Andrea Mitchell, NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, will moderate the discussion between two foreign policy experts and former national security advisors, Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice, at Hamilton College on Wednesday, April 11. The program is free and open to the public, although tickets are required. Tickets will be available to the public on Tuesday, March 13.
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.”
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
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 April 11 program at Hamilton combines the College’s longtime Sacerdote Great Names Series with the new Common Ground program. Hamilton President David Wippman said the program responds to the sharp and escalating political polarization in the United States and abroad.
Members of the Hamilton community can view the event online, but they must login using their My Hamilton username and password.
“The goal 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.”
The inaugural program in this series featured former White House advisors David Axelrod and Karl Rove. USA Today Washington D.C. Bureau Chief Susan Page was the moderator.
Condoleezza Rice
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 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.
Susan Rice
Susan Rice 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. 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. She is also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.
