A brief insight into our astounding conference a couple of weeks ago
Who would’ve thought that some of America’s brightest diplomats, journalists, and scholars would all meet up one week in March in southern Indiana? Not for a major summit, caucus, or some other fancy thing that important people do, but to talk to a bunch of tired college students.
What I’m talking about, of course, is the America’s Role in the World conference. This unique, two-day event that Hamilton Lugar has put on annually for the past four years comprises seven different sessions and brings in some of the leading experts in their field right here to little Bloomington, Indiana.
As the mastermind behind Hamilton Lugar’s Instagram account (yes, we do have an Instagram; it’s @hamiltonlugar), I got to promote the event and help build some hype around it. During my time looking through our fliers, pictures from past conferences, and impressive bios of this year’s panelists, I got to wondering, “Just how great is this conference, really?” You see, Hamilton Lugar may have thrown this shindig for a few years now, but this was my first year going, and let me say, it blew my expectations out of the water.
During the two days of the conference, I got to attend each of the sessions, personally congratulate our editorial contest winner, Tyler Combs, and record some one-on-one interviews with the outstanding, eager students I got to meet. On top of that, I had the pleasure to have lunch and discuss foreign policy with our incredible dean, Ambassador Lee Feinstein, and some of our distinguished guests: FOX News correspondent, Marie Harf, Nexus Fund executive, Sally Smith, and our keynote speaker, former secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz (whom you can read about in my most recent blog).
Now, since I’m such a great student, I try to go to see guest speakers whenever I can. These have included journalists, diplomats, industry leaders, policy makers, comedians, and the list goes on. But, no conference or guest speaker I’ve ever attended can compare to what I saw a couple weeks courtesy of Hamilton Lugar.
I mean, the energy alone was something else entirely, and you’d need to see it to believe it. The panelists were excited to share their work and their passion with the attendees, of course, but I’m mainly talking about the students. I’m confident that you’d have to look pretty damn hard for the same cocktail of knowledge, determination and passion that you could find in each student I saw at the conference.
It didn’t matter whether the discussion was global hate speech, cyber security, free trade or nuclear arms; each student came well-equipped with their questions, lessons from their amazing HLS classes, and a desire to explore the world more deeply. The panelists were terrific for sure, and I hope they all continue to come back to educate future generations of Hoosiers, but I know whole-heartedly that one of these days, the speakers up on stage will be the students at the conference who were sitting next to me.
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