Bayer

Dan Bayer

co-founder and co-CEO, the Carlyle Group

Riccardo Savi

What I experienced at Yale with the student protests was a deep sense of outrage and a deep sense of disappointment.

What people needed most of all was to be heard.

If we don’t listen, we’re in the way. The students discovered they had more resources within themselves—the power to create change—than they realized.”

—Jonathan Holloway, dean, Yale College

The work the FDA does is vital to health and safety.

When things get put through a political maze, it can result in important action not being taken.”

—Margaret Hamburg,

Leigh Vogel

foreign secretary, Institute of Medicine and former commissioner, US Food and Drug Administration

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Brexit Signs

“On Friday, we woke up to the Brexit news, which was heartbreaking for those of us who are truly Europeans. Contrary to what I hear all the time from my teams— that markets usually get it pretty right and anticipate reasonably well—the vote to leave the EU was not anticipated. Markets had based asset and other currency values on the assumption that the U.K. would probably remain. But there was no panic. Central bankers did their job. The situation was under control.

Why is it that the populist voices based on so-called ‘truth’ carried a lot more and a lot further than the voices of ‘experts,’ who were largely unanimous about the consequences of the decision?

That’s a big question. Is it an issue of the economic outcome? Of the democratic process? Of the communication channels?

Those questions warrant attention.

Europe is an incredible construction, an extraordinary achievement in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Millions of people had died at the hands of each other for centuries.

To actually decide that, in the name of peace and prosperity, they were going to establish a free-market zone where products, services, and people can actually move is something that should not be wasted. The EU is a resilient construction.”

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Dan Bayer

Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde talks about Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.

We tell women who are being abused to run. But when girls run, we lock them up for the offense of running away. This is a vicious example of the sexualabuse-to-prison pipeline.”

—Malika Saada Saar,

Leigh Vogel

senior counsel, civil and human rights, Google

Riccardo Savi

Black Lives Matter has pushed me to go back into my childhood. I grew up in a very heterogeneous community—mixed race, mixed income. It was like the Disney channel—until there were those moments where the realities of how I was taught to navigate the world were not the same realities or lessons that were taught to my friends who were not black.

—Clint Smith, poet and educator

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The Hijacked Humanities

“Higher education was charged by the government several years ago to develop a report that looks at our success as educators based on the salaries of graduates at their first jobs. This made me go berserk. The last thing we should measure our success by is what a person does the first year out of college. We educate students for a lifetime, not for one single job. An education is to be able to understand when someone is talking rot. In an age where we are bombarded with misinformation, it is even more important to distinguish: What is a good argument? How is language being deployed in ways you need to unravel? The humanities are an important tool for widening the world, for seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes—through literature or the histories of other people’s experiences—and developing empathy. Innovation is also based in an understanding that things can be different, and this is one of the fundamental purposes of learning history.”

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Riccardo Savi

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust on how the humanities can survive and flourish in an age of reverence for technology and quantification.

The way we design humanitarian aid is a failure. Syrians don’t want survival aid. They want education, jobs.

They don’t want to be dependent on charity.”

—Kilian Kleinschmidt,

Riccardo Ssavi

chairman and founder, Innovation and Planning Agency

Space can be empty, but as Einstein taught us, it doesn’t just sit around doing nothing. There are ripples of space-time that propagate at the speed of light.”

—Nergis Mavalvala,

Nick Tininenko

Curtis and Kathleen Marble professor of astrophysics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Summer at Aspen: Aspen Ideas Festival In 1994, when the genocide began in Rwanda, there was never a policy discussion about whether or not the United States should intervene to stop it. There were not editorials; there were not debates in Congress.

There was nothing until it was over. It may not be wise to intervene in every instance.

But what I have learned is, we have to have the discussion and the debate.”

—Susan Rice,

Dan Bayer

assistant to the president for national security affairs

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Clash of Civilizations Secretary of State John Kerry examines America’s place in the world at a time of mounting insecurity.

“The United States of America is more engaged in more places with more impact today than at any time in history. With violent extremism and the emergence of radical nonstate actors, everybody knows the threat: vicious attacks from Orlando to San Bernardino to the Philippines and Bali.

We’ve seen shocking crimes committed

by Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Jaysh Al Islam, Ahrar Al Sham, Al Shabaab, Daesh against innocent civilians. We are more effectively hammering at their heavy weapons, training camps, supply routes, infrastructure. We have cut their revenue at least in half. We’re working to destroy the Daesh narrative—that they are the caliphate of the future.

It has been more than one year since Daesh has launched a full-scale military offensive. That’s because our coalition is relentless on every front.

Yes, you can still bomb an airport.

You can blow yourself up. That’s the tragedy: Daesh knows that we have to get it right 24/7 365; they have to get it right for ten minutes.

So at this festival of ideas my idea is straightforward: We have to defeat Daesh, its affiliates, and its imitators wherever they raise their ugly heads.

This is not a clash of civilizations.

This is a clash of civilization against barbarism.”

Dan Bayer

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Teaching Trump to Dance Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the US House of Representatives, on the vice presidency and power in Washington.

Nick Tininenko

“Donald Trump has said he needs a vice president who understands Washington because he doesn’t. With the vice presidency, you have to look what the real relations are with the senior staff. You always have tension with the chief of staff. If you have a strong vice president, then you have to work out the arrangement, so that the chief of staff isn’t threatened.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have enormous leverage. If Trump wins, the first thing he has to think about is, “Gee, I would like to appoint a Cabinet.” The first person you have to talk to about appointing the Cabinet is the Senate majority leader. So if McConnell and Trump are not dancing, he has a huge problem. Trump is going to want to hold a number of measures that pass the House and Senate. The total power of scheduling—except in the rarest circumstances—is the speaker. It’s a terrific job.

You have complete power. And so if Paul Ryan decides he doesn’t like what Trump is doing, legislation just won’t get scheduled.”

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If you only bring solutions to the table, then you create a culture of advocacy, not of enquiry.”

—Adam Grant,

Dan Bayer

professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Monogamy was basically an imposition on women by the patriarchy in order to know whose children were whose and who gets the cows when I die. It was about patrimony and lineage. It had zero to do with love.”

—Esther Perel,

Riccardo Savi

psychologist; author, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

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Guarding Justice Attorney General Loretta Lynch tackles the tension between the police and communities of color.

“As I’ve traveled the country, one of the underlying concerns I’ve heard residents say is: ‘We don’t have a connection to our local police force.’ Several years past, a huge influx of narcotics came into our communities. That certainly led to consequences that we are trying now to alleviate with criminal-justice reform.

But it also led to a view that aggressive policing was necessary in order to deal with narcotics and the violent crime that comes along with them. There are those who said the pendulum swung too far in that direction.

Now, to say there is a frayed relationship between law enforcement and minority communities is the understatement of this generation. I’ve been working on finding places where communities and law enforcement are working together, making positive change, and where the police are the guardians of the community.”

I spent the first half of my life being afraid and the second half telling people to be brave.”

—Jennifer Finney Boylan,

Riccardo Savi

Dan Bayer

transgender activist; author, She’s Not There

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Shoot the Moon

Afghan people hope our troops won’t leave too fast. If we leave Afghanistan, there’s a vacuum. They want the security that our troops give them. Security gives them time to build institutions to create a successful country.”

Vice President Joe Biden talks about his Cancer Moonshot and why communication is everything.

Dan Bayer

—Former First Lady Laura Bush

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“Imagine, given our ability to sequence the cancer genome, we’re able to aggregate all the biopsies that have been done on cancer all in one place.

Imagine we can aggregate treatment processes, all in one place—with supercomputers to find patterns, look at everything from lifestyle to what other drugs you’re taking, and find answers to why so many people suffer from cancer.

Imagine if we were willing to share this data. Imagine what we could do.

Breakthroughs are possible, but we have to change the culture, and the culture of medical research does not rest on sharing data and information. I hosted a cancer roundtable with top researchers— two were Nobel laureates. I asked them, “Tell me what you’re doing.” They told me. Then I said, “It sounds like you’re all doing the same thing.” They all kind of put their heads down. I said, “Wouldn’t we make a hell of lot more progress if it was all open data, if you shared it all?”

And the answer was, “Yeah.” I privately met with more than 280 of the leading virologists, oncologists, immunologists in the world. They all said, We’re not sharing data enough; if we did, we could exponentially increase the potential to answer a whole range of questions relating to cancer therapies. Hell, Uber can tell you exactly where everybody is, but there’s no place to find every cancer trial. So there’s going to be a new website that aggregates every single, solitary cancer trial in the United States.”

