Following the announcement of Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice as this year’s Great Names speakers, the College has chosen Andrea Mitchell of NBC to moderate the debate.
Mitchell is the chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of MSNBC’s
Andrea Mitchell Report
s. Since joining
NBC News
in 1978, Mitchell has covered seven presidents, Capitol Hill, and, since 1994, has focused on the U.S. State Department and intelligence agencies. She regularly appears on “
NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt
,” “
TODAY
”, and “
Meet the Press with Chuck Todd
.”
Mitchell has previously reported on the arms control summits held by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Head of State Mikhail Gorbachev, the diplomatic normalization with Cuba, the Iran nuclear negotiations, and conflicts in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, along with assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. She also held a series of exclusive interviews with Cuba’s late President Fidel Castro. In reference to American politics, Mitchell has covered every U.S. presidential campaign for
NBC News
since 1980, most recently as the lead correspondent on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Mitchell has received numerous awards, including the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation, the 2015 MATRIX Award from New York Women in Communications as one of the “Women Who Change the World,” and the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from the John F. Kennedy School of Government; she was also chosen by the Society for Professional Journalists for their Lifetime Achievement Award.
“What was already going to be a thought-provoking program will be enhanced significantly by having a professional journalist serve as moderator,” said Michael Debraggio, Hamilton’s Associate Vice President for Communications.
“And who better to facilitate a discussion featuring two foreign policy experts than Andrea Mitchell, a well-known, award-winning foreign affairs correspondent.”
The April 11 program combines the College’s Sacerdote Great Names Series with the new Common Ground program. According to President David Wippman, the initiation of the program comes in response to the sharp and escalating political polarization at home and abroad.
“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 program is free and open to the public, although tickets are required. Information about tickets will be released in March.
