Sept. 12, 2025/Midnight
Erie, PA.— On Tuesday night, people from all over Erie and surrounding areas packed the Erie Insurance Arena to have a conversation with the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama.
In the event, A Conversation with Barack Obama, put on by The Jefferson Education Society as part of their Global Summit XVII speaker series, the former president sat down with the night’s moderator, Steve Scully, to give updates on his life post White House and discuss hot button topics, such as the death of political commentator, Charlie Kirk, current U.S. immigration policies, the potential implications of artificial intelligence, deployment of the National Guard in D.C., and the injustices happening in Gaza.
“I think at a moment like this, when tensions are high, the job of the president is to bring us together,” says Obama.
The event had a few hecklers from the crowd who pressed Obama to talk about the current state of Gaza. The former president directly addressed the situation in Gaza by saying he condemns the actions of both the perpetrators of the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the reaction to that attack by “those who are now withholding food and medicine,” as Obama described.
Since the end of his second term back in 2017, Obama said he has mainly been working on writing his memoir, which he is planning to finish the second volume of by the end of this year.The contents of the memoir will connect the struggles of his presidency with the current state of the world.
“When we don’t see people as people, bad things happen,” Obama continues saying, “When we dehumanize people bad things happen,”
He is also working in the completion of his presidential library, called The Obama Presidential Center located in Chicago. Obama says construction for the center has taken longer than anticipated as they broke ground during the COVID–19 pandemic. According to The Barack Obama Foundation website the center is set to open spring 2026.
Obama, known as the United States’ “first digital president,” also addressed the rapid progression of AI and how he views the current status of social media. Although there are many benefits to this technology, Obama warns AI will be more disruptive than social media and that it will happen over a shorter span of time.
Obama concluded the event on a lighter note, by encouraging the youth not to be afraid to stand up for what they believe in, to “develop of code” which to live by. He shared a saying he and former First Lady Michelle Obama would share with their own children, “Be kind and be useful.”