Dan Bayer

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Summer at Aspen: Resnick Aspen Action Forum

Top: Art by Aaron Huey Center: Ashley Entwistle and the Action Pledge wall Bottom: Rehmah Kasule (left) and Mariam Luyombo of the Africa Leadership Initiative – East Africa

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I

n July, about 350 leaders representing 35 countries landed in Aspen for the inaugural Resnick Aspen Action Forum, a place for leaders from across the Aspen Global Leadership Network to engage with each other and increase their social impact. “Now more than ever, society is challenging us to ensure that ‘liberty and justice for all’ is more than a rote phrase,” says Peter Reiling, the Institute’s executive vice president for leadership. “We spur our Fellows and others to combine their talents, resources, and platforms to address injustice head-on around the world.”

The AGLN operates 14 different fellowships, from South Africa to the United States, which give leaders in various fields—such as finance, health care, manufacturing, and tech innovation— the chance to apply their entrepreneurial skills to critical social problems. Over the course of two years, Fellows meet four times to dig deeper into the challenges of socially responsible leadership in a globalized world.

The Fellows did not want their exploration to end when those two years did. “There was a growing need for a place to convene

“Given the tragedies and inequities we see on what seems like a daily basis around the globe,” Loper says, “there is no better time for the Institute to host a global gathering of leaders focused on this theme.”

Each year, about 70 percent of the Action Forum attendees are AGLN Fellows, and the remaining 30 percent include Fellows’ spouses or partners and nominated or sponsored participants.

Because the Forum brings together leaders from such a wide variety of fields, the programming embodies a diversity of topics, ranging from health and science to business leadership or human rights.

“We try to blend the head and the heart,” Loper says.

The format is true to the AGLN Fellowship experience­­­ — personalized, highly interactive, and geared toward action.

This year’s 350 participants engaged with each other in four structured formats: topical discussions, text-based seminars, “Action Workshops,” and skills workshops. Throughout the year, Reiling, Loper, and the rest of the Action Forum team received hundreds of topic suggestions for discussions and selected 42 to offer Fellows and participants, including “Race in America: Can we talk?”; “The Future of Talent and Work”; and “Social Enterprise: The View

In Action Dan Bayer

The inaugural Resnick Aspen Action Forum brought 350 leaders from 35 different countries to Aspen. By Alison Decker

after that initial Fellowship experience,” says Tom Loper, the managing director of the Forum. The AGLN managing directors wanted to support the goal of a life-long journey to engage the Institute’s growing community of 2,300 international leaders. And so the idea for the Forum was born in 2009 with the first of several gatherings, originally planned to be held every two years.

Quickly, however, there was a huge demand for an annual event.

In 2013, Institute Trustee Lynda Resnick and her husband, Stewart Resnick, began to provide $1 million annually to double both the size and frequency of the Aspen Action Forum. With their support the Forum flourished, nurturing leaders’ commitments to improve the lives of people across the planet with projects that tackle crucial topics like energy efficiency, college literacy, and medicine. Then in 2015, the Resnicks provided a historic $15 million gift as a term endowment to ensure the continuation of the event through 2030.

The Forum was renamed for them to reflect their generosity.

“It is inspiring to see such a unique gathering of global leaders committed to real and tangible action,” says Lynda Resnick, the vice chair and co-owner of the Wonderful Company. “Stewart and I are so pleased that this platform will help create ripples of hope and opportunity around the world for generations to come.”

This year, the Resnick Aspen Action Forum was called “Leading Toward Justice”—a theme crowdsourced from across the AGLN.

Resnicks and Walter Isaacson

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Summer at Aspen: Resnick Aspen Action Forum

Stevenson

The Broken Will Lead Us to Justice Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and the author of Just Mercy, spoke to the Resnick Aspen Action Forum about creating racial justice.

If we want justice, we’ve got to get closer to places where injustice prevails. When you get proximate, you understand things you cannot understand from a distance. Yet many of us have been taught, if there is a part of our community with abuse, drug addiction, neglect, and despair, stay far away.

We are surrounded by the consequences of a history of racial inequality. The great evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude and forced labor. It was the narrative of racial difference we created to legitimate the ideology of white supremacy that we made up to feel more comfortable with enslavement.

We said black people are different than white people.

We can’t get free until we change that narrative.

For decades, we did damage to people in this country.

And we haven’t done the things you’re supposed to do to recover. You cannot spend time in South Africa without

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having to confront the legacy of apartheid. In Rwanda, you are required to understand the legacy of the genocide.

The Germans actually want you to go Auschwitz and reflect soberly on the legacy of the Holocaust. In America, we do the opposite: You start talking about racial justice; people start looking for the exits.

But we have to stay hopeful. You cannot create justice unless you are hopeful about what you can do.

Hopelessness is the enemy of justice. We also have to be willing to do uncomfortable things. We will not create justice until we’re willing to position ourselves in uncomfortable places and be witnesses.

If you get proximate, change narratives, stay hopeful, and do uncomfortable things, it will break you. But in brokenness, you will understand compassion. It is the broken who understand the way justice really needs to work.

from an Investor.” Moderated, text-based Socratic seminars prompt participants to reflect on their values as socially responsible leaders.

In the Action Workshops, participants serve as advisers to one another, helping their peers overcome specific leadership challenges.

That could mean redefining a business plan for a Middle East Fellow building an innovative social-media platform, say, or making the case for an investment in arts education in Honduras. In skills workshops, participants with expert backgrounds take the floor. This year’s offerings included “So You’re Thinking of Running for Public Office,” presented by Kristin Gisleson Palmer, a Rodel Fellow and a former New Orleans city council member, and “Building a Brand,” presented by Pauline Brown, a Henry Crown Fellow and the former North America chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Nearly every day at the Forum featured a public panel centered on Leading Toward Justice: empowering girls and women, leveling the playing field for educational opportunity, and thinking about how business leaders can promote justice. The Forum also included a special session on “The Path to Justice” with the Equal Justice Initiative’s Bryan Stevenson (please see page 58). But the rest of what the participants discussed stays confidential. “We see this as a space where people can reflect without fear of judgement,” Loper says. And after this year’s spate of unexpected civic violence, participants were looking forward to an “intimate, soul-tending experience.”

To that end, art installations at the Action Forum were designed to help participants connect with the Forum’s theme. Janet Echelman, a Henry Crown Fellow and an internationally recognized artist, suspended a model-sized replica of one of her aerial sculptures, which are intended to be inviting focal points for civic dialogue, in the Doerr Hosier building. Visiting artist and National Geographic photographer Aaron Huey displayed boldly colored posters and graphic art designed to help grassroots-advocacy groups focused on criminal justice, Native American rights, and other issues spread their messages via art. Forum participants could tear off posters from perforated pads to take home.

AGLN Fellows are not only socially conscious and creative; they inspire positive change. That’s why the Forum was the ideal place Irvin

to announce the four John P. McNulty Prize finalists for 2016. The prize is awarded to AGLN visionaries who are having significant impact on their communities and the world in innovative, scalable, and replicable ways. The winner will receive $100,000 for his or her project, and the remaining laureates will each receive $10,000.

This year, ventures included creating jobs in rural South Africa, empowering women in the Himalayas, demobilizing gangs in Panama City, and revolutionizing prenatal care in South Carolina.

Dialogue and reflection (and, of course, hiking to Maroon Bells) are not the only things to come out of the Forum. The emphasis throughout the event is clear: turn thought to action. Each Fellow makes an Action Pledge—a public commitment to a socially good project—that is visually represented on campus. Since the first Forum in 2013, more than 800 pledges have been made, and the AGLN tracks their progress. Fellows write their pledges on a leaf that is then added to trees in an art installation.

True to the diverse nature of the Fellows, the 2016 Action Pledges addressed many kinds of issues. Arvind Malhan, with the India Leadership Initiative, pledged to provide classes in English and computer literacy to more than 5,000 underprivileged rural children in India by 2020. Emile Cubeisy, with the Middle East Leadership Initiative, pledged to identify, train, and empower 80 public-sector servants in Jordan to design positive policy initiatives for their communities. Adela Mendoza, with the Liberty Fellowship, pledged to develop leadership skills among 20 talented Hispanic South Carolinians so they can take charge in an array of fields by 2018.

And this year a major collaborative pledge was inspired by sessions at the Forum itself. A group of about 30 Fellows, most of whom had participated in a daylong “Deep Dive” called “Race in America,” created a Truth and Reconciliation Collaborative Action Group.

The group, whose members range from education experts to public officials, made an Action Pledge to start a national process to address the repercussions of slavery and systemic racism in the United States.

Fellows from South Africa and Rwanda shared significant lessons from which their North American counterparts could learn.

“We are at a time in America where we couldn’t just be left with readings and discussion,” says Nike Irvin, a Henry Crown Fellow.

