Clinton's Harvard message pushes citizen service
Former president Bill Clinton urged Harvard University's graduating seniors yesterday to serve others in an age of uncertainty.
"For all the opportunity, there's a lot of inequality," he told an estimated crowd of 20,000 gathered on one of Harvard's main yards during yesterday's Class Day ceremony. "The world is awash today with political, psychological conflicts, which require us to divide up and demean people."
Clinton took a more somber tone than recent speakers -- including Will Ferrell, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Al Franken -- at Harvard's Class Day, a relatively informal ceremony for undergraduates before today's commencement.
Apart from a few humorous asides, Clinton focused on darker topics, including poverty, the AIDS epidemic and other world health issues, and his relief work after the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
"Citizen service is a tradition in our country as old as Harvard and probably older than our government," Clinton said.
Although Clinton did not specifically mention Hillary Rodham Clinton, his wife and a presidential hopeful, he did joke about women being in charge.
"Maybe it's because you're about to name Drew Faust president," Clinton said of the reason students invited him to speak. "And I think women should run everything."
Clinton told the crowd, which included family and friends of seniors as well as Clinton supporters, that people share 99.9 percent of their genetic coding.
"The greatest temptation for you is thinking that the one-tenth of 1 percent is different . . . and that others deserve their fate," Clinton said.
Clinton's speech followed his appearances this year at a circuit of other schools, including the University of New Hampshire and Middlebury College in Vermont.
"It definitely was a tone shift" from other Class Day speeches, said senior Lina Tetelbaum, 21, of Forest Hills, N.Y. "But I think it was in keeping with what Class Day's all about. It's about us, the highs and the lows."
April Yee can be reached at ayee@globe.com. 