everything now [LAUGHTER].

And then I figure

maybe its just because Robin Williams and Billy
Crystal turned you down [LAUGHTER]. But for
whatever reason, were here and I have had a
really good time [LAUGHTER].
Youve already heard most of what you need to
hear today, I think. But I want to focus for a
minute on the fact that these graduating classes
since 1968 have invited a few non-comedians. First
was Martin Luther King [APPLAUSE], who was
killed in April before. I remember that very well
because it was my senior year at Georgetown. He
was killed in April, before he could come and give
the speech. And Coretta came and gave the speech
for him here. And youve had Mother Teresa and
youve had Bono. What do they all have in
common? They are symbols of our common
humanity and a rebuke even to humorists
cynicism. Martin Luther King basically said he lived
the way he did because we were all caught in what
he called an inescapable web of mutuality. Nelson
Mandela, the worlds greatest living example of
that, I believe, comes from a tribe in South Africa,
the Xhosa, who call it ubuntu. In English, I am
because you are. That led Mother Teresa from

Albania to spend her life with the poorest people

on earth in Calcutta. It led Bono from his rock
stage to worry about innocent babies dying of
AIDS, and poor people with good minds who never
got a chance to follow their dreams. This is a really
fascinating time to be a college senior. I was
looking at all of you, wishing I could start over
again and thinking Id let you be president if you
let me be 21 [LAUGHTER].
Id take a chance on making it all over again if I
could do it again. But I think, just think what an
exciting time it is. All this explosion of knowledge.
Just in the last couple of weeks before I came
here, I read that thanks to the sequencing of the
human genome, the ongoing research has
identified two markers which seem to be high
predictors of diabetes, which, as you heard, is a
very important thing to me because its now
predicted that one in three children born in the
United States in this decade will develop diabetes.
We run the risk that we could be raising a first
generation of kids to live shorter lives than their
parents. Not because were hungry, but because
we dont eat the right things and we dont
exercise. But this is a big deal. Then right after

that, I saw that through our powerful telescopes

we have identified a planet orbiting one of the
hundred stars closest to our solar system, that
appears to have the atmospheric conditions so
similar to ours that life could actually be possible
there. Alas, even though its close to us in terms of
the great universe, its still 20 million light-years
away. Unreachable in the lifetime of any young
person. So unless theres a budding astrophysicist
in the class that wants to get married in a hurry
and then commit three generations and take
another couple with him, well have to wait for
them to come to us. Its an exciting time.
Its also exciting because of all the diversity. If you
look around this audience, I was thinking, I wonder
how different this crowd would have looked if
someone like me had been giving this speech 30
years ago. And how much more interesting it is for
all of us.
Its a frustrating time, because for all the
opportunity, theres a lot of inequality. Theres a lot
of insecurity and theres a lot of instability and
unsustainability. Half the worlds people still live on
less than two bucks a day. A billion on less than a
dollar a day. A billion people go to bed hungry

tonight. A billion people wont get a clean glass of

water today or any day in their lives. One in four of
all the people who die this year will die from AIDS,
TB, malaria and infections related to dirty water.
Nobody in America dies of any of that except
people whose AIDS medicine doesnt work
anymore, or people who decline to follow the
prescribed regime.
In the United States in the last decade, we have
had six years of economic growth, an all-time high
in the stock market, a 40-year high in corporate
profits. Workers are doing better every year with
productivity, but median wages are stagnant. And
theres actually been in all this so-called recovery a
4 percent increase in the percentage of people
working full-time falling below the poverty line,
and a 4 percent increase in the percentage of
people working, who with their families, have lost
their health insurance. Its an unequal time. Its an
uncertain, insecure time because were all
vulnerable to terror, to weapons of mass
destruction, to global pandemics like avian
influenza. We all make fun of the modern media
and culture all the time, but I thought it was
interesting in my little house in Chappaqua, where

I stay home alone rooting for the candidate

[LAUGHTER], I watch the evening news in the last
few months, and its interesting. Somehow,
clawing its way through the stories of the latest
crime endeavor in our neighborhood and whether
Britney Spears hair has grown out or not, I have
learned that there were chickens in Romania, India
and Indonesia identified with avian influenza and
that every chicken within three square miles, those
unfortunate ones, was eradicated. On the evening
news, competing with Britney Spears and crime.
Why? Thats a good thing because of the shared
insecurity we feel. You all saw it this week in all of
the stories about the terrorist attack being
thwarted in Kennedy airport.
Now remember a few months ago, everybody I
knew was shaking their head when we found out
that there was a plot in London to put explosive
chemicals in a baby bottle to make it look like
formula to evade the airport inspection. And every
time I ask somebody, I said did you feel a chill go
up and down your spine, they said yeah, they did.
Because they can imagine being on the airplane, or
in my case, I could imagine my daughter, who has
to travel a lot on her job, being on the airplane.

