Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice, two former national security advisors with differing points of view, will discuss current issues on Wednesday, April 11, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. in the College’s Margaret Scott Bundy Field House. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, will moderate the program.
Who: Former national security advisors Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice
When: Wednesday, April 11, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Hamilton College Margaret Scott Bundy Field House
Admission: Free, but tickets will be required
The program combines the longtime Sacerdote Great Names Series with the new Common Ground program for a moderated discussion open to the public. The program is free, but tickets will be required.
Hamilton President David Wippman said the program responds to the sharp and escalating political polarization in the United States and abroad.
“The goal for Common Ground is for the speakers, one a Democrat, the other a Republican, to model the kind of respectful dialogue across political boundaries that should occur not just on college campuses, but in the broader society as well,” Wippman said. “With capable speakers on both sides of a given issue, each willing to acknowledge strengths in the position of the other, we aim to encourage students and other audience members to question their own assumptions and consider carefully the evidence and arguments supporting other viewpoints.
“We are delighted two of America’s leading foreign policy experts will visit Hamilton for what we expect will be an informative and thought-provoking discussion.”
Condoleezza Rice
Members of the Hamilton community can view the event online, but they must login using their My Hamilton username and password.
Condoleezza Rice is currently the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, and a professor of political science at Stanford University. She is also a founding partner of RiceHadleyGates, LLC.
From 2005 to 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first African-American woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s National Security Advisor from January 2001 to 2005, the first woman to hold the position. From 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff.
Rice was Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As professor of political science, Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981. She has authored and co-authored numerous books, including two bestsellers, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011) and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010). Since 2009, Rice has served as a founding partner at RiceHadleyGates, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.
Rice currently serves on the board of Dropbox, an online-storage technology company; C3, an energy software company; and Makena Capital, a private endowment firm. In addition, she is a member of the boards of the George W. Bush Institute, the Commonwealth Club, the Aspen Institute, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
Born in Birmingham, Ala., Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her master's degree from the University of Notre Dame; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Rice is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded 11 honorary doctorates. She currently resides in Stanford, Calif.
Susan E. Rice
Susan E. Rice is currently a distinguished visiting research fellow at the American University School of International Service and a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Previously, she served President Barack Obama as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013. From 2013 to 2017, she led the National Security Council Staff of approximately 400 defense, diplomatic, intelligence, and development experts as national security advisor in the Obama administration.
From 2002 to 2008, Rice was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she conducted research and published widely on U.S. foreign policy, transnational security threats, weak states, global poverty, and development. .
As U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997 to 2001, Rice formulated and implemented U.S. policy toward 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. She was responsible for the management of 43 U.S. embassies and more than 5,000 U.S. and foreign service national employees.
From 1993 to 1997, Rice served as special assistant to the president and senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House, as well as director for international organizations and peacekeeping on the National Security Council staff.
Rice has previously served on numerous boards, including as an outside director of the Bureau of National Affairs (now Bloomberg BNA), as well as Common Sense Media, the Beauvoir School in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. She is currently on the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Rice received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in international relations from New College, Oxford University, England, where she was a Rhodes Scholar and her B.A. in history, with honors, from Stanford University, where she was a Phi Beta Kappa and a Truman Scholar. A native of Washington, D.C., Rice is married to Ian Cameron, and they have two children.
Andrea Mitchell
Andrea Mitchell is NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Report. Since joining NBC News in 1978, Mitchell has covered seven presidential administrations, Capitol Hill, and, since 1994, the State Department and intelligence agencies. She reports regularly on “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt,” “TODAY” and “Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.”
Mitchell’s in-depth journalism from around the world includes all of the Reagan/Gorbachev arms control summits, a series of exclusive interviews with Cuba's late President Fidel Castro, the diplomatic normalization with Havana, the Iran nuclear negotiations, conflicts in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo as well as assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. She has also covered every presidential campaign for NBC News since 1980, most recently as the lead correspondent assigned to Hillary Clinton throughout 2016.
Frequently honored by her peers, Mitchell received the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation in recognition of her devotion to the pursuit of truth and model of bravery for those who follow. She has also received the 2015 MATRIX Award from New York Women in Communications as one of the “Women Who Change the World,” the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and was chosen by the Society for Professional Journalists for their Lifetime Achievement Award.
In September 2005, Mitchell authored Talking Back, a memoir about her experiences as one of the first women to cover the White House, Congress, and foreign policy.
The inaugural Common Ground program at Hamilton took place in October 2017 and featured political strategists David Axelrod and Karl Rove. USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page served as moderator.
