Megan Schmidt echoes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deepest unspoken desire: to one day have as many Twitter followers as Justin Bieber.

PIZZA @ LEO’S asks the Secretary of State to endorse Leo’s pizza. Perhaps we can expect an editorial from PIZZA@LEOS on why its voting for Obama. Or maybe this account is just a viral marketing campaign started by Aramark, which explains its lack of effectiveness.

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At 1 p.m. today in Gaston Hall, students stood up and enthusiastically greeted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a roar of applause. Dean of the School of Foreign Service Carol Lancaster introduced her to the stage. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard more noise in this place than right now,” she said.

Clinton was visibly pleased by the positive reception from students, saying, “I am a Hoya by marriage.”

Today’s talk revolved around the heavily debated issue of energy diplomacy in the 21st century. Clinton spent the majority of the lecture discussing America’s leading role in the implementation of programs to increase the focus and importance of energy in diplomatic conversations.

“It’s been a top concern of mine,” Clinton said. “America’s objectives for energy security is critical, and the steps that we are taking to try to achieve those objectives are ones I want to briefly outline.”

She added that the very “real threat of climate change” is an ever present concern for policy makers, and the United States has a vested interest in “helping the 1.3 billion people worldwide who don’t have access to energy.”

Of the several initiatives Clinton described, she announced the creation of a new bureau within the State Department devoted to discovering new and creative ways to deal with energy issues. Heading the bureau is Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Carlos Pascual, who was in the audience at Gaston Hall.

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“There is an Afghan proverb: A good year is determined by its spring. I think that is a worthy proverb to keep in mind, and indeed it is a call to action for us to be sure that the spring sets the pace for the kind of good year we hope to see in Afghanistan,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her opening remarks at a State Department event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council.

At the event, University President John J. DeGioia presented an award to Clinton and former First Lady Laura Bush for their contributions to the Council. Also in attendance were Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul and Afghan ambassador to the U.S. Eklil Hakimi.

DeGioia co-chairs the Council with Melanne Verveer, a Georgetown graduate and Ambassador-At-Large for Global Women’s Issues. Originally founded by former President George W. Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in 2002, the Council is dedicated to improving the standard of life for Afghan women and children by reaching out to non-governmental organizations as well as academics and the private sector. Both Sec. Clinton and Mrs. Bush thanked DeGioia yesterday for “providing a home for the Council since 2008.”

Foreign Minister Rassoul catalogued the dramatic improvements in the life of women and children in Afghanistan over the past ten years. According to Rassoul, women made up 40 percent of voters in the 2004 elections. He also mentioned the emergence of “female pilots, army and police officers, and professional martial artists.” DeGioia chuckled.

“These numbers and percent that I just referenced by the example were all a big zero in 2001 and there were no legal guarantees for women rights in Afghanistan,” Rassoul said. He thanked the Council and all members in attendance for their hard work.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose Gaston Hall today as the venue to introduce a wide-ranging set of policies aimed to protect women and institutionalize their voices around the world.

The first-ever National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security lays out five steps for cooperation and action among numerous governmental agencies to increase women’s security in zones of conflict and implement their voices in government and peacekeeping operations around the world. President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order that directed for the plan’s implementation earlier this morning.

Clinton emphasized, “women are not just the victims of war. They are agents of peace.” Accordingly, the first area of the National Action Plan emphasizes partnering with women in vulnerable regions and countries to prevent conflict before it begins. Women’s health and security issues are often “canaries in the coal mine”, said Clinton, and can act as “early warning systems” to not only highlight where women are being oppressed, but where conflict is likely to occur in the future.

When armed conflict does break out, the second prong of the National Action Plan is designed to strengthen and expand efforts to protect women in conflict zones. Clinton said the plan will compel American diplomats and humanitarian workers across the globe to reach out to “political leaders and local influentials” and “poorly trained soldiers and police” in efforts to combat the use of rape as a war tactic and to provide adequate aid services to women.

The US government will also work to reach out to men and boys at all levels of society to end discrimination—including combating tribal and religious-based gender discrimination. Clinton said that many of these efforts will remain sensitive to local norms and cultures, but “you must draw lines in certain areas.” “Beating women is not cultural,” the Secretary said. “It is criminal.”

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Yesterday morning, while most Hoyas were still warm in their beds, others were lining up outside Gaston Hall at the crack of dawn, hoping to get a seat for a speech by one of the nation’s biggest political figures. The speech they were waiting for was by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spoke at 8:30 a.m. for the opening address of the U.S.-India Higher Education Summit.

“Democracy depends on education,” Clinton said of the importance of the summit, which marks the first time that the world’s two largest democracies have come together to discuss what she believes to be the crux of their political systems.

Also present for the summt were Minister of Human Resource Development in India Kapil Sibal, Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake, University President Jack DeGoia, and 300 presidents, chancellors, and other important educational figures from the U.S. and India. Because of all the high-profile guests, only about a hundred of the students who lined up were allowed seats, and those lucky hundred were relegated to the balconies of Gaston.

Clinton began her remarks by welcoming the students in attendance. She took the chance to make a plug for careers in the Foreign Service—considering the sleep that most sacrificed to be there, her message probably did not fall on deaf ears.

She then outlined the United States’s commitment to collaborate on issues of higher education with India.

“Investing in education is in our common interest,” she said.

She continued by saying that education is a “passport to understanding,” along with building international relationships and the importance of “looking outward” in the world that we now inhabit.