“After the course of the week, we felt that truth and reconciliation could be approached strategically—and we have the right layers within the Action Forum circle to take it all in.” Though still in the planning stages, the group aims to have its pledge culminate in an annual day of reconciliation, when diverse groups can come together for dialogue, healing, and civic engagement to develop a pathway forward. The process will be gradual. “Of course we want things to happen tomorrow,” Irvin says. “But this is daunting and large, and the legacy of American slavery is long and very deep.”

More than half of Forum participants were female this year, and 40 percent were from abroad—but even from so many different countries and disciplines, they all have one thing in common: a deep commitment to use their unique talents for social good. “We may be small in numbers compared with the challenges we face and the changes we want to see in the world,” Echelman says. “But if we act collectively, we have the power to make real change.”

Alison Decker is the managing editor of Ideas: The Magazine of the Aspen Institute.

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Summer at Aspen: Aspen Security Forum

S

ince its beginnings in 2010, the Aspen Security Forum—a gathering of leading experts and decision-makers at the center of international security—has become the nation’s premier event focused on keeping the country and the world secure. The 2016 Forum featured three full days of panel discussions and in-depth interviews with 80 experts, on topics including cybersecurity threats, global terrorist organizations, the European migration crisis, and the spread of Russia’s influence. The frankness of the dialogue makes the Forum a unique gathering where the nuance and complexity of the issues at hand can be fully explored, rather than boiled down to sound bites.

Speakers at ASF 2016 included CIA Director John Brennan; Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism; Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL; Elissa Slotkin, assistant secretary of defense; Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, who kicked off the event with an interview with Thom Shanker of The New York Times.

At the opening session, Johnson spoke about what he sees as the biggest threats to homeland security, including the new styles of terror attacks occurring across the globe. “The thing that most keeps me up at night,” he said, “is the next Orlando or San Bernadino–type attack by someone who has radicalized in secret. I believe that we’re going to be addressing these types of events for a while.”

Slotkin

Call Security The 2016 Aspen Security Forum gathered leading experts from around the world to discuss making the world a safer place.

By Zach St. Louis

Zach St. Louis is a public-affairs coordinator at the Aspen Institute.

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Brennan

Monaco

Photos by Dan Bayer

Many speakers said that the ability of the internet to obscure radicalization is one of the most troublesome ideas facing the world today. “This generation of terrorists within ISIL has made sophisticated use of all the different types of apps and communication systems,” Brennan said. “The world can be their playground.”

Many conversations centered on different types of cybersecurity concerns, especially in light of the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer systems, which had just taken place. Without commenting specifically on that investigation, Monaco said that it is “a serious, serious issue if there is deliberate intrusion for the purpose of coercing and influencing the political process.” She went on to explain that cyber threats are becoming more consequential as technologies advance. “The cyber threat is one that poses not only a national security but an economic security challenge for all of us.”

The rise of international conflicts came up frequently, including China’s naval expansion in the South China Sea, North Korea’s possession of nuclear arms, terrorist attacks across Europe, and ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East. During an interview with NPR’s counterterrorism correspondent, Dina Temple-Raston, Brennan specifically addressed the future of the complex and ongoing conflict in Syria. “I hope there’s an endgame in Syria,” he said. “I don’t know whether or not [it] can be put back together again.” It was a comment that was picked up by media outlets across the country.

“Over the course of its short history, the Aspen Security Forum has helped to shape the national security agenda,” says Clark Ervin, executive director of the Institute’s Homeland Security Program. “As we enter next year with a new administration, my hope is that the Forum will continue to be a place for bipartisan dialogue that serves both policymakers and the public at large.”

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Summer at Aspen: Summer Celebration

“Through the Lens of Humanity” Sheri and Howard Schultz discuss how they make leading with compassion a reality.

Howard and Sheri Schultz greet guests.

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As part of a public conversation on values-based leadership preceding the Institute’s 23rd annual Summer Celebration Dinner, Howard and Sheri Schultz, this year’s recipients of the Aspen Institute Public Service Award, took the stage to discuss the role of the Schultz Family Foundation, which works with citizens facing barriers to success—particularly “opportunity youth” and veterans—in the couple’s quest to improve and inspire an American social contract based on compassion. The Schultzes were joined by Oscar– and Grammy Award–winning artist Common, who uses his music to fill a similar role. “Some people go unheard, unseen,” he told the group.

“They are invisible. I take it upon myself to speak for those people and for every human being walking this earth.”

Here are highlights from the Schultzes’ conversation with Walter Isaacson.

Walter Isaacson: What have you learned from running Starbucks that helps you understand the type of governance we should have in this country, or the type of values we should have?

C2 Photography

Howard Schultz: We have 25,000 stores in 73 countries. We serve almost a hundred million customers each week, but the core foundation of our company is our founding values and guiding principles. In 1987, when we had 11 stores, we decided early on that we were going to build a different kind of business model, where we would achieve the fragile balance of profit and conscience.

That meant we were going to give ownership to every employee—every single person at Starbucks who works 20 hours or more, which is 95 percent of our employees, is an owner of Starbucks globally. We created comprehensive health insurance 30 years before the Affordable Care Act. T his past year, we honored college achievement by giving free college tuition—for four years—to every employee.

Sheri and Howard Schultz We’re not smarter; we’re not better. We’re a coffee company. But all these things are based on a recognition that culture and humanity are what drive decisions and what we do. We are a performance-driven company operating through the lens of humanity. Going back to Washington, when I look at the decisions being made and the divisiveness, complicity, lies—the humanity of the nation has been stripped as a result of the fracturing of leadership.

think we could even call it a foundation. I would call it responsive giving—seeing incredible needs in the community and people who needed help, grassroots organizations that lifted people’s spirits and gave them hope.

I think our foundation honestly started in a van. The very first time I went out in the community was to give at-risk, homeless youth hot meals and socks. I was intimidated, for sure, but I remember this moment when a young boy looked at me with incredible eye contact and said, “Thank you, I’m so grateful, it’s so cold outside.”

And I saw my son. So that was really the beginning, the impetus, of coming back to Howard and saying, “We can do responsive giving, but strategically, we have to figure out—what are the greater needs of the community and what is the capacity to change?”

WI: Tell me about the

veterans push.

SS: There’s a lot of crossover between at-risk youth and soldiers coming home from war. They’re greatly misunderstood, they don’t know how to apply their skills to become assets, and we don’t understand who they are. They all have stories to tell that are significant and help create who we are and how we should identify ourselves as a nation. The work that we’re doing, particularly with jobs but also with helping families and veterans come home and adjust—it changes the narrative of who we are as people and gives us an opportunity to stop something happening in America that is rampant and completely unfair.

WI: Twenty years ago, you launched the Schultz Family

Foundation. Tell me how it has evolved and what you’ve learned.

HS: We hired about 10,000 veterans.

Sheri Schultz: When we first started the foundation, I don’t

SS: And 97,000 youth.

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The Aspen Journal of Ideas offers thought-provoking analysis and issue-defining information from the programs and partners of the Institute. The digital magazine, updated weekly, is at aspen.us/journal.

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DESTINATION UNKNOWN The 2016 election cycle has been unprecedented—upending conventional wisdom, bucking trends, and at times defying belief.

Social media, extreme voices on cable TV, and intractability in Congress have all polarized the electorate and made politics seem like a blood sport rather than a platform for civil action. And when fear and resentment drive the conversation, we all lose. It’s no wonder more and more Americans consider themselves independents.

Dan Glickman looks at what the major parties need to do to resonate with voters—rather than drive them away.

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ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE, NO BARRIERS Ever since the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act, the United States has experienced renewed interest in electoral systems. While some states are experimenting with automatic or online registration to increase voters’ ballot access, many others are throwing up barriers—from strict voterID laws to a dearth of polling places—that prevent easy voting access. But Michael Klein says there’s a single, simple solution: A new amendment to the Constitution.

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YOUR BRAIN ON BABIES New neuroimaging studies reveal the potent changes that occur in new parents’ brains that propel them to care for their infants—often at the expense of their own well-being. But such a fundamental reorganization of adult brain behavior is also a time of distinct vulnerability. Some parents may have the opposite reaction to these changes—and respond poorly, get overwhelmed, or become depressed. Sarah Enos Watamura explores how new science could help those adults by igniting their parenting brains.

Check out our new online essay series “Election 2016: America Faces the Issues,” where Aspen Institute leaders pose solutions to the challenges driving the vote this fall. as.pn/election2016 IDEAS

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DESTINATION UNKNOWN

Where do the parties go after the fractious 2016 campaigns?

If parties are to remain central or even relevant to the US political process, they’d better decide soon.

