Hamilton College will open this year’s Common Ground (https://hamilton.edu/commonground) series with a conversation between U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Rep. (R-PA) G.T. Thompson, chair of the House Committee on Agriculture.

Moderated by award-winning, multilingual global journalist Edvige Jean-François, this event will offer a discussion on bipartisanship as well as the two speakers’ respective careers in U.S. agriculture policy and their reflections upon it.

Secretary Tom Vilsack, a 1972 graduate of Hamilton College, was confirmed as the United States Secretary of Agriculture in Feb. 2021, a return to the position after serving as secretary from 2009-2017 under the Obama administration.

Congressman G.T. Thompson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 and represents Pennsylvania’s 15th district. He is the chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, and has been a member for more than a decade.

During her more than 20 years as a journalist and television producer, moderator Edvige Jean-François, held positions at ABC News in New York, Associated Press Television News in Washington, D.C., and CNN International in Atlanta. Last year, she was appointed the inaugural executive director of the Center for Studies on Africa and Its Diaspora at Georgia State University’s College of Arts and Sciences in Atlanta. Also a graduate of Hamilton, Jean-François was recently elected to the Hamilton College Board of Trustees.