Bill Clinton touts global citizenship in wide-ranging speech at UC Berkeley
By Matt Krupnick

Posted: 02/24/2010 06:35:09 PM PST
Updated: 02/24/2010 07:22:49 PM PST


BERKELEY — Former President Bill Clinton urged UC Berkeley students Wednesday to practice "communitarianism" by helping improve the lives of impoverished people around the world.

Speaking in front of more than 2,000 students and university employees in Zellerbach Auditorium, the 42nd president talked about global citizenship in his first speech on the Berkeley campus since 2002.

Barely glancing at the notes in front of him, Clinton touched on a wide range of topics: health care, education, sanitation, energy and climate change. He spoke at length about the importance of nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, in changing the world.

"There will always be some gaps in the social fabric," Clinton said. "The traditional role of the NGO has been to fill that space."

Clinton, who arrived and left to standing ovations, was brought to the campus by the university's Blum Center for Developing Economies, founded by University of California Regent Richard Blum. Blum is married to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and introduced Clinton on Wednesday.

The event also was a showcase for UC Berkeley's global poverty and practice minor, which has in just two years become the school's largest minor with 350 students. Most of those students took up the first few rows of the auditorium.

"It's a tremendous enthusiasm they have for social justice on a global level," said the department's chairwoman, Professor Ananya Roy. "President Clinton is a wonderful embodiment of those values."

Clinton highlighted the global topics that have been the focus of his Clinton Global Initiative, which has sponsored projects around the world to solve medical and social problems. The key to solving problems, he told students, is to answer the "how" question by finding ways to overcome obstacles.

"The future is in your hands," he said. "You have to be willing to put yourselves on the line."

The former president also told students they could help the United States by advocating for health care reforms — "We need to get it done," he said — "and by improving the higher-education system, which has fallen behind those in other countries.

In California, student fees are rising too quickly, he said, and community college students are unable to transfer to universities.

"I wouldn't have become president if I hadn't had a chance to go to college, and law school, and get a government-backed loan," Clinton said. "Never begrudge another nation's success. But we should be a leading force, and we should be a beacon of opportunity and change."



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