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A politician is coming to Georgetown! And no, this time it isn’t one of those drop-ins from the Vice President that we’ve gotten so accustomed to. Instead, as the opening speaker for the U.S./India Higher Education Summit, which takes place at Georgetown on Thursday, October 13, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be speaking in Gaston.

The purpose of the summit, according to its website, is to “provide a platform for government and education leaders from both countries” to discuss their ideas about education and plans for its betterment with a “broad cross-section” of audience members, including academics, administrators, and NGO executives. Other notable speakers Indian Minister of Human Resources Kapil Sibal, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Indian Ambassador to the United States Nirupama Rao, who spoke on campus in September. Ribal will be joining Clinton in making the Summit’s opening remarks.

Rao isn’t the only one of the summit’s speakers who is familiar to the Hilltop. Clinton two years ago to discuss Obama’s human rights agenda, and Duncan was here in May 2010 to discuss the role of parents in education.

After Clinton and Ribal’s opening ceremonies, the summit will continue throughout the day, with events including a roundtable and plenary session in Gaston Hall, and a speaker’s luncheon on Healy Lawn. Duncan will make the closing remarks, again joined by Ribal, in Gaston at 5:00 p.m.

For those who can’t make it out of bed and to Healy at the appropriate time—which we’re sure is going to be very, very early—the summit’s events will be broadcast online from Georgetown’s webcast site.

In his first major foreign policy address in the United States since the formation of Britain’s new coalition government, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs William Hague delivered a powerfully unapologetic speech in Gaston Hall on Wednesday.

Hague spoke about a wide array of security issues, from NATO efforts in Afghanistan to the United Kingdom’s developing partnership with the United States against threats in cyberspace. The Foreign Secretary also expounded upon his long-held beliefs that core liberal values underpin national security.

“[W]e cannot protect our security or influence unless we also champion our own values,” he said. “Unless we stand up for democracy, the rule of law, political freedom and human rights and unless others perceive that we do this, we weaken our security and prosperity over the long term.”

Hague also responded to American military concerns that British budget reductions would affect the nation’s global commitments.

“The decisions we have taken are necessary beyond question and will ensure that Britain will be able to defend all its territories and meet all its commitments,” Hague said. “This should be good news for our allies, and a timely reminder to potential adversaries that Britain still packs a punch on the world stage.”

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They were reading textbooks intently in the stairwell of Gaston Hall before the event, and proofreading their essays as they waited to be let out of the Hall afterwards, but despite being in the heat of finals season, Georgetown students had packed Gaston Hall by 11:15 a.m. to hear Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speak about the Obama Administration’s Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century at noon.

“[It's] one of those quasi-legitimate reasons for taking a break,” Clinton told the audience of students, faculty, administrators, and press.

Before she began her remarks, Clinton praised Georgetown for the thought and research its members contribute to the subjects of human rights, interreligious dialogue, and international relations.

“Thank you for training the next generation of civil rights advocates,” she said, adding that she was grateful that all students, even those who were not focused on these issues, “leave this university with [an appreciation for them] imbued in their hearts and minds.”

Above her, the IHS symbol for Jesus, which caused a stir among some Catholics when University officials covered it up when President Barack Obama spoke in April, was uncovered. (“The State Department agreed to use our standard backdrop for this address,” Director of Media Relations Andy Pino wrote in an e-mail).

Clinton was introduced by the International Relations Club’s Jasdeep Singh (SFS ’10) (or “Jas,” if you’re the Secretary) and University President John DeGioia, who called Clinton “a champion of human dignity and human worth both here and abroad … especially of women and children.”

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Slate published a short piece by one of its interns, a Georgetown senior and Hoya writer named Alex Joseph. Entitled “Confessions of a young Hillary Clinton supporter,” the crux of the piece is that a lot of college students, particularly at Georgetown, support Barack Obama, and that both Clinton and Obama supporters are astonished that a college-age man would support Clinton. Because Joseph supports Clinton, he’s “practically a social pariah.” Quel Horror!

Now, when I decided, after long consideration, to support Barack Obama in the 2008 primary, the first thing I did was purge any Clinton supporters from my social life, just as I did with all conservatives back in High School when I decided I was a liberal. Same thing when the Voice endorsed Obama a few weeks ago: All the Clinton supporters (and yes, there are a few, and a majority are men) were kicked off the paper!

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That’s what New Yorker reporter George Packer would have you think. He uses the experience of our own Barbara Feinman Todd, Associate Dean of Georgetown’s brand-new graduate journalism program and the reason Georgetown even has what anemic undergraduate offerings do exist, to explain how Senator Hillary Clinton has a “habit of undermining herself, when the worst might have been averted by a little candor and grace—a tendency that has reappeared in the past few weeks.”

Feinman Todd, before and while at Georgetown, worked as a freelance journalist and particularly as a ghostwriter, and her most famous job was working with the then-first lady to write “It Takes A Village.” Clinton didn’t thank her in the book’s acknowledgments, causing a minor scandal at the time, but Packer’s sources, apparently editors at Simon & Schuster, claim that Feinman Todd really did a bad job and didn’t deserve the credit. I e-mailed Feinman Todd, who declined to comment specifically due to a confidentiality agreement, except to say that she believed the piece to be inacccurate. I’m waiting to hear back from Packer about the story, but in the meantime you can read the relevant excerpt after the jump and judge for yourself.

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