Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 7, 2003|Volume 32, Number 10

Former President Bill Clinton talks to students at a reception in Woodbridge Hall prior to his speech. He is shown here flanked by Yale President Richard C. Levin and Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, which sponsored Clinton's lecture.

Clinton asserts 'shared responsibilities' among nations are key to creating a 'genuine global community'

Former President Bill Clinton may not have laid out a road map for living in a world where "we cannot escape each other," but he did provide direction for American foreign policy during a lecture on campus on Oct. 31.

His speech before a capacity audience at Woolsey Hall was sponsored by the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. It also coincided with his 30th Law School reunion.

Clinton said he preferred the word "interdependence" to "globalization" to describe the new world order. Interdependence, he noted, "makes it clear that the nature of the world today and our connections are far more than economic."

The consequences of this interdependence among nations are both negative and positive, he said.

Surveying the audience, he observed that ethnic and cultural diversity in the Yale community reflects one of the positive aspects of globalization. "You would not have seen that 30 years ago," he remarked of the wide cross section of nations represented in Woolsey.

He also pointed to the tremendous increase in trade and productivity during his administration that resulted from the information technology revolution and the openness of America's borders. On the other hand, he noted, open borders and the ubiquity of Internet access allowed terrorist networks like Al Qaeda to flourish.

The situation in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians represents the failure to achieve interdependence most acutely, Clinton said, adding that Yassar Arafat's walking away from the 1994 Peace Agreement was a "colossal mistake."

In laying out his ground rules for maximizing the benefits of globalization, while avoiding its negative consequences, Clinton said all Americans and people residing in America should ask themselves three questions: "What is your vision of the 21st century?" "How do we achieve that end?" And: "What role should America play in bringing about positive changes?"

"The great mission of the 21st-century world is to make it a genuine global community," Clinton asserted. "Shared responsibilities, shared benefits and shared values" are the three components of a global community, he said.

He explained that by "shared responsibilities," he meant cooperative efforts to achieve security against terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, organized crime and illegal drugs. Specifically, he said, it is incumbent on members of the global community to seek peace in the Middle East, to encourage dialogue between India and Pakistan, to curb the threat of nuclear proliferation in North Korea and to ensure in post-war Iraq "a successful transition to a democratic self-government."

He also emphasized the need to develop global institutions to establish and enforce agreed standards of justice and fairness. The United States has the military power to win any war independently, but "you can't build the peace all by yourself," he said to thunderous applause.

"We have to bring economic opportunity to the 50% of the global population that lives on $2 a day or less," he said.

Citing the statistic that one billion people in the world are completely illiterate, Clinton noted that education was one of the shared responsibilities that should exist among interdependent nations. The former president also pointed to a host of other areas where nations need to share global duties, from protecting the environment and seeking alternative energy sources to providing medicine and medical care to prevent and cure disease.

In fact, Clinton admonished, the United States' failure to act interdependently is dangerous. He told a story about an African woman who went running after him as he was leaving Ghana on a recent trip. The woman told him he had to take a shirt that she had made in a factory, built through an American trade bill, now employing 400 women. She wanted him to have the shirt because she was so grateful for having a job, she said. Clinton keeps the shirt in a prominent place in his home, he said. "Every time I look at that shirt, it reminds me that that woman is not mad at me, or you, or the United States."

"We are drastically under-investing in building a world with more partners and fewer terrorists," Clinton lamented.

Acknowledging the issue of shared values in a world where ethnic and religious conflicts threaten peace locally and globally every day, Clinton argued that there are simple values common to all humanity that transcend religious differences: "Everyone counts, everyone deserves a chance, everyone has a responsible role to play, competition is good but we all do better when we work together. ... [Those] must become the globe's dominant values across all the lines of race and religion. The only thing you have to give up to embrace that value is that you don't have the absolute truth."

-- By Dorie Baker

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Harold Koh is appointed as next Law School dean

Clinton asserts 'shared responsibilities' among nations . . .

'Women Mentoring Women' program launched

Budget plans for the coming year

Event to explore ethics of media coverage in wartime

Colleges' sustainable dining initiatives are focus of conference

Women astronauts will talk about their 'Place in Space'

Computer scientists to develop ways to protect privacy online

Exhibit looks at Robert Damora's '70 Years of Total Architecture'

Yale Rep show explores collision of politics and culture in America

Her native landscape inspires Irish writer's 'desperate themes'

DeStefano hopes 'game plan' will bring him to Olympics

Study: Recovery rates from childhood leukemia . . .

Memory-enhancing drugs may actually worsen . . .

Dr. Robert Arnstein, counselor to generations of students, dies

World-renowned oncologist Dr. Paul Calabresi passes away

Rare form of obsessive compulsive disorder linked to gene mutation

Older patients may not be prepared to receive diagnosis, study says

Symposium will examine 'American Literary Globalism' . . .

Koerner Center to showcase emeritus faculty member's works

Researchers sequence and analyze the DNA of an ancient parasite

Two books on slavery are winners of the Douglass Prize

United Way Campaign nears halfway mark in meeting its goal

Yale Books in Brief

Campus Notes