But heres what I want to tell you about that. The

inequality is fixable and the insecurity is
manageable. Were going to really have to go some
in the 21st century to see political violence claim
as many innocent lives as it did in the 20th
century. Keep in mind you had what, 12 million
people killed in World War I, somewhere between
15 and 20 million in World War II, six million in the
Holocaust, six million Jews, three million others.
Twenty million in the political purges in the former
Soviet Union between the two world wars and one
afterward. Two million in Cambodia alone. Millions
in tribal wars in Africa. An untold but large number
in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I mean, were
going to have to really get after it, if you expect
your generation to claim as many innocents from
political violence as was claimed in the 20th
century. The difference is you think it could be you
this time. Because of the interdependence of the
world. So yes, its insecure but its manageable.
Its also an unsustainable world because of climate
change, resource depletion, and the fact that
between now and 2050, the worlds supposed to
grow from six and a half to nine billion people, with
most of the growth in the countries least able to

handle it, under todays conditions, never mind

those. Thats all fixable, too. So is climate change a
problem? Is resource depletion a problem? Is
poverty and the fact that 130 million kids never go
to school and all this disease that I work on a
problem? You bet it is. But I believe the most
important problem is the way people think about it
and each other, and themselves. The world is
awash today in political, religious, almost
psychological conflicts, which require us to divide
up and demonize people who arent us. And every
one of them in one way or the other is premised on
a very simple idea. That our differences are more
important than our common humanity. I would
argue that Mother Teresa was asked here, Bono
was asked here, and Martin Luther King was asked
here because this class believed that they were
people who thought our common humanity was
more important than our differences [APPLAUSE].
So with this Harvard degree and your incredible
minds and your spirits that Ive gotten a little
sense of today, this gives you virtually limitless
possibilities. But you have to decide how to think
about all this and what to do with your own life in
terms of what you really think. I hope that you will

share Martin Luther Kings dream, embrace

Mandelas spirit of reconciliation, support Bonos
concern for the poor and follow Mother Teresas life
into some active service. Ordinary people have
more power to do public good than ever before
because of the rise of non-governmental
organizations, because of the global media culture,
because of the Internet, which gives people of
modest means the power, if they all agree, to
change the world. When former President Bush
and I were asked to work on the tsunami, before
we did the Katrina work, Americans, many of
whom could not find the Maldives or Sri Lanka on a
map, gave $1.2 billion to tsunami aid. Thirty
percent of our households gave. Half of them gave
over the Internet, which means you dont even
have to be rich to change the world if enough
people agree with you. But we have to do this.
Citizen service is a tradition in our country about
as old as Harvard, and certainly older than the
government.
Benjamin Franklin organized the first volunteer fire
department in Philadelphia 40 years before the
Constitution was ratified. When de Tocqueville
came here in 1835, he talked among other things

about how he was amazed that Americans just

were always willing to step up and do something,
not wait for someone else to do it. Now we have in
America a 1,010,000 non-governmental groups.
Not counting 355,000 religious groups, most of
whom are involved in some sort of work to help
other people. India has a million registered, over a
half a million active. China has 280,000 registered
and twice that many not registered because they
dont want to be confined. Russia has 400,000, so
many that President Putin is trying to restrict
them. I wish he wouldnt do that, but its a highclass problem. There were no NGOs in Russia or
China when I became president in 1993. All over
the world we have people who know that they can
do things to change, but again, I will say to all of
you, there is no challenge we face, no barrier to
having your grandchildren here on this beautiful
site 50 years from now, more profound than the
ideological and emotional divide which continues to
demean our common life and undermine our ability
to solve our common problems. The simple idea
that our differences are more important than our
common humanity.

When the human genome was sequenced, and the

most interesting thing to me as a non-scientist
we finished it in my last year I was president, I
really rode herd on this thing and kept throwing
more money at it the most interesting thing to
me was the discovery that human beings with their
three billion genomes are 99.9 percent identical
genetically. So if you look around this vast crowd
today, at the military caps and the baseball caps
and the cowboy hats and the turbans, if you look
at all the different colors of skin, all the heights, all
the widths, all the everything, its all rooted in onetenth of one percent of our genetic make-up. Dont
you think its interesting that not just people you
find appalling, but all the rest of us, spend 90
percent of our lives thinking about that one-tenth
of one percent? I mean, dont we all? How much of
the laugh lines in the speeches were about that? At
least I didnt go to Yale, right? [LAUGHTER] That
Brown gag was hilarious. [LAUGHTER]
But its all the same deal, isnt it? I mean, the
intellectual premise is that the only thing that
really matters about our lives are the distinctions
we can draw. Indeed, one of the crassest elements
of modern culture, all these sort of talk shows, and