Illustration By Jim Penola

BY DAN GLICKMAN

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Political differences have become a leading characteristic in n 2016, the election has been a bulldozer, defying political self-sorting by neighborhood. If you don’t know any Republicans, science, conventional wisdom, punditry, predictions, and, and Democratic elected officials are telling you Republicans are every so often, common sense. If politics is a reflection of evil, it’s hard to see loyal opposition as anything but the enemy. the id of society, then American society is anxious, afraid, In addition, there has been an exponential increase in the and distrustful of most institutions. amount of campaign funds raised and spent in recent years— The insurgent candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders and the especially so-called “dark money” or unreported contributions. nomination of Donald Trump demonstrate the loss of trust in Much of that money is spent on vitriolic and negative ads on political parties and in their traditional leaders. Both of these TV and social media, further discouraging compromise and politicians are exploiting rifts in the coalitions that form the base of bipartisanship. I suspect that the 2016 elections, federal and state, the Republican and Democratic parties. Whether it be class, race, will see spending records and public disgust with the political urban and rural, religious, or age divisions, this primary season system reach all-time highs. has highlighted what divides us, not what unites us. All of this Perhaps if the United States had a parliamentary system shows a wounded system of government and two political parties like many European nations, this would be less problematic for that are looking toward uncertain futures. Yet the Democratic governance. But because the US system can only function on Party and the GOP are storied institutions in American life. Party compromise, the nation is in its current organization is a critical pillar of state of extreme dysfunction. With so democratic governance. So where do few evenly balanced congressional political parties go after 2016? districts, the political base of each First, let’s look at the past. For party, often representing the ideological It’s easier to get people to many years, political-party affiliation extremes of the parties, determines the was a loose set of guidelines, or a vote if they are afraid of agenda for the candidates and elected spectrum of beliefs. There were officials, which leads to political liberal Republicans, conservative what the other party might do gridlock. And gridlock leads to voter Democrats, and much in between. disappointment with parties and with than it is to inspire voter Political newcomers and incumbents governments. could run as proudly affiliated with support with a comprehensive Voters have expressed this a political party, receive substantial frustration by pulling the levers for plan to, say, make the tax support from the party’s campaign political outsiders. The extreme infrastructure, but still retain positions and rhetoric of Trump code more progressive. independence when necessary and have clearly created an opening for important.

Each congressional profound divisions in the Republican district or state required its elected Party. Even Governor Mitt Romney, officials to understand the places in the GOP’s 2012 candidate, is which the community felt strongly about an issue. In Kansas, for encouraging Republicans to not vote for Trump. There are example, support for agriculture subsidies was strong across party some parallels, even if less severe, with Sanders supporters on lines because folks understood what could happen to their way of the Democratic side. life if the bottom fell out of commodity markets.

So where does this lead? The most growth in political In my own case, while in Congress, I voted with the national affiliation is in the numbers of Americans who are selfDemocrats 60 to 70 percent of the time, but I would often vote identified independents. Unless party ideology becomes less with Republicans when it was in the interest of my constituents. rigid and political independence for their members more I wasn’t afraid to cast these votes because I felt they were the common, Americans will eventually see political parties as right things for Kansans. I didn’t fear party reprisal. Democratic irrelevant. Will they tune out politics completely, disengage campaign officials understood that I felt the need to take certain and not vote at all? positions against the party. That didn’t make me a traitor.

Whatever the result of the current election, something Today, elected officials cross party lines much less frequently, needs to happen in order for the government to respond to the if at all. Certainly voters have become more partisan themselves. big issues of this time in US history. Will voters demand that But in my judgment, increased partisanship among voters is the their politicians commit to solving major national problems like effect and not the cause of increased partisanship in political fixing the nation’s infrastructure, fighting terrorism sensibly, institutions. Campaign consultants, in coordination with the news upgrading energy policy, making progress on long-term fiscal media and well-funded organizations with extreme views, have soundness, or making college more affordable? It is in the used modern communications tools to exploit emotions like fear hands, hearts, and minds of the American people to demand and anxiety to increase turnout among their supporters. It’s easier political change. to get people to vote if they are afraid of what the other party might do than it is to inspire voter support with a comprehensive Dan Glickman is vice president of the Aspen Institute and the executive plan to, say, make the tax code more progressive or to rein in director of the Institute’s Congressional Program. government spending in the Department of Education.

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ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE,

NO BARRIERS

Yet another round of challenges to the most fundamental of American rights calls for the most fundamental of American changes.

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n the midst of another election cycle, Americans find themselves also in the midst of a plethora of votingrights issues. Some states—Oregon, California, and Washington—are experimenting with online registration and other devices to increase access to registration and voting.

Other states—Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio, encouraged

by Shelby County v. Holder, a 2013 split Supreme Court decision eviscerating the Voting Rights Act—have created new barriers to voting registration and ballot access. These new barriers have led in turn to a flurry of litigation raising constitutional challenges to the new stringent state voter-restriction laws.

As the nation heads into a presidential election, all this action highlighted the fundamental weakness of the Constitution: it does not adequately define or protect the right of every citizen to vote. And the right to vote is the underpinning of America’s identity as the world’s greatest representative democracy.

Amending the Constitution to enhance the right of citizens to vote has been a long-standing challenge. Importantly, it is a challenge the nation has repeatedly met. Despite the extreme difficulty of amending the Constitution, on no fewer than seven occasions amendments have been made to the original provisions governing the rights of citizens to vote. Those amendments have been necessary because although the Founding Fathers, as we refer to them, started the Constitution with the phrase “We the people,” they must have known it was a bit of a fiction. As Tonto, the fictional Native American sidekick, famously asked the Lone Ranger, the fictional cowboy, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Reflecting 18th-century racism, sexism, and elitism, the Founding Fathers had a very narrow view of who should be the voters in their declared democracy. The original Constitution did not define voting eligibility. It was left to the 13 original states to decide who could vote. The states in turn created a very limited class of those eligible to vote: free men over the age of 21 who owned property. And since the Constitution limited the power of even those voters to directly elect only a very limited number of federal offices, that narrow white male propertied minority of the population could vote directly only to elect members of the House of Representatives. Senators were elected by state legislatures, and the president and vice president by an Electoral College whose members were elected by the legislatures of the states.

Not quite what we think of as democracy today!

Americans have had to travel a very long way toward having a government by “the consent of the governed,” as the Declaration of Independence promised, or to become Abraham Lincoln’s

The US government has never gotten around to providing a singular robust affirmation of the basic right of citizens to vote.

“government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Well over a century, in fact. The process of expanding the rights to vote began after the Gettysburg Address and the Civil War, and continued through those seven amendments to the Constitution.

The amendments first enfranchised former slaves and threatened states with lesser representation if they deprived citizens of voting rights for reasons other than crimes. They then assured all citizens of equal protection of the laws—then women, then citizens over the age of 18. They then abolished the poll tax and provided for the direct election of senators.

Notably, and rather magnificently, every one of those seven constitutional expansions of the right to vote was approved by voters who thereby reduced their previous voting power— apparently for the sake of fulfilling all those wonderful promises of representative democracy in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution’s preamble, and the Gettysburg Address.

Because, however, the severely constricted 18th-century attitudes toward equality that infected the promised democratic ideal were disinfected one narrowly focused amendment at a time, the US government has never gotten around to providing a singular robust affirmation of the basic right of citizens to vote. This, and the limiting and limited decisions of US courts— particularly the recent Shelby decision striking down the core of the Voting Rights Act—has enabled those who have been motivated by racist, partisan, or other reasons to persist in continuing to create obstacles to the most fundamental of the nation’s basic ideals: universal representative democracy.

National leaders know how to fix this problem. Arduous though the Constitution makes it, the solution is one more amendment to the Constitution addressing voting rights. The Constitution’s First Amendment—prohibiting any law restricting political rights of speech, assembly, press, and petition—established and provides the model. The courts read it clearly. To in any way inhibit those political rights, a law must pass “strict scrutiny.” For any infringement on those freedoms to pass muster, it must demonstrably be the least restrictive needed to achieve a necessary objective.

So should it be with the right to vote. After all, those First Amendment political rights of speech, assembly, press, and petition are as protected as they are precisely to make possible the meaningful exercise of voting rights—informed, intelligent, and free. A fortiori—from the greater, the lesser is known—as legal scholars note.

Here is a text that can achieve what’s needed:

“Neither the Congress nor any State shall deprive or inhibit the right of any native-born or naturalized adult Citizen to vote in any duly called election.”

What plausible reason, other than the complexity of the effort, can be offered in opposition to this proposal? It has been done before. America can and should do it again—finally.

Michael Klein, chairman and co-founder of the public-interest Sunlight Foundation, is a Trustee of the Aspen Institute.

