Clinton was the latest among dozens of leaders and diplomats to participate in the 60-year-old Ogden Lecture series, which has hosted everyone from His Holiness the Dalai Lama to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger to heads of state including Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Union) and Theresa May (U.K.). Clinton’s visit was co-presented by Brown 2026, an initiative to observe the U.S. semiquincentennial and the role of research universities in advancing democratic societies, and by the University’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. School of International and Public Affairs, which celebrated its launch during a public event at Brown on Oct. 25.

Clinton, who served as the nation’s 67th secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 during the first term of President Barack Obama’s administration, talked about lessons she learned during her career. Among the most consequential: it is critically important to engage across difference with humanity and humility, seeking to understand other people’s perspectives, particularly when they’re in conflict with one’s own beliefs.

“[It’s about] investing in relationships, not treating everything like some kind of transaction…” Clinton said. “Educate your peers. Talk about politics — not in who’s winning and who’s losing — but what’s at stake.”

While dialogue is critical, she conceded that it doesn’t always work — like with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who she described as impossible, dangerous and misogynistic. Despite strained relations between their two countries, she tried to apply diplomacy to cultivate a relationship, and even traveled to his dacha outside of Moscow where they finally made one small connection that she recounted for the audience at Brown.

“We go into an office, then we go into an inner-inner office that has this enormous map of Russia on the wall, and he starts telling me… ‘I’m soon going up to far, far northern Russia to tag polar bears,’” Clinton said. “‘I said, wow sounds pretty exciting.’ And then he says to me, ‘Would your husband like to come with me?’ I said, ‘I don’t know about Bill, but I’d like to come with you.’”

Clinton also offered insights on present-day foreign policy challenges and global conflicts, including the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. She praised the current administration for getting the accord in place, but noted that it will require patient, strategic diplomacy to build the kind of alliances needed for longer-term solutions in the Middle East. And she noted the United States’ increasingly strained relations with many of its allies.

“We are stronger in the United States when we are nurturing and preserving alliances, when we have friends, when we work to isolate and diminish adversaries — but if we don't know what our policies are literally from week to week, that gives a lot of room for maneuver by people who don’t wish us well,” Clinton said. “It also causes others who have historically been our friends and allies to begin… hedging their bets about what's going to happen next.”

Clinton encouraged women to consider careers in the public arena while understanding that online attacks and sexism adversely impact women, advising them to “take criticism seriously, but not personally.” She warned the audience — which included many Brown students and young alumni — of the unprecedented threats to free and fair elections from calculating, widespread disinformation campaigns, originating both domestically and from abroad.

“This is one of the biggest and most important issues we face, and we are certainly not doing near enough,” Clinton said. “[Disinformation] is the successor to propaganda… a lot of the foreign disinformation is meant to further divide Americans, which it has done a pretty good job of accomplishing.”

Clinton conceded that during her 2016 presidential campaign, she misunderstood the power of social media to spread misinformation, deploying what turned out to be an out-of-date digital strategy that impacted the election result. She also urged more transparency from technology companies about algorithms and the way that users’ data is tracked and used to target them with disinformation and excessive marketing.

“The election is a big piece of this because without facts, evidence and truth, you can’t have trust, you can’t make decisions in any setting that are going to be rooted in reality, but certainly in elections,” Clinton said. “It’s very difficult to imagine having an election where voters are being asked to make decisions when there's no basis in fact for what they're being asked to choose between.”

Echoing the ethos of efforts at Brown like the Discovery Through Dialogue project and Brown Votes, Clinton called on colleges and universities to cultivate participation in the nation’s democratic process among students, faculty and staff. She encouraged forums where people of differing points of view debate issues, whether health care costs or the presence of National Guard troops in U.S. cities.

“Universities should be incubators of citizenship and create every opportunity possible for everyone — but particularly for students — to understand the stakes, to be exposed to good debating that’s based on facts, even if they are disagreeing, and then of course to get registered and turn out to vote,” Clinton said. “For me, it is about the day-to-day challenges that Americans face, but it’s also about this 250th anniversary that’s coming up where we are the longest-surviving democracy — and where we owe so much to those that came before us — and part of what we owe is to make sure that we don’t lose it.”

On Wednesday, Nov. 5, just six days after Clinton’s visit, Brown will welcome 66th U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served in the role from 2005 to 2009 during the second term of President George W. Bush’s administration, for the University’s 105th Ogden Lecture.