I Thought Taking A Class Taught By Hillary Clinton Would Be Empowering. I Was Wrong.

Hillary Clinton (left) and Keren Yarhi-Milo on the first day of their “Inside the Situation Room” course at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in September. Courtesy of Cate Twining-Ward

From my aisle seat, I was well positioned to access the lecture microphone. Just beyond it stood Hillary Clinton. It’s too bad I was only able to ask her one question the entire semester I spent in her course.

Last fall I learned that Clinton would be teaching a class at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. I did not hesitate to apply — and neither did 1,200 other students.

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My application essays were impassioned. I was certain Clinton’s five decades of public service would enrich my own leadership ambitions. I had imagined that spending two hours each week with a former senator, secretary of state, first lady and presidential nominee would embolden me in new ways. Unfortunately, my idealistic hopes got the best of me.

Clinton’s course, titled “Inside the Situation Room” and co-taught with SIPA’s Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo, promised students an opportunity to understand the key factors that underpin a nation’s most crucial decisions.

“But what is her class really like?” my peers often asked me.

Well, the thing is, it wasn’t really a class — it was a production.

On my first day, I expected to enter a classroom with 30 other students, which would be typical of classes in my program. Instead, I approached a swarm of several hundred. Next to them was a sea of cameras belonging to journalists from various major outlets. Just to their right, I spotted Secret Service personnel whispering into their radios. It was only 11:30 a.m. — our lecture didn’t begin until 2:10 p.m.

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Perhaps the enormous class size was to be expected. It was, arguably, an equitable decision made to meet the high demand from students across a diversity of programs, all of whom