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WHY WILL PARENTS ABANDON EVERYTHING TO CARE FOR THEIR BABIES, AND WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE OVERWHELMED BY THEIR NEW RESPONSIBILITIES? NEW RESEARCH HAS SOME ANSWERS. SARAH ENOS WATAMURA, PH.D.

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newborn’s cry pierces the stillness of 4:00 a.m. as darkness loses its grip on the sky. My wife and I are bone-tired, neither of us has slept more than an hour in days, not since before we were her parents.

It’s our first night home from the hospital with our first child— no nurses, no family. Although we are beyond exhausted, that cry has brought us both to full attention hour after hour— propelling us out of bed and to her side, again and again. In a few short months we will know just how to soothe her, the right touch, the right song, and when she is hungry, or wet, or cold.

But tonight, we fumble, we struggle, we despair, we persevere.

That wild force that propels us to her side? It’s powered by a changing brain and a flood of potent hormones. The power of a new parent’s changing brain is often overlooked—and it’s something that needs to be understood and supported if all families and communities are to be healthy and thriving. I’m a researcher at the University of Denver and a fellow of Ascend, the Institute program focused on breaking the cycle of poverty.

With my colleague Dr. Pilyoung Kim and others, I’m engaged in a new line of neuroimaging studies of the specific regions of the brain that change to support parenting.

A changing brain that drives new parents to care for their offspring while subjugating their own most basic needs for food and sleep is not unique to humans. New mother rats will choose their pup’s cry over even cocaine, though rats who aren’t parents choose cocaine over food and water. And this isn’t unique to mothers—in biparental species like humans and prairie voles, the same changes happen for new moms and new dads.

Three key changes have been documented. In the reward circuit—the part of the brain that orients us toward and motivates us to seek out things like food and sex and the part that is co-opted by drugs—there are changes in size and structure, and the brain becomes more responsive to the sounds and images of one’s own baby. More growth in the reward circuit is also related to how often parents say their infant is “beautiful” and “perfect.” In the social-information circuit—a part of the brain important for recognizing and processing social signals, and a part that operates differently when people have disorders such as autism—there is also structural growth and increased responsiveness to infant signals. Lastly, there are changes in the emotion-regulation circuit. Changes here are twofold, as optimal social responsiveness requires that you both detect and feel empathy at another’s distress and can also regulate your own distress so you can actually help. The changes here involve prefrontal control of amygdala activation. More

supportive parenting neurobiology is strongly related to the level of sensitivity that caregiving parents provide.

The transition to parenting is a sensitive period—a time of openness and a time of vulnerability. New parents are open to massive structural and functional brain reorganization, but they are also at heightened risk for stress and mood disorders. The vulnerability may be particularly heightened when new parents have a history of poor caregiving or have experienced trauma, depression, or substance-use disorders. In fact, when new parents start with any of these vulnerabilities, they may experience fewer supportive neurobiological changes, making the transition to parenting that much more challenging. When parents who are struggling in their new role say, “I’m not sure I love this baby as much as I should,” or, “When she cries, I curl up and cry, too—I’m so overwhelmed,” they may be telling us that their brains are not yet providing them the extra boost of support they need.

What can be done when the already very tough job of parenting is made that much tougher? In a new study, Dr. Kim, Dr. Phil Fisher, and I are testing just this. If science can help parents improve the core of their relationship to their babies, reduce the stress of parenting, and help them improve their parenting self-efficacy, can their brains be jump-started toward a reorganization that supports parenting?

I believe this is possible. Brains change. When people exercise and learn and grow, they build more efficient, effective, and robust brain circuits. Brain changes reflect and support people’s most important transitions—in early life, in adolescence, and during the transition to parenting. If parents can be helped to exercise their positive parenting muscles, supportive parenting brain circuitry should get stronger, too—even in those parents whose brains have been tuned to negative inputs and subject to insults.

Parents need to believe that everyone has the capacity to be wonderful parents. They need to share their questions and fears with their doctors, pediatricians, and families, so they can get the support they need. And it is the responsibility of pediatricians, early childhood teachers, social workers, and anyone else who works with young families to help parents build their parenting muscles. The social fabric of families and communities depends on it.

Sarah Enos Watamura, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Denver, where she directs the Child Health & Development Lab and co-directs the Stress, Early Experience and Development Research Center.

She is a part of the 2015 class of the Aspen Institute Ascend Fellows.

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gham

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ildenho

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INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

ASPEN INSTITUTE MÉXICO In June, Aspen Institute México organized a series of open forums designed to analyze the political and economic environment of Mexico. Together with Vector Casa de Bolsa, a Mexican brokerage firm based in Monterrey, AspenMX brought together the renowned political analysts and journalists León Krauze, Carlos Puig, and Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, as well as Alan Stoga, founder and president of Zemi Communications, for an event titled “Mexico: Where are we? Where are we going? What to expect for 2018? Economic and political outlook for Mexico and the United States.” There

were two editions of the event, one in Mexico City and one in Monterrey, each with more than 800 participants.

In addition, on June 29, AspenMX, in collaboration with PwC Mexico, hosted the launch of the new book Green Giants: How Smart Companies Turn Sustainability into BillionDollar Businesses, by E. Freya Williams. During the event, the author explained the business case for sustainability by looking at nine billion-dollar companies that have managed to maintain profits while contributing to the world’s sustainable development.

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Aspen Seminar for Leaders particpants

Photo courtesy of Aspen Institute Romania

ASPEN ROMANIA

A joint Aspen Institute Romania and Aspen Institute Kyiv initiative, the Aspen Seminar for Leaders provided a forum for discussions about “The Moral and Practical Fundaments of Good Governance” in the region, with a focus on the Republic of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. This May, the seminar gathered a mixed group of Romanian, Moldavian, and Ukrainian participants, including Igor Munteanu, the former ambassador of Moldova to the United States and Canada; David Puie, the counselor for foreign affairs, Prime Minister’s Chancellery, Romanian government; and representatives of major companies and NGOs in the region. Sergey Koshman, the executive director at Aspen Institute Kyiv, also joined the conversation on values-based leadership. The seminar was moderated by Andrei Tarnea, the executive director of Aspen Institute Romania, and Denis Poltavets, the program development director of Aspen Institute Kyiv. The seminar is a striking example of the power of the Aspen idea and the Socratic method in the difficult and diverse context of postcommunist societies.

ASPEN KYIV This May, Aspen Institute Kyiv officially lauched with a public event. Aspen Kyiv was officially approved by the Aspen Institute in November 2015 as part of its network of ten international partners in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The goal of Aspen Kyiv is to become a valuable and respected platform for open dialogue to address regional challenges.

“We are proud to bring the Aspen Institute’s values-based leadership approach to Kyiv,” said Institute Executive Vice President Elliot Gerson. “There are few places in the world today where Aspen values of tolerance, good governance, and the search for common ground are more critically in demand.” Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson added: “The Aspen Institute supports global independent affiliates, such as Aspen Kyiv, because we seek to create a diverse worldwide community of leaders committed to the greater good. The notion of ‘good’ has a special resonance at the Institute. The motivations and innovative ideas inspired by the exchanges facilitated around its tables are providing the impetus to build that ‘good society’—one continually striving for improvement, individually and collectively, driven by the ideas that are contemplated and the actions that are taken.”

Aspen Institute Kyiv is governed by a board of trustees chaired by Natalie Jaresko.

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SEMINARS

Seminars help participants explore the tensions among the values that form our conception of a Good Society, with the aim of deepening knowledge, broadening perspectives, and enhancing the capacity to solve the problems leaders face. Our unique, humanities-based approach to leadership development uses a variety of classic and contemporary philosophical and literary texts as the basis for intensive, interactive roundtable discussions led by skilled moderators in small groups of 15–20 participants. Facebook.com/AspenLeadership Twitter: @AspenDialogue 82

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FACTS/PROGRAMS THE ASPEN EXECUTIVE SEMINAR ON LEADERSHIP, VALUES, AND THE GOOD SOCIETY The Aspen Executive Seminar challenges leaders in every field to clarify the values by which they lead and to think more critically and deeply about their impact on the world in a moderated, text-based Socratic dialogue. aspeninstitute.org/aspenseminar

JUSTICE & SOCIETY SEMINAR Co-founded by the late Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, this seminar brings together people from diverse backgrounds to discuss what we mean by justice and how a just society ought to structure its legal, judicial, and political institutions. Roundtable discussions are led by two distinguished and experienced moderators: a federal or state high court judge and a professor of law or political theory.

