On Oct. 17, the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and Dartmouth Dialogues co-hosted writer and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting Ben Rhodes for a talk titled “Foreign Policy, the Obama Administration and the World as It Is.” Approximately 170 people attended the event — which was part of the College’s 2024 Election Speaker Series — in person, and another 50 watched the livestream on YouTube.
During the event, Rhodes discussed his career in government and reflected on domestic and foreign issues such as political engagement among young people, foreign policy under former President Donald Trump and the Israel-Hamas war.
In an interview with The Dartmouth prior to the event, Rhodes said he likes to visit college campuses to learn about what “younger demographics” find important. Rhodes added that he believes there is an “unhealthy gap” between politics and “how much agency young people feel like they have.”
“If I was in college in this day and age, I would feel incredibly detached from what is happening in politics,” he said. “I think [politics have] gotten too divorced from young people’s experiences, concerns, where they are, what they’re consuming.”
Event moderator and government professor William Wohlforth opened the event by asking Rhodes why he chose to “walk away from power” when he left Washington D.C. in 2017, after the end of former President Barack Obama’s second term in office.
Rhodes said he thought about “who [he] wanted to be in the world” after the end of Obama’s presidency. After Obama left the White House, Rhodes began work as a political commentator as a co-host on Crooked Media’s “Pod Save the World” and regular contributor to MSNBC and NBC News.
“I never wanted to feel like I was living because there was some job that I wanted to do,” Rhodes said. “I wanted to just follow what I’m interested in, what I’m curious about — that’s more who I am.”
However, Rhodes said leaving Washington D.C. and watching “someone like Trump come in and tear down all that you have been working on” was a “traumatic experience.” Micheal Anton replaced Rhodes in the White House when former President Donald Trump assumed the presidency.
Wohlforth asked Rhodes what he thought about the country’s foreign policy under Trump. Rhodes said while both the Trump and Obama administrations agreed about the problems in foreign policy — such as “forever wars”— they chose to handle those problems differently.
“With Trump, the critique doesn’t necessarily lead to the prescriptions I would choose,” Rhodes said. “A lot of the time, [his policies] don’t lead to a logical conclusion.”
The conversation then shifted to a discussion about domestic policy decisions.
“I’m confident enough in America,” he said. “We ultimately can come out on the back end of this period of global turbulence in a strong position.”
Following the moderated discussion, the floor was opened for an audience Q&A.
An attendee asked Rhodes how he felt about a recent “announcement” from the Biden administration stating that there will be “consequences” if Israel does not “let more aid into Gaza in the next 30 days.”
Rhodes said he does not believe Israel has any reason to take “anything that [the Biden] administration says seriously” because there has “never been a single consequence to anything [Israel has] done.”
“From the beginning of the conflict, every single time Biden says, ‘Don’t do this,’ [Israel] do[es] it and nothing happens,” he said.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Rhodes said he was “broadly sympathetic to the idea that people want to protest” for the Palestinian cause.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth after the event, government professor Herschel Nachlis wrote that it was “thrilling” to have Rhodes visit the College.
Nachlis added that Rhodes did “three things” during the talk “that are hard to do on their own.” First, he explained how policy decisions are made; second, he “candidly” shared his views on certain policy decisions and third, he showed the audience why engagement in politics can be “inspiring and exhilarating,” Nachlis wrote.
Attendee Prescott Herzog ’25 said he thought it was “fantastic that we had someone like Ben Rhodes come to campus.”
“[He is] someone who was at the top of the foreign policy decision making within the United States,” he said. “[It was] very relevant to hear him talk.”
