Describing the current political era as a "decisive moment in the life of this country," former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg urged young people in a Feb. 20 talk at Dartmouth to pursue public service despite its professional, familial, and financial challenges.
If the arc of the American republic bends toward a "multiracial democracy, the likes of which the world never saw until we delivered it, wouldn't you like to be part of that even if it means some tough choices when you're graduating from college?" Buttigieg asked the students in the audience of 675 in Spaulding Auditorium, with 1,200 people viewing online.
Buttigieg, a former mayor of his hometown of South Bend, Ind., and 2020 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was on campus as part of the Law and Democracy: The United States at 250 lecture series, co-sponsored by Dartmouth Dialogues and the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. He was also named the Rockefeller Center's 2025-26 Class of 1930 Fellow.
John Carey, interim dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of government; Herschel Nachlis, senior associate director and senior policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center and research assistant professor of government; and Lucia Vitali '26, executive director of Dartmouth Democrats, moderated the event.
Despite a snowstorm that evening, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who ran for president in 2020, drew a crowd of 675 in his Feb. 20 talk at Dartmouth, with another 1,200 people watching online. (Photo By Kata Sasvari)
In a wide-ranging discussion, Buttigieg addressed the future of electric vehicles; his tenure as transportation secretary under President Joe Biden; the advent of the widespread use of AI; whether Biden should have run for a second term; and his concern that the Democratic Party suffers from an excess of nostalgia for previous Democratic presidential administrations, leading candidates to run for office as if it were still the 1990s or the late-2000s. Buttigieg declined to answer whether he would run for the Democratic nomination in 2028.
In response to a question from Nachlis about whether the Democratic Party should run culturally conservative but economically progressive campaigns for office, Buttigieg said that 60% to 70% of Americans agree with the Democrats on numerous economic and social issues, such as the role of government in health care, the need for more affordable child care, the right of women to decide whether to have an abortion, and the importance of affordable housing.
"I do feel like we're being offered a false choice sometimes, as if favoring kitchen table issues, which I think we should be talking about all the time, somehow means backpedaling on equality," Buttigieg said. Look at the 2015 Supreme Court decision affirming the constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, which in a relatively short 10 years, went from being thought unlikely to possible, he said.
He added, however, that "the most ideologically radical candidate rarely prevails in Democratic primaries. They can make a big difference, but they rarely win."
On contested social issues, he said later, it is better to beckon people to the "right side of history" than to drag them.
Vitali asked whether the trend of modern presidents claiming ever-greater executive power—and its corollary, a weakened Congress—will continue.
Calling Congress "asleep at the switch," Buttigieg said that lawmakers should reassert the powers assigned them in the U.S. Constitution. Despite some defections from President Donald Trump's base on the issues of tariffs and releasing the Epstein files, Congress still looks weak by comparison with the largely unfettered dominance that Trump has shown as chief executive, Buttigieg said.
The U.S. Congress must "confront money in politics, gerrymandering, and the other things that pervert (its) ability to be a truly representative body for the American people," Buttigieg said, adding that a stronger Congress signals "we are less likely to have an out-of-control presidency."
Citing the Trump administration's use of federal agents to detain both documented and undocumented immigrants across the country, attempt to politicize the American military, and threats to free speech, Buttigieg said "the thing that keeps you safest from that, it turns out, is not your gun but your vote," one of several times he drew applause from the audience.
After a question from Nachlis, Buttigieg addressed the global rise in antisemitism, although he argued that displays of antisemitism on the American left are not equivalent to displays of antisemitism on the American right.
On October 8, 2023—one day after the Hamas attacks on Israel but before any Israeli military response—there were "celebrations and repetitions of Hamas slogans and language on U.S. soil," Buttigieg said.
That does not excuse, he said, the current administration's deployment of charges of antisemitism as a "cudgel to browbeat universities to conform to the political whims of this president," or the fact that Trump, between terms, invited a Holocaust denier to dinner, Buttigieg said.
A "Democratic national leader understands how to vigorously condemn antisemitism and does so in various ways," Buttigieg said, adding that doing so is not irreconcilable with expressing solidarity with the suffering of the Palestinian people or criticizing the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and beyond.
Pete Buttigieg meets with a group of students during his visit to Dartmouth on Feb. 20. (Photo By Kata Sasvari)
The issues facing the U.S. are weighty, Buttigieg said. How will American technology and manufacturing respond to the competition from China? What does it mean to be an American? What is the role of the American education system in training both workers and citizens? How will artificial intelligence affect the social contract between the employed and the employers?
In times of uncertainty, the liberal arts are more important than ever, Buttigieg said, joking that he wasn't just playing to the Dartmouth crowd. "The liberal arts give us terms to understand what we're up against at a moment like this," he said.
To Vitali's question about giving advice to college graduates contemplating public service despite barriers of student loan debt and limited job openings, Buttigieg said, "Yes. First of all, go for it. We need you."
The private sector is more lucrative but, Buttigieg said, "There's something you can get in terms of meaning from being involved in public service—and there's nothing like it. Part of that is because it's important, and part of it is because it is hard. It matters."
The upheaval the country is experiencing also makes it a fascinating period, Buttigieg said. "The same things that make this a hard time to be an American are the things that make this an important time to be an American. The only healthy future for this country is one where everybody on both sides of the aisle can agree, in 20 years, that we can never go back to where we are right now in the leadership of this country," he said.
Thirty years from now, Buttigieg added, today's children will be tomorrow's adults in a "world decided and shaped by what's going on right this minute. If we get it right, if you get it right, then we get to tell people, 'Yeah, I was there in the 2020s and it was scary and it was crazy but we stepped up. … We stepped up and made sure that rights would continue and freedoms would expand, rather than the other way around.'"
After the talk, JJ Dega '26, senior class president and a delegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, said, "What Buttigieg talked about with building the next generation is a critical message that the Democrats have to take in. The country needs to be re-founded again."
"It's important we're having conversations like this. It's important to have political hope," said Praburaman Mohan, who is studying toward a master's in public health at the Geisel School of Medicine.
Keely Ayres, who drove in from Canaan, N.H., in bad weather to hear Buttigieg, had seen him in his 2020 campaign swing through the state. Her earlier impressions of him still held up, she said: "He's real; he doesn't talk over you or down to you. He's succinct, approachable, and so level-headed."
The program was co-sponsored by the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society, the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Ethics Institute, and the Office of the Associate Dean for the Social Sciences.