OCTOBER 1-7, 2016 | WYE RIVER

Contact Michael.Green@aspeninstitute.org: aspeninstitute.org/jss

MARCH 11-17, 2017 | ASPEN, CO

JULY 6-12, 2017 | ASPEN, CO

APRIL 8-14, 2017 | ASPEN, CO APRIL 22-28, 2017 | WYE RIVER MAY 6-12, 2017 | WYE RIVER JUNE 3-9, 2017 | ASPEN, CO AUGUST 12-18, 2017 | ASPEN, CO SEPTEMBER 9-15, 2017 | ASPEN, CO

ASPEN ROMANIA LEADERSHIP SEMINAR In collaboration with Aspen Institute Romania, this seminar explores the specific leadership challenges facing business, government, and civil society in a post-communist environment. aspeninstitute.org/romaniaseminar TBD | SUSAI MOUNTAIN RESORT, ROMANIA

OCTOBER 14-20, 2017 | WYE RIVER

LEADERSHIP AND CHARACTER Leadership and Character takes up where the Aspen Executive Seminar leaves off, looking at the internal context of making leadership decisions and exploring the competing tensions that form our internal moral compass. aspeninstitute.org/characterseminar

WYE ACADEMIC PROGRAMS In a longstanding collaboration with the Association of American Colleges and Universities, these seminars engage faculty, senior academic administrators, and college presidents in an exchange of ideas about liberal arts education, citizenship, and the global polity. aspeninstitute.org/wyeseminars

OCTOBER 27–30, 2016 | ASPEN, CO

NATURE, SOCIETY, AND SUSTAINABILITY Nature, Society, and Sustainability provides both updated content and a values framework as we balance the tensions between a vibrant human social and economic ecology and environmental sustainability. aspeninstitute.org/natureseminar

WYE DEANS' SEMINAR TBD | WYE RIVER, MD

WYE FACULTY SEMINAR JULY 15-21, 2017 | WYE RIVER, MD

ASPEN ESPAÑA SEMINAR Transatlantic Values at a Crossroads: Contemporary Leadership Challenges In collaboration with Aspen Institute España, this seminar probes the European context of modern leadership in the midst of the uncertainties in democratic capitalism, nationalism, and culture. aspeninstitute.org/espanaseminar OCTOBER 20–23, 2016 | RONDA, SPAIN

CUSTOM SEMINARS In addition to our open enrollment leadership development programs, we work with individual organizations to design and execute custom seminars on specific business growth and leadership development issues. We use our unique method of moderated dialogue and draw upon more than 65 years of experience to help organizations achieve their goals. aspeninstitute.org/customseminar

ASPEN ITALIA SEMINAR Values and Society & Leadership, Globalization, and the Quest for Common Values In collaboration with Aspen Italia, these concurrent seminars explore the cultural challenges of leadership in a European context, deepening partcipants' understandings of the values by which they lead even as those values are tested by the demands of globalization.

“As a CEO, taking time to sharpen the saw is critical.

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—Reed Hastings, founder and CEO, Netflix

MARCH 2–5, 2017 | CASTELVECCHIO PASCOLI, LUCCA, ITALY

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT THE INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMS.

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Making sure our staff and physicians have world-class facilities, equipment and resources is a shared mission of our generous donors and Aspen Valley Hospital Foundation.

Join us, as we continue to elevate healthcare in our community for generations to come.

supportaspenvalleyhospital.org Deborah Breen, President / CEO • 970-544-1302

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FACTS/PROGRAMS

THE SOCRATES PROGRAM The Socrates Program provides a forum for emerging leaders (ages 28–50) from a wide range of professions to explore contemporary issues through expertmoderated roundtable dialogue. aspeninstitute.org/socrates

Innovative | Inspiring | Inviting

This amazing off the grid home features quality finishes coupled with an unbelievable setting encompassing mountain views and Aspens groves.

This Old Snowmass secret will enchant you. $4,250,000

SOCRATES NEW YORK SALON | NEW YORK, NEW YORK Transformational Business: Inclusion, Leadership, and Culture Moderators: Susan P. Sturm, George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility; founder, Center for Institutional and Social Change, Columbia Law School. Heidi Brooks, senior lecturer on organizational behavior, Yale School of Management NOVEMBER 4-5, 2016 SOCRATES MEXICO | PUEBLA, MÉXICO The Future of Work in the Digital Economy Moderator: Sonal Shah, professor and founding executive director, Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, Georgetown University NOVEMBER 17-20, 2016 SOCRATES SAN FRANCISCO RECEPTION | SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA DECEMBER 7, 2016 SOCRATES LOS ANGELES SALON | LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA DECEMBER 9-10, 2016 SOCRATES KYIV | KYIV, UKRAINE The Future of Privacy and Transparency: Surveillance in a Digital Age Moderator: Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO, National Constitution Center DECEMBER 9-11, 2016

Private Setting in the Core

This spectacular Alps corner unit features wrap around decks for dining and gathering, while the large windows splash the open floor plan with light and bring the adjoining forest into each room. $2,950,000

WINTER SEMINARS | ASPEN, COLORADO FEBRUARY 17-20, 2017

THE SOCIETY OF FELLOWS The Society of Fellows is an engaged community of supporters who are active in the Institute’s programs, act as advocates and ambassadors, and help sustain the Institute’s mission. For more on joining the Society of Fellows, contact Peter Waanders at 970.544.7912 or at peter.waanders@aspeninstitute.org.

SOF DISCUSSION RECEPTIONS FEATURING: Dan Glickman and Mickey Edwards: Elections and Politics in America SEPTEMBER 21 | PRIVATE HOME | NEW YORK, NEW YORK Adam Grant: How Non-Conformists Move the World OCTOBER 13 | PRIVATE HOME | NEW YORK, NEW YORK

CAROL DOPKIN The Realtor with Horse Sense 970.618.0187 cell Carol@CarolDopkin.com www.CarolDopkin.com

David Gergen: The Election and American Political Trends OCTOBER 25 | PRIVATE HOME | WASHINGTON, DC Jeffrey E. Garten: From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives NOVEMBER 16 | PRIVATE HOME | SAN FRANCISCO SOF Vanguard Chapter Holiday Party Featuring Neal Katyal: US Supreme Court Decisions that Changed the Course of History in 2016 DECEMBER 8 | PRIVATE HOME | ASPEN, COLORADO Please visit aspeninstitute.org/sof for a complete list of Society of Fellows events.

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Red Mountain Remodel or Redevelopment Half-acre lot, panoramic Aspen Mtn views | $3,975,000

Castle Creek Compound

5 bdrm main house, 4 bdrm guest cabins | $8,640,000

Saddle Ridge Ranch

Two Starwood Building Sites

1,232 acres, under an hour from Aspen | $15,900,000

7.6 acres, wide open views | $6,780,000

Conundrum Creek Riverfront

5 bedrooms, only 4.6 miles to Aspen | $8,900,000

Conundrum Creek Frontage

Build 50-feet from the river, 2.8 acres | $4,459,000

Heidi Houston | 970.925.6866 | 888.925.6866 | heidi@compass.com aspen.compass.com

970.925.6063

compass

compassinc

compass IDEAS

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Real estate agents affiliated with Compass are independent contractor sales associates and are not employees of Compass. Equal Housing Opportunity. Compass is a licensed real estate broker located at 90 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Fl. NY, NY 10011. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing is from sources deemed reliable, but Compass makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice. To reach the Compass main office call 212.913.9058.

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LEADERSHIP

Dan Bayer

THE INSTITUTE CULTIVATES ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERS AND ENCOURAGES THEM TO TACKLE THE GREAT CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES THROUGH SOCIAL VENTURES. SPANNING VARIOUS GEOGRAPHIC AND ISSUE AREAS, WE HOST 14 DIFFERENT FELLOWSHIPS.

AGLN Fellows from around the world share leadership insights at the Resnick Aspen Action Forum.

THE ASPEN GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NETWORK Each Aspen Global Leadership Network program, inspired by the Henry Crown Fellowship Program, is developing a new generation of civically engaged men and women by encouraging them to move “from success to significance” and to apply their entrepreneurial talents to addressing the foremost challenges of their organizations, communities, and countries. Today, there are more than 2,300 Fellows in 50 countries.

