Dartmouth Events

Join us for "Foreign Policy, the Obama Administration, and the World as It Is," a 2024 Election Speaker Series featuring writer, political commentator, and national security analyst Ben Rhodes. The conversation will explore the impact of current foreign policy on the 2024 Election, and the potential impact of 2024 Election results on American foreign policy. The conversation will be moderated by William Wohlforth, Professor of Government; Daniel Webster Professor; Faculty Director, Dartmouth Institute for Global Security; Faculty Coordinator, Rosenwald Fellows Program in US Foreign Policy and International Security.

Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, and The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World; a contributor for MSNBC; a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama; and chair of National Security Action, which he co-founded with Jake Sullivan in 2018. From 2009-2017, Ben served as a speechwriter and Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. In that capacity, he participated in all of President Obama’s key decisions, oversaw the President’s national security communications and public diplomacy, and led the secret negotiations with the Cuban government that resulted in the effort to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. His work has also been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. A native New Yorker, Ben has a B.A. from Rice University and an M.F.A from New York University.

Rhodes’s most recent book is the bestseller After the Fall, which The New York Journal of Books called “vital reading for Americans and people anywhere who seek to understand what is happening ‘after the fall’ of the global system created by the United States.” At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned; he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping; and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance.

This event is part of the 2024 Election Speaker Series, co-sponsored by the Rockefeller Center and Dartmouth Dialogues. The Speaker Series is part of the Fall 2024 term Government and Public Policy Course, "The 2024 Election," taught by Professor Russell Muirhead, Professor Herschel Nachlis, and Professor William Wohlforth.

Registration is highly encouraged for both in-person and virtual attendance.

To register for the program, visit:http://dartgo.org/24Rhodes.