Former President Barack Obama showed courage by addressing this political moment in American history during a visit to Hamilton College in Clinton on Thursday, college President Steven Tepper said after the event.
Instead of giving a speech, Obama answered questions from Tepper, the event moderator, the usual format for the college’s Sacerdote Great Names speaker series.
“We tried to ask questions,” Tepper explained, “that we’ve been asking ourselves on this campus.”
Obama thrilled him, he said, when he talked about the need for people with a liberal arts education as artificial intelligence takes over more and more jobs.
The lines to enter the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House on the campus of Hamilton College in Clinton snaked across the campus for hours before a scheduled talk by former President Barack Obama on Thursday, April 3, 2025.
“What these machines can’t yet do, and I don’t anticipate will be able to do, is tell a story or show compassion or be able to inspire a child or build a sense of teamwork and get people to understand and believe in a common mission,” Obama said. “Those kinds of people-based skills, human skills that are unique to us, there will be more need for that than ever.”
Obama’s visit: Big crowd cheers Barack Obama at Hamilton College
And Tepper smiled, he said, when Obama praised Common Ground, another speakers’ series at the college in which two people with opposing views come and engage in civil dialogue. Obama had criticized colleges where students aren’t willing to hear from people with different, even objectionable viewpoints.
He’s right, Tepper said, that campuses need more viewpoint diversity.
Tepper had previously said that the college has wanted to bring Obama to campus for years, but the timing never worked out before. But he said Obama did not tell him why, given how long it’s been since his last public talk, he chose Hamilton College to speak out again.
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He speculated that the combination of an historic college, a reasonable flight from his home, in a rural area without as much “noise” as many other places he could have gone might have contributed to the decision.
Many other members of the Hamilton community who attended the event shared their thoughts on Obama, why they wanted to hear him speak and what they hoped he might talk about.
Once in a lifetime opportunity
“How many opportunities do you get to listen to a president of the United States speak?” asked alumnus Steve Adolfi.
“To have his perspective and insight, I think, is just an absolute gem,” said his friend Frank Tietje, an alumnus who came in from Boston with his wife, Margaret.
“I’m so excited to hear it,” she said. “Any former president would be amazing, but particularly in today’s environment.”
A story worth sharing
Long lines snaked across the Hamilton College campus in Clinton on Thursday afternoon and early evening as 5,400 members of the college community waited to pass through security to get into the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House to hear a talk by former President Barack Obama on April 3, 2025. About 250 people didn’t clear security before the doors were locked when the event began.
Student Qiyaamah Brame’s mother has always held Michelle Obama up to her daughter as a demonstration of what women can accomplish, Brame said. So she couldn’t turn down an opportunity to hear from her husband, said Brame, of Pottsdam.
Her mother, she said, will be waiting for a full report.
Student newspaper embraces moment
“People are quite excited,” said Nikki Greenberg, one of the editors of the student newspaper The Spectator, who covered Obama’s visit for the paper. Faculty, students and staff have been talking about the visit for a long time, starting back when they thought it was just a rumor, she said.
An area by the science building set aside for demonstrations remained empty on Thursday. But Greenberg said some signs criticizing Obama have been put up, anonymously, on campus. The signs’ content suggests they were left by someone or people farther left on the political spectrum than Obama, not by supporters of President Donald Trump, she said.
Her co-editor, Anoushka Aswin, of Princeton, New Jersey, said she hoped Obama would talk about higher education and the challenges it’s facing. It is a big worry among students right now, she reported.
A pivotal figure for current Hamilton students
Former President Barack Obama speaks during a moderated discussion with Hamilton College President Steven Tepper during the college’s Sacerdote Great Names Series event in Scott Field House at Hamilton College on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Clinton, N.Y. (Photo by Nancy L. Ford)
Student Madeline Cerone said she’s excited to hear Obama and proud that her college can bring such influential people to campus.
“I grew up with Obama as our nation’s president and so getting to hear him speak will be a great opportunity for me and my peers,” she said. “I think of him as a classy, respectable politician.”
She’d particularly like to hear him talk about health care and the 2008 recession because her dad, a physical therapist, had his own outpatient clinic during Obama’s presidency. Her dad had to close the clinic, though, partially because of the recession, she said.
Future politicians cherish the moment
The audience of students and other members of the Hamilton College community wait in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House in Clinton, NY for former President Barack Obama to speak. The field house would have had a capacity audience if slow security procedures hadn’t failed to clear 250 people before Obama’s security team insisted on locking the doors when the event began.
“I think it’s always really exciting to have a big name on campus, especially a big political name,” said student Elizabeth Oakes, of Westchester County. “I think it brings a lot of attention to the campus.”
And Oakes is interested in politics and was eager to hear a president speak for the first time, she said.
‘It feels like an honor’
Student Amelia Brown, of Washington, D.C. said Obama is her personal hero. For a long time, she had trouble believing that he was actually coming to their small campus, she said.
“It feels like an honor,” Brown said.
She was hoping he would address the state of the world, especially tariffs and the current administration’s lack of respect for decorum, and where he sees a path forward for the country.
Freshman brings along immigrant parents
“I think it’s intriguing as a student. Obviously, he was a person in a high position of power,” freshman Grace Fischer, of Sandy Hook, Connecticut, said. “So I’m curious to see what his advice is to the next generation.”
The child of Ecuadoran immigrants, freshman Carol Daquilema signed up for tickets as soon as possible so she could bring her parents with her to hear Obama speak.
“I think it’s a really rare opportunity that you can see someone so great in American history,” she said.
She said she’d like it if Obama talked about the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, the end of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and his view of higher education.
‘Diplomacy, wisdom and emphathy’
“It truly is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear from such an inspiring and courageous leader as President Obama, especially in these uncertain and tumultuous political times,” said Anna Gnapp, president of the Student Government Alliance who introduced Obama at the event and got to shake his hand. “He brings with him decades of diplomacy, wisdom and empathy that have shaped a more positive way of life for so many Americans.”
She also praised him for his commitment to values shared by the college: “education access, civic engagement and thoughtful and intentional dialogue.”
His leadership, Gnapp added, inspired her own passion for politics.
A former president with important thoughts in new era
Politics is a bit outside her usual wheelhouse as a biochemistry major, said student Caire Tratnyek, of Short Hills, New Jersey. But she was really interested in hearing his perspective on his time as president and the years since then, she said.
She’d probably want to hear any former president, but Obama was the president of her childhood, which gives him a special place, Tratnyek said.
She came with her mom, Cynthia. “I’d like to hear his perspective post-election,” her mother said. “Things are very different going forward compared to the past.”
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance, she added, to see a former president for someone who does work in politics or have a job in D.C.
‘What presidents should hope to do’
“President Obama really set the bar on what presidents should hope to do,” said Clinton resident William Miller, who came with his wife, Esther.
And Obama’s achievements came, he added, in spite of all the resistance he faced.
Obama one more important connection for Hamilton junior
“All of us are very, very excited to see President Obama. And all of us are braving this weather to see President Obama,” said junior Quinn Liu, of Lawrenceville, New Jersey, referring to a strong wind and the gray clouds overhead.
Having been born in 2004, Liu only saw Obama on television as a kid. Yet he came to what Liu described as a “secluded, elitest, liberal arts college,” a place in a “bubble,” he said.
Liu spent last semester working in a public relations job in Washington, D.C.; he met a deputy secretary of state and all kinds of Hamilton alumni, making for a good experience, he said.
“Seeing President Obama here just adds to it,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Barack Obama visit to Hamilton College: What audience said about visit