HENRY CROWN FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

FINANCE LEADERS FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

PAHARA-ASPEN EDUCATION FELLOWSHIP

agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ henrycrown

agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ financeleaders

agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/pahara

AFRICA LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE (ALI)

INDIA LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE (ILI)

agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ healthinnovators

agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ africaleadership

ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERS FELLOWSHIP agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ environment ASPEN INSTITUTE-RODEL FELLOWSHIPS IN PUBLIC LEADERSHIP

agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ indialeadership

CHINA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ chinafellowship

LIBERTY FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/liberty

agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/rodel

CENTRAL AMERICA LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE (CALI) agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/CALI

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HEALTH INNOVATORS FELLOWSHIP

MIDDLE EAST LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE (MELI) agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/MELI

CENTER FOR URBAN

INNOVATION

The center bridges the gap between innovators and underserved neighborhoods, so that innovators focus more attention on community challenges and so neighborhood residents can bring their own groundbreaking ideas to life. aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/ center-urban-innovation

AspenLodgeProperties.com PRESENTED BY SUSAN GUGGENHEIM LODGE | Going Above & Beyond

QUINTESSENTIAL SKI-IN, SKI-OUT 1627 Wood Road, Snowmass Village, CO GUGGENHAUS WEST $3,950,000

OLD SNOWMASS RIVERFRONT HOME 26501 Highway 82, Snowmass, CO CAST A LINE FROM YOUR DECK $1,750,000

970.379.1467 | Susan.Lodge@sir.com | 300 S. Spring Street, Aspen Aspen Pitkin County Airport

DELIVERING THE ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL

BRANDON BELL, PERCUSSION | JT KANE, VIOLA | LISA DEMPSEY, VIOLIN

N O N - S T O P C H I C A G O D E N V E R L O S A N G E L E S S A N F R A N C I S C O H O U S T O N D A L L A S / F T.W O R T H

A SPEN AIRPORT.COM

FACTS/PROGRAMS

Dan Bayer

POLICY

Policy programs and initiatives serve as nonpartisan forums for analysis, consensus-building, and problem-solving on a wide variety of issues.

ASCEND AT THE ASPEN INSTITUTE

CONGRESSIONAL PROGRAM

ascend.aspeninstitute.org

aspeninstitute.org/congressional

ASPEN FORUM FOR COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS aspencommunitysolutions.org

ASPEN GLOBAL HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT aspeninstitute.org/ghd

ASPEN INSTITUTE LATINOS AND SOCIETY PROGRAM

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/eop

EDUCATION AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/education

ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/ee

aspeninstitute.org/latinos-society

GLOBAL ALLIANCES PROGRAM

ASPEN NETWORK OF DEVELOPMENT ENTREPRENEURS aspeninstitute.org/ande

ASPEN PLANNING AND EVALUATION PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/apep

ASPEN STRATEGY GROUP aspeninstitute.org/asg

BUSINESS AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/bsp

aspeninstitute.org/global-alliances

FINANCIAL SECURITY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/fsp

HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/health

HOMELAND SECURITY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/security

JUSTICE AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/justice

CENTER FOR NATIVE AMERICAN YOUTH aspeninstitute.org/cnay

PROGRAM ON PHILANTHROPY AND SOCIAL INNOVATION

CITIZENSHIP AND AMERICAN IDENTITY PROGRAM

aspeninstitute.org/psi

aspeninstitute.org/citizenship

COLLEGE EXCELLENCE PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/college-excellence

COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/c&s

PROGRAM ON THE WORLD ECONOMY aspeninstitute.org/pwe

ROUNDTABLE ON COMMUNITY CHANGE aspeninstitute.org/rcc

SERVICE YEAR ALLIANCE serviceyear.org

COMMUNITY STRATEGIES GROUP aspeninstitute.org/csg

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SPORTS AND SOCIETY aspeninstitute.org/sports-society

FACTS/PROGRAMS

POLICY PROGRAM FELLOWSHIPS Born from the policy programs at the Aspen Institute, Policy Leadership

NEW VOICES FELLOWSHIP Founded by the Institute’s Global Health and Development Program, the New Voices Fellowship cultivates compelling experts to speak on development issues.

Programs seek to empower exceptional

aspennewvoices.org

individuals to lead with innovation in

THE ASCEND FELLOWSHIP

their chosen fields. These individuals then become more effective

Founded by the Institute’s Ascend Program, the Ascend Fellowship targets diverse pioneers paving new pathways that break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. ascend.aspeninstitute.org/fellows

change agents who can influence FIRST MOVERS FELLOWSHIP

the institutions and fields in which they work and lead to create better outcomes for society.

Founded by the Institute’s Business and Society Program, the First Movers Fellowship seeks to help the business community live up to its full potential as a vehicle for positive social change. aspeninstitute.org/firstmovers

“When “Wh en you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.”

ATTORNEYS AT LAW (l-r) Ann Hutchison, Michele Bass, Matt Ferguson, Kristi Ferraro, Michelle Schindler 119 S. Spring St, Ste 201 Aspen, Colorado 81611 MATTHEWFERGUSONLAW.COM 970.925.6288

LITIGATION & TRANSACTIONS Civil | Business | Real Estate

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FACTS/PROGRAMS

Dan Bayer

PUBLIC

Public conferences and events provide a commons for people to share ideas.

ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL This weeklong, large-scale public event—co-hosted by The Atlantic—brings some of the world’s brightest minds and leaders to Aspen every summer for enlightened dialogue on the planet’s most pressing issues.

ASPEN SECURITY FORUM On the Institute’s campus in Aspen, the Aspen ­Security Forum convenes leaders in government, industry, media, think tanks, and academia to explore key national homeland security and counter­terrorism issues.

aspenideas.org

aspensecurityforum.org

WASHINGTON IDEAS FORUM Presented in partnership with The Atlantic, this Washington, DC–based event features leading figures in public policy discussing the most important issues of the day.

ONGOING PROGRAMS IN NEW YORK The Institute hosts a variety of programs in New York City, from book talks and benefits to roundtable discussions, forums, and the Aspen Leadership Series: Conversations with Great Leaders in Memory of Preston Robert Tisch. aspeninstitute.org/newyorkevents

ASPEN WORDS Throughout the year, Aspen Words encourages writers in their craft and readers in their appreciation of literature by hosting festivals, readings, and other literary exchanges. aspenwords.org

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ASPEN COMMUNITY PROGRAMS The Institute offers residents of Aspen and the surrounding Roaring Fork Valley communities a variety of programs throughout the year, including speaker series, community seminars, and film screenings.

THE ASPEN INSTITUTE ARTS PROGRAM The Arts Program was established to support and invigorate the arts in America and to return the arts to the Institute’s “Great Conversation.” It brings together artists, advocates, educators, managers, foundations, and government officials to exchange ideas and develop policies that strengthen the reciprocal relationship between the arts and society.

aspeninstitute.org/community

aspeninstitute.org/arts

aspeninstitute.org/events

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ONGOING PROGRAMS IN WASHINGTON, DC From September through June, the Institute’s DC headquarters hosts the Alma and Joseph Gildenhorn Book Series, featuring discussions with major recent authors.

Concurrently, the Washington Ideas Roundtable Series focuses on world affairs, arts, and culture.

AUTHENTICITY

CREATIVITY

SUCCESS

R E C E N T LY S O L D $12.8 M I L L I O N Renowned designer Holly Hunt states, ‘’This house has some of the most beautiful finishes, interiors and furnishings in Aspen.”

U N D E R C O N T R AC T

OFFERED AT $13,649,000 This horse property is surrounded by 65 acres of foreverprotected Moore Open Space, but only 1.5 miles to the gondola

Susan Plummer

Broker Associate 970.920.7399 | 970.948.6786 cell susan@masonmorse.com Aspen | 970.925.7000 www.masonmorse.com

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FACTS/PROGRAMS

CALENDAR On November 3, the Institute hosts its 33rd Annual Awards Dinner at New York’s Plaza Hotel. The featured speaker is Tom Brokaw, the award-winning journalist who anchored NBC's Nightly News for more than 20 years, reporting on everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the 9/11 attacks.

The Institute will honor Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with its Public Service Award for her work championing children, education, and medical research. The Institute will also honor Robert K. Steel, the CEO Steel

of Perella Weinberg Partners and former Institute board chairman, with the Henry Crown Leadership Award for his guidance and insight. The evening begins with cocktails at 7:00. Dinner starts at 7:45.

Trustee Mercedes T. Bass is chairing the gala event.

For more information, contact Natasha Little: natasha.little@aspeninstitute.org.

Gates

Brokaw

Left to right: Clint Spaulding, Shutterstock, Shutterstock

SEE YOU AT THE PLAZA!

SERIOUS MEETINGS THE NATURAL WAY With more than 1,000 acres on Maryland's Eastern Shore, privacy abounds on the grounds of two estates with state-of-the-art conference facilities, 51 distinctive accommodations, farm-to-table cuisine, striking water views and notable amenities.

