In her first public event since leaving Washington this past January, former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum stage on Feb. 26 to discuss the Biden administration, journalism, and democracy. ABC News national political reporter and Spring 2025 IOP Resident Fellow Brittany Shepherd joined Jean-Pierre, as well as Harvard College undergraduate Anoushka Chander ’25.
Jean-Pierre previously served as the regional political director for the White House Office of Political Affairs during former President Barack Obama’s first term and was National Deputy Battleground States Director during his 2012 re-election campaign. Her decision to return to the White House—first as a senior advisor, then as principal deputy secretary, and finally as press secretary—was motivated by a belief in the mission and platform of the incoming Biden administration. “It was really important if I was going to come back into the White House, that I believed in what we were trying to do,” she said. “As president, he has to make incredibly difficult decisions.”
As the first Black and openly queer woman to hold this position, Jean-Pierre began her talk by highlighting the importance of the prior presidential administration. “I would not have made that history or be at the White House in that role if it wasn’t for Joe Biden, who believed in me, who believed I was the best person to help him communicate with the American people,” she said.
“As the White House press secretary…I’m not a policymaker: I am the person who tries to share the message that the president believes is the right thing to do on behalf of the American people.”
Though dedicated to advancing diversity in American governance, Jean-Pierre acknowledged the pressure that came with her trailblazing role.
“I represent many communities, so you don’t want to disappoint those communities,” she explained. “I don’t want to disappoint the president… It is very much a lot of pressure, and you just have to learn how to maneuver and manage through that and still show up; not just for everyone else, but for yourself.”
“When you are the first, you don’t want to be the last,” Jean-Pierre continued, echoing advice from former Vice President Kamala Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris. “You have to overperform, you have to outperform, you have to be better than everybody before you.”
To stay focused, Jean-Pierre avoided reading online comments (calling herself her own harshest critic) and chose to keep the details of her personal life out of the public eye. In a Jan 21. “Vanity Fair” op-ed, she wrote: “I have kept details about my private life under lock and key. Society doesn’t allow women of color to be vulnerable at work.”
She shared with the Forum audience why she wanted the article to be published the day after she left the White House: “For two and a half years in the job, I couldn’t defend myself,” she said. “I couldn’t talk about what I was going through. Because I couldn’t—it wasn’t about me. If I’m the story, there is a problem.” In her op-ed, she shared the emotional toll of her mother’s cancer and coping with it in secret. “I felt that if I shared that, it would be seen as an excuse.” This testimony highlights the “cooker pressure” job Jean-Pierre held. “Some people have said ‘It’s the hardest job in the White House,’” Jean-Pierre reflected.
“Would you say that?” Shepherd asked. “I’m like, ‘Yes, it is, thank you,’” Jean-Pierre replied.
She also explained the process of disconnecting from the news after leaving the White House. After spending years following the media and dedicating hours each day to preparing for press briefs, Jean-Pierre has not watched the news since President Donald Trump’s inauguration. “I have deprogrammed myself so that I can be a civilian again. I used to wake up at 4:30 in the morning. That was my schedule every day for four years,” she explained.
“I thought that when I stepped away from the lectern and the podium, that I would have this adrenaline—like I would need to feed my need to do something—and I have not missed it at all.”
However, regardless of her relation to the news, Jean-Pierre addressed the growing threat to a free press. President Donald Trump’s administration recently announced plans to determine which reporters and organizations would be granted access to the president, effectively taking control of the White House press pool. Jean-Pierre contrasted this new system against her management of the executive branch’s press. “We took questions not just from the mainstream media: we took questions from nontraditional media, right-leaning media. We took questions from them, and we didn’t shy away from that, because it was important to do that,” she explained. “When you take that away, when you do not do that, where is the democracy? Where is the healthy back-and-forth? Where is the accountability?”
“We understood how important it was to have the freedom of the press, even when we didn’t agree with them,” she continued. “It didn’t matter, right? Even when it was contentious in that room, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about making sure that we are exercising something that is really part of who we are as a country. We are also leading the world.”
“We’ve got to continue to fight for democracy. That includes the freedom of the press.”
During the audience Q&A, Jean-Pierre fielded questions about Biden’s final months in office, the messaging strategies of Democrats in the recent presidential election, and the intersection of identity and politics. In one exchange, when asked about the three weeks between the first presidential debate and Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, Jean-Pierre expressed frustration with the response from Democrats toward the former president. “I’ve never seen a party do that in the way that they did, and it was hurtful and sad to see that happening—a firing squad around a person who I believe was a true patriot.”
“Instead of coming together to really be unified in trying to figure out: ‘How do we save our democracy?’ ‘How do we fight back?’ That is what I was seeing. That’s what we decided to do for three weeks,” she said. “It was truly, truly unfortunate. And I think it hurt us more than I think folks realized to have done that.”
Jean-Pierre’s visit to the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum stage allowed an untold perspective of what happens behind the scenes of White House communications, and the difficulties, challenges, and pressures that meet the person who is the face of them. “[The press secretary] office is the connector between the Oval Office and the press briefing room, supposedly equal distance. I connect the president to the press and vice versa,” she explained.
“How amazing that was, and not to forget what I was being able to experience and be a part of, and I got to do this press briefing. Even if it was hard and difficult, I got to be at that lectern, standing there, taking questions, exercising in what is incredibly important, which is democracy, which was being televised across the globe for the most powerful political person in the world.”
Layla Chaaraoui ’26 (laylachaaraoui@college.harvard.edu) is the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Independent.