Yesterday, the courtyard at the NYU School of Law was filled to capacity with students, members of the press and the United States Secret Service for Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign speech.

His address focused on the success of the Obama administration’s foreign policy and laid out future foreign policy plans, while drawing a sharp contrast between Obama’s policies and the proposed policies of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney.

Zachary B. Taylor, president of the NYU College Democrats and a CAS senior, said Biden was formally invited as a guestspeaker when the Obama-Biden campaign reached out to the club last week. According to the campaign, NYU was chosen because of its national status as a premier academic institution.

“It’s been a crazy week,” Taylor said. “Everything happened in a very short time. Our conversations happened in the space of a few minutes rather than a few weeks.”

Biden said Americans must compare Obama’s record with Romney’s rhetoric. He dismissed Romney’s criticisms by systematically relaying the key successes of Obama’s foreign policy, from the withdrawal of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to the long-awaited killing of Osama bin Laden.

“If you’re looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how Obama has handled what we inherited, it would be this: Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive,” Biden said.

In his speech, Biden framed the victories the president has won. He also discounted Romney’s remarks against Obama’s foreign policy.

“Romney wants to take us back to the past we’ve worked so hard to move beyond,” Biden said. “He is looking through the glass of a rear-view window.”

Biden cited Romney’s references to Russia as America’s primary geopolitical threat and the governor’s calls to engage aggressively with Iran. Biden then pointed to the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts and the need for “global burden-sharing.”

Steinhardt senior Colleen Hagerty said she found Biden’s speech refreshing.

“It was nice to hear something other than the rhetoric that young voters have been getting lately about student loans,” Hagerty said. “Biden took us seriously, he addressed us on an issue that really is important to us [students.] Foreign policy remarks often aren’t directed at younger voters but it is an issue we really care about.”

CAS sophomore Danielle Herring left the talk convinced that she will be voting for Obama in November.

“I was expecting more of a speech on foreign policy in general, more of an overview on what America is planning on doing in the future,” Herring said. “But I think it did a good job of explaining our foreign policy and what America has done in the last four years.”

Kayla Epstein is a contributing writer. Email her at [email protected].