HWS News
29 September 2023 President’s Forum: Congressman Faso and U.S. Secretary Glickman
The President’s Forum Series, in partnership with HWS Votes, will host former Congressional representatives for a discussion on voting, service and democratic engagement.
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, will join the campus community on Monday, Oct. 16 for the President’s Forum Series. Their conversation with President Mark D. Gearan and HWS Votes co-presidents, Samari Brown '24 and Katelyn Oswalt '24, will explore service, democratic engagement and the importance of participating in elections. 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.
Faso and Glickman will spend three days on campus through a partnership between HWS Votes and Congress to Campus, a program developed by former members of Congress to connect with college students and promote civic interest and understanding. The bipartisan program is designed to inspire students to participate in U.S. democracy.
Between Oct. 15 and Oct. 17, Faso and Glickman will join classes focused on public policy, public service, social innovation, and media and information, and participate in a career chat and public speaking class at the Centennial Center for Leadership.
Throughout their careers, Faso and Glickman have been advocates for bipartisanship policy solutions; the nonpartisan Lugar Center ranked Faso as the 13th most bipartisan member of the House of Representatives in 2018, and Glickman served as a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that fosters bipartisanship.
Faso served in the 115th Congress from 2017 to 2019, representing New York’s 19th Congressional District. He was a prime sponsor of legislation, signed into law in October 2018, which cracked down on the illegal shipment of fentanyl into the U.S. from abroad through the U.S. Postal Service. He was the Republican candidate for governor of New York in 2006. Faso served in the New York State Assembly, where he was the Republican minority leader from 1998 to 2002. Since leaving Congress, he has worked as a business consultant while maintaining a private law practice and regularly publishes opinion articles on topics of the day. He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Brockport and Georgetown University Law Center.
Glickman is currently a senior counselor and chair of the International Advisory Board at APCO Worldwide, an advisory and advocacy communications consultancy. He served as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 to 2001, overseeing the administration of farm and conservation programs; meat and poultry food safety and related inspection programs; global trade in food and agriculture; civil rights enforcement impacting employees and other stakeholders; and the U.S. Forest Service. Prior to that, Glickman served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of Kansas’s 4th Congressional District. While in Congress, he was a member of the House Agriculture Committee, including six years as chair of the subcommittee overseeing federal farm policy issues. He was also an active member of the House Judiciary Committee; chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; and a leading congressional expert on general aviation policy. He has since served organizations including the Governance Committee of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and was chair of the Motion Picture Association of America. A distinguished fellow in Global Food and Agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Glickman is an adjunct professor at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, and a J.D. from George Washington University.
HWS Votes is a nonpartisan group of student leaders devoted to voter registration and the continuous education of the Hobart and William Smith and Geneva communities. The group works to instill a sense of civic duty and foster participation in the democratic process. HWS Votes increased midterm voter participation on campus by more than 20 percent between 2014 and 2018 and increased campus voter registration from 74 percent in 2016 to 89 percent in 2020. As a result, the Colleges were recognized among the most engaged campuses in the 2022 ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.
In 2020, HWS Votes partnered with Congress to Campus to enhance civic education by engaging students in dialogue with bipartisan teams of former members of Congress, Congressional staffers and U.S. diplomats.
Established in 2000 by President Gearan, the President’s Forum Series brings a variety of speakers to campus to share their knowledge and ideas with students, faculty and staff, as well as with interested community members.
