ARKADELPHIA, Ark. (ABP) — Former President Bill Clinton, delivering a speech as a “personal favor” for his former pastor March 27, encouraged students at Ouachita Baptist University to help solve the problems of a rapidly changing, increasingly interdependent world.
Clinton delivered the Arkadelphia, Ark., school's annual Birkett Williams Lecture as part of formal inauguration festivities for Rex Horne, who became the school's president last year. Prior to Ouachita, Horne was Clinton's pastor for 16 years at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock. Ouachita is the oldest school affiliated with the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
Clinton mostly steered clear of partisan politics, especially his wife's presidential bid, in his address, choosing instead to encourage students to think strategically about solving the problems of a globalized society.
“You need to be able to tell the difference between a headline and a trend line,” the former president said, bemoaning the media attention given to celebrity stories like the death of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith or the mental health of pop star Britney Spears.
Clinton said he has recently seen far more important news stories on chickens in three different countries around the world, including Romania. The chickens had one thing in common: All died from the bird flu, which has the potential to become the world's biggest pandemic since the AIDS crisis.
“The avian influenza story about the Romanian chicken is more important to your future … than the fight over poor Anna Nicole Smith's remains,” he said. “But it gets less coverage — one is a trend line and one is a headline.”
Clinton told students they should be able to answer five questions in order to be responsible world citizens.
“First, what is the fundamental nature of the 21st-century world?” he said. “Second, is it a good or a bad thing that the world is this way? Third, how would you like to change it? Fourth, what steps would be necessary to change it in that way? And fifth, who's supposed to do it?”
He offered his own answers in an effort to get students to evaluate their own thinking, he said.
In Clinton's estimation, the 21st-century world is defined by what he called “interdependence.” He said that encompasses not only economic globalization but also cultural exchange and political entanglements across national boundaries.
Individual societies, particularly in developed nations, have become more heterogeneous in ethnic, religious and cultural terms. And the information age's technological advances mean that average citizens are able to be far more aware of the rest of the world than they were decades ago.
“Now, I'm just as likely to be asked about the crisis in Darfur [when] in Arkansas … as [when] in New York or Liberia,” Clinton marveled.
But while such economic and cultural exchanges have benefited much of the world, many people are left behind, he said. Such inequality creates its own tensions.
So, in answer to his second question, the interdependent nature of the 21st-century world “is both good and bad,” Clinton said. “It simply means that we can't escape each other.”
Clinton noted the vast economic disparity between the world's wealthiest citizens and its poorest. Such disparities lead to a great physical and moral gulf between the two groups.
“Almost no one you will ever meet is at risk of dying from AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria or diseases from dirty water,” Clinton told the students. “But one in four of all the [world's] people who will die from wars, from famines, from natural disasters … die of these things that you don't expect anyone you know to die from.”
Economic disparity also contributes to social tensions — including terrorism, he noted.
Clinton also said the world's interdependence is, under current trends, “unsustainable.” He noted that the vast majority of the world's population growth — with an increase of 50 percent expected by 2050 — “will take place in the countries least able to sustain people.”
He also mentioned global warming, claiming that “nobody questions the reality of it anymore or that it is caused by human activity.” He said getting rid of dependency on fossil fuels for transportation won't be as difficult in the United States or the rest of the industrialized world as some would expect. But there are other goods — like plastics — that depend on petroleum and that won't be as easy to replace. Meanwhile, other resources are disappearing at a rapid rate.
“Now none of this is going to happen tomorrow, and all of it can be reversed, but we're crazy if we don't look at the trend lines,” he said.
Clinton said he'd like to change the 21st-century world by seeing it “move toward more integrated communities” on the local, national and international levels. He said such communities would be marked by a genuine sense of belonging, an equal ability to participate in the community's life, and a shared sense of responsibility for the community's success.
To get there, communities must have “a security policy.” But the definition of security in the modern world is broader than it was during the Cold War era, Clinton said.
“A security policy alone in an interdependent world will never be enough, for a simple reason: In an interdependent environment, you cannot, by definition, kill, jail or occupy everyone who's not for you,” Clinton said.
He said diplomacy involving “principled compromises” will be increasingly important in the interdependent world, as will ensuring that all the world's citizens have equal opportunities and voices.
What's more, he noted that U.S. disaster relief and aid to developing nations can do much to contribute to the world's security. American government and non-governmental organizations engendered much goodwill after the tsunami in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation.
Clinton also called on America — the world's wealthiest nation — to contribute more to global development. He touted the Millennium Development Goals created in 2000 to reduce global poverty and associated problems like infant mortality.
Getting the world to the point where more integrated communities can be established, Clinton said, is too big a task for any single group — individuals, private organizations or governments — to tackle alone.
“There will always be a gap for the foreseeable future between the way the world is and the way it ought to be, and we have to step into that gap,” he said.
But such action will require greater cooperation than U.S. politics have encouraged in recent years, he continued. “We are best when we're in the solutions business — not when we're fighting with each other; not when we're demonizing each other,” Clinton said, in closing.
Horne then asked Clinton selected questions submitted from Ouachita students. In response to a question on whether President Bush had done enough to solve the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, Clinton said Bush had been “fine on this rhetorically” but should push for more attempts to pass a stronger policy through the United Nations Security Council against the Sudanese government. He said U.S. officials shouldn't worry about shaming or embarrassing China, which has prevented tougher U.N. sanctions against Sudan.
Both Clinton and Horne noted that the ex-president had spent virtually his entire life prior to the White House within an hour's drive of the Ouachita campus — in Little Rock, Hope and Hot Springs, Ark. Asked how his Arkansas heritage affected his tenure as president, Clinton said it gave him empathy for all kinds of people and an acute understanding of America's racial problems.
He noted that his family didn't own a television until he was about 10 years old, so he grew up listening to stories. “My kinfolks could make the most normal people around us in Hope or Hot Springs sound like they were from Hollywood,” he said. “It gave me an extraordinary respect for people without regard to their station in life.”
Clinton also observed that he grew up a lower-middle-class white man in the South in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Given that background, he said, he considers it a miracle that he was not raised with a predisposition toward racial prejudice but instead had relatives supportive of desegregation.
“I came from the group of people in the South most likely to be adamantly against civil rights for African-Americans,” he said. “What are the odds that I would be born into a family like that and those are the lessons I would be taught in my socioeconomic group?”
Clinton's visit to Arkansas Baptists' flagship school did not come without controversy. Charlie Warren, editor of the Arkansas Baptist News, said he received several letters condemning, and a few defending, Clinton.
One critical letter, signed by Kevin White of Van Buren, Ark., appeared in the newspaper's March 8 issue. White wrote: “Of all the people to invite to an Arkansas Baptist school to speak, why Bill Clinton? Maybe it is because of his pro-abortion views, or maybe it is his great support for homosexual/gay/lesbian rights. Maybe it is his support for sex education and condom distribution within the public schools.”
Horne declined Warren's offer to respond formally to critics of his decision in the newspaper. But, in introducing Clinton to the students, he seemed to present one explanation.
“He is here because he loves Arkansas. He is here because he loves education. He is here as a personal favor to your [Ouachita] president,” Horne said, noting that the Birkett Williams lectures are intended to be thought-provoking. “We want to have difference-makers on campus, and we want those to challenge you to think critically but also to live redemptively.”
With those words, he introduced Clinton to an enthusiastic standing ovation from thousands of students, faculty and others present. The former president received a similar ovation upon completing his remarks.
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