Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Leading Questions

The President’s Forum Series cultivates campus dialogue.

Is there a conservative political tradition in America? What does the country’s financial future look like? How can politicians work across the aisle more effectively? After achieving climate neutrality, what’s next for sustainability at HWS — and what can the world learn?

At this year’s President’s Forum events, the HWS community confronted pressing challenges and big questions in conversation with guest experts.

Going from Zero
This spring, a PFS event explored HWS’ progress toward climate neutrality. Moderated by President Mark D. Gearan, the panel featured the early architects of sustainability at HWS: Clancy Brown ’09, a science educator who in 2006 prompted HWS to become a charter member of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment; Jamie Landi ’08, HWS’ first sustainability manager and now a partner at Mohawk Lifts LLC; and Professor Tom Drennen, the Stine Family Chair of Management and Entrepreneurship, who has led the campus’s climate neutrality work for the past 20 years.

Exploring the question of a greener future, the event’s second half included Dan Gadigian ’11, a vice president of ESG and sustainability at Cerberus Capital Management; Jamey Mulligan ’07, a senior scientist and technical and strategy lead on Amazon’s carbon neutralization team; and Erin Kluge ’23, M.S.M. ’24 and Emilyn Reed ’23, M.S.M. ’24, who helped Drennen compile comprehensive reports on HWS’ greenhouse gas inventory and sustainability efforts.

In a time “with so many challenges, so many issues…it’s easy to get concerned that nothing can ever change,” President Gearan said. “I would offer tonight as an example that things can and do change.”

Getting Out the Vote
As HWS Votes celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024, the non-partisan, student-led organization was busy registering voters and educating campus ahead of this fall’s elections. HWS Votes co-presidents Samari Brown ’24 and Katelyn Oswalt ’24 helped coordinate and moderate the PFS conversation with former U.S. Rep. John J. Faso (R-NY) and former U.S. Rep. Dan Glickman (D-KS), who also served as Secretary of Agriculture. The former lawmakers visited campus through a partnership with Congress to Campus, a program developed by former U.S. representatives to connect with students and advance civic interest and understanding.

Brown, a student Trustee, and Oswalt were each named to the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge Student Voting Honor Roll, a national recognition of student leaders who “have gone above and beyond to advance nonpartisan student voter registration, education and turnout efforts.” Thanks to their work, HWS was named one of the Most Engaged Campuses for College Student Voting.

When students return to campus this fall, they can delve deeper into the issues, candidates and policies at play in 2024 with Professor of Politics DeWayne Lucas and President Gearan, who are teaching a course focused on the upcoming elections.

The State of the Economy
Kicking off the HWS Volunteer Leadership Summit in April, President of UBS Investment Bank Rob Karofsky ’89 shared insights from his decades of leadership in the financial services industry. The conversation touched on the dynamic between populist politics and the economy, the Main Street– Wall Street relationship, cryptocurrency and the importance of “human capital” in finance.

“Culture is everything,” said Karofsky, head of one of the world’s largest multinational investment banks. He noted that culture is “how you execute the strategy” and pointed to the multitude of missed opportunities “if you’re not inclusive, if you’re not collaborating, if you’re not a good teammate, if you’re not supportive.... Developing and nurturing mentorships, sponsorships, promoting diversity — all of these things are so critical.”

Karofsky also fielded questions from students and reflected on the lingering impact of his education at HWS, which he called “an incredible journey…it was life changing.”

New Possibilities
“I think we are actually in a time when there’s perhaps a new openness to different possibilities,” said Patrick Deneen, a professor at Notre Dame University and influential author shaping contemporary conservative political thought. Deneen argued a populist conservatism might be the antidote to the sociopolitical problems that the past several decades have put into sharp relief. The question going forward is: “Are the people revolutionary, or are they conservative? And if that’s the terms of our debate, then we’re in for an interesting ride.”