FOR SERIOUS MEETINGS THE NATURAL WAY, VISIT ASPENWYERIVER.COM OR CALL 410.820.0905

water rights water planning water for food & energy transboundary & tribal water

Aspen based since 1985 www.waterlaw.com IDEAS

(800) 282-5458 SPECIAL ISSUE 2016

CONNECT WITH US ASPEN ACROSS AMERICA Executive Vice President, Institutional Advancement and Corporate Secretary Eric L. Motley 202.736.2900 eric.motley@aspeninstitute.org SOCRATES PROGRAM INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS Vice President, Director Melissa Ingber 202.736.1077 melissa.ingber@aspeninstitute.org

THE SOCIETY OF FELLOWS Director Peter Waanders 970.544.7912 peter.waanders@aspeninstitute.org aspeninstitute.org/sof

TO CONTACT INSTITUTE LEADERS SEMINARS Director Todd Breyfogle 202.341.7803 todd.breyfogle@aspeninstitute.org aspeninstitute.org/seminars

HENRY CROWN FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM Managing Director, Henry Crown Fellowship Program Tonya Hinch 202.736.3523 tonya.hinch@aspeninstitute.org aspeninstitute.org/crown

DONATIONS, SPECIAL EVENTS, AND BENEFITS Director of Development Events and Donor Relations Leah Bitounis 202.736.2289 leah.bitounis@aspeninstitute.org

aspeninstitute.org/community

PUBLIC PROGRAMS Vice President Aspen Ideas Festival, Director Kitty Boone 970.544.7926 kitty.boone@aspeninstitute.org aspenideas.org

Vice President, Director Jamie Miller 202.736.1075 jamie.miller@aspeninstitute.org

Willow Darsie 202.736.3545 willow.darsie@aspeninstitute.org

POLICY PROGRAMS Director of Administration, Policy and Public Programs Donna Horney 202.736.5835 donna.h@aspeninstitute.org

aspeninstitute.org/leadership

aspeninstitute.org/policy-work

ASPEN GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NETWORK Dep. Director, Operations & Partnerships

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ASPEN COMMUNITY PROGRAMS Director Cristal Logan 970.544.7929 cristal.logan@aspeninstitute.org

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HERITAGE SOCIETY To learn more about planned giving opportunities, please call ​ Kris Robinson 202.736.3852 aspeninstitute.org/heritagesociety

MEDIA INQUIRIES Managing Director, Communications and Public Affairs Pherabe Kolb 202.736.2906 pherabe.kolb@aspeninstitute.org

OFFICES HEADQUARTERS Suite 700, One Dupont Circle, NW Washington, DC 20036-1133 202.736.5800 ASPEN CAMPUS 1000 North Third Street Aspen, CO 81611 970.925.7010 WYE RIVER CAMPUS 2010 Carmichael Road, P.O. Box 222 Queenstown, MD 21658 410.827.7168 NEW YORK OFFICES 477 Madison Avenue, Suite 730 New York, NY 10022

Dan Bayer

aspeninstitute.org/socrates aspeninstitute.org/international

A Resort Within A Resort An exceptional opportunity exists to acquire a new custom-designed residence in the desirable Meadows and West End neighborhood of Aspen. Situated on a beautiful, sun-filled 16,000 sq ft lot adjacent to a biking and walking path, this rare setting provides easy access to the neighboring world renowned Aspen Meadows, offering all of the resort services to this distinctive property.

Looking out from the residence is the historic Aspen Meadow, forever dedicated as open space and right outside the front door. Adjacent to the open meadow is the Aspen Institute and Aspen Music Tent both within easy access of this stunning contemporary home. With extensive windows to capture enormous panoramic views of Aspen Mountain, Red Mountain, Buttermilk Mountain and beyond, the light-filled living areas and outdoor spaces offer an individual perspective of the surrounding splendor.

Save a year or more in the design and permitting process by moving immediately into construction!

$8,950,000 5 bedrooms | 5 full and 2 half baths | 5,150 sq ft

Tom Melberg 970.379.1297 Tom.Melberg @ sir.com AspenSnowmassSIR.com

Craig Morris 970.379.9795 Craig.Morris @ sir.com CraigMorris.com

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THE INSTITUTE ONLINE

FOLLOW US

Join our friends at Facebook.com/AspenInstitute.

To learn how to reach individual policy programs on Facebook, go to aspeninstitute.org/socialmedia.

Follow the Aspen Institute with @aspeninstitute. To follow individual Institute programs and directors go to Twitter.com/aspeninstitute/lists/aspen-institute.

See the Institute’s people, places, and things on Instagram.com/aspeninstitute.

Access New Ideas All Year Long You can find the talks, debates, and discussions from Aspen Ideas Festival and other public events on our new, mobile-friendly website year-round. Check out original pieces and analysis from speakers like Allan Murray, editor of Fortune; or Donna Shalala, former secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services; and watch coverage of sessions like "What is Gender, Anyway?" or "Decoding North Korea."

E-NEWSLETTER Sign up for the Aspen Institute biweekly e-newsletter at aspeninstitute.org/newsletter.

MULTIMEDIA CHANNEL Find videos of many of the Institute’s panels and discussions, many of which are invitation-only at aspeninstitute.org/video.

PUBLICATIONS To find Institute publications, some of which are available for purchase or downloadable for free, go to aspeninstitute.org/publications.

IDEAS: THE MAGAZINE OF THE ASPEN INSTITUTE To find and share this issue online, go to aspeninstitute.org/magazine.

THE ASPEN IDEA BLOG Aspen Institute directors, experts, and guest bloggers offer insight into the work of the organization at

IDEAS

SPECIAL ISSUE 2016

Watch videos of the Institute’s events and panel discussions at YouTube.com/aspeninstitute.

See what the Institute is pinning at Pinterest.com/aspeninstitute.

To find the Institute’s photos, go to Flickr.com/aspeninstitute.

aspeninstitute.org/blog.

THE ASPEN JOURNAL OF IDEAS The Institute’s digital collection of thought-provoking analyses and opinions on critical issues is at aspeninstitute.org/journal.

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Join our LinkedIn Group to read more from the Institute at Linkedin.com/company/the-aspen-institute.

Find some of the Institute’s longer publications, including the magazine, at Scribd.com/aspeninstitute.

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PARTING SHOT

Summer at the Aspen Institute—like a double rainbow—can be fleeting. The 2016 summer season occupied a unique moment in history, with America on the brink of a potentially historic election and in the midst of civic upheaval across many parts of the country. What better time to come together in the sublime setting of Aspen and examine the roles we can all play in creating Walter Paepcke’s “good society”? From discussions of how individuals can lead toward justice with Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson, to an open dialogue with Sheri and Howard Schultz on how they create compassion as part of their day-to-day lives, to the pledge to create a truth and reconciliation action group at the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, this summer was eye-opening. It left those of us who work on Institute programs reinvigorated and looking forward to next summer. So while we might not have captured every moment from this season—even with our trusty cell phones—a lot of us certainly tried.

Ideas: The Magazine of the Aspen Institute is published three times each year by the ­A spen Institute and distributed to Institute ­constituents, friends, and supporters.

To receive a copy, call (202) 736-5800. Postmaster: Please send address changes to The Aspen Institute ­Communications Department, Ste. 700, One Dupont Circle NW, Washington, DC 20036.

The opinions and statements expressed by the authors and contributors to this publication do not necessarily reflect opinions or positions of the Aspen Institute, which is a nonpartisan forum. All rights reserved. No material in this publication may be published or copied without the express written consent of the Aspen Institute. ©The Aspen Institute All Rights Reserved

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Dan Bayer

Midsummer Dream

Cutting-Edge Real Estate

Did you know that greater than 50% of home searches are now done on a mobile device? Brittanie Rockhill has seen the changes first hand in the industry and knows how to adapt to ensure your most valuable asset won’t be left behind.

A 10-year real estate vet, she has quickly risen through the ranks as one of the top five highest performing brokers in the valley. From implementing new marketing technology, to finding unlisted properties that you never knew existed, Brittanie will maximize your renting, buying or selling experience. With an unrivaled work ethic, her greatest joy comes from connecting people to this special place.

Superior Quality and Value in Snowmass

$3,995,000

Brittanie Rockhill

Broker Associate

brittanie@compass.com

compass.com 970.925.6063

970.366.0891

compass

compassinc

CasasAspen

BrittanieRockhill.com

compass

E Aagents S SUMM ER 2 0 1 6are independent contractor sales associates and are not employees of Compass. Equal Housing Opportunity. Compass is a licensed real estate broker located at 117 S. Monarch Street, Main Level Aspen, 100 RealI Destate affiliated with Compass CO 81611. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing is from sources deemed reliable, but Compass makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice.

GORSUCH getaway 2016

VA I L

B E AV E R C R E E K PA R K C I T Y SNOWMASS ASPEN

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