even a lot of political journalism thats sort of

focused on this shallow judgmentalism. They try to
define everybody down by the worst moment in
their lives, and it all is about well, no matter
whatevers wrong with me, Im not that. And yet,
you ask Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and
Bono to come here. Nelson Mandelas the most
admired person in the world. I got tickled the other
night. I wound up in a restaurant in New York with
a bunch of friends of mine. And I looked over and
two tables away, and there was Rush Limbaugh
[LAUGHTER], whos said a few mad things about
me. So I went up and shook hands with him and
said hello and met his dinner guest. And I came
just that close to telling him we were 99.9 percent
the same. [LAUGHTER] But I didnt want to ruin
the poor mans dessert, so I let it go. [LAUGHTER]
Now were laughing about this but next month, Im
making my annual trek to Africa to see the work of
my AIDS and development project, and to
celebrate with Nelson Mandela his birthday. Hes
89. Dont know how many more hell have. And
when I think that I might be 99.9 percent the
same as him, I cant even fathom it. So I say that
to you, do we have all these other problems? Is

Darfur a tragedy? Do I wish America would adopt

sensible climate change regulation? Do I hate the
fact that ideologues in the government doctored
scientific reports? Do I disagree with a thousand
things that are going on? Absolutely. But it all flows
from the idea that we can violate elemental
standards of learning and knowledge and reason
and even the humanity of our fellow human beings
because our differences matter more. Thats what
makes you worship power over purpose. Our
differences matter more. One of the greatest
things thats happened in the last few years is
doing all this work with former President Bush. You
know, I ought to be doing this. Im healthy and not
totally antiquated. Hes 82 years old, still jumping
out of airplanes and still doing stuff like this. And I
love the guy. Im sorry for all the diehard
Democrats in the audience. I just do. [LAUGHTER]
And life is all about seeing things new every day.
And Ill just close with two stories, one from Asia,
one from Africa. And Im telling you all the details
dont matter as much as this.
After George Bush and I did the tsunami, we got
so into this disaster work that Kofi Annan asked
him to oversee the UNs efforts in Pakistan after

the earthquake, which you acknowledged today,

and asked me to stay on as the tsunami
coordinator for two years. So on my next to last
trip to Aceh in Indonesia, the by far the hardest hit
place, a quarter of a million people killed. I went to
one of these refugee camps where in the
sweltering heat, several thousand people were still
living in tents. Highly uncomfortable. And my job
was to go there and basically listen to them
complain and figure out what to do about it, and
how to get them out of there more quickly. So
every one of these camps elected a camp leader
and when I appeared, I was introduced to my
young interpreter, a young Indonesian woman, and
to the guy who was the camp leader, and his wife
and his son. And they smiled, said hello, and then I
looked down at this little boy, and I literally could
not breathe. I think hes the most beautiful child I
ever saw. And I said to my young interpreter, I
said, I believe thats the most beautiful boy I ever
saw in my life. She said, yes, hes very beautiful
and before the tsunami he had nine brothers and
sisters. And now theyre all gone.
So the wife and the son excused themselves. And
the father who had lost his nine children proceeded

to take me on a two-hour tour of this camp. He

had a smile on his face. He never talked about
anything but what the people in that camp needed.
He gave no hint of what had happened to him and
the grief that he bore. We get to the end of the
tour. Its the health clinic in the camp. I look up
and there is his wife, a mother who had lost nine
of her 10 children, holding a little bitty baby less
than a week old, the newest born baby in the
camp. And she told me, Im going to get in trouble
for telling this. She told me that in Indonesian
culture, when a woman has a baby, she gets to go
to bed for 40 days and everyone waits on her hand
and foot. [LAUGHTER] She doesnt get up, nothing
happens. And then on the 40th day, the mother
gets up out of bed, goes back to work doing her
life and they name the baby. So this child was less
than a week old. So this mother who had lost her
nine children is here holding this baby. And she
says to me, this is our newest born baby. And we
want you to name him. Little boy. So I looked at
her and I said through my interpreter, I said, do
you have a name for new beginning? And she
explained and the woman said something back and
the interpreter said yes, luckily for you, in

Indonesian the word for dawn is a boys name. And

the mother just said to me, we will call this child
Dawn and he will symbolize our new beginning.
You shouldnt have to meet people that lose nine of
their 10 children, cherish the one they got left, and
name a newborn baby Dawn to realize that what
we have in common is more important than what
divides us.
[APPLAUSE]
And I leave you with this thought. When Martin
Luther King was invited here in 1968, the country
was still awash in racism. The next decade it was
awash in sexism, and after that in homophobia.
And occasionally those things rear their ugly head
along the way, but by and large, nobody in this
class is going to carry those chains around through
life. But nobody gets out for free, and everyone
has temptations. The great temptation for all of
you is to believe that the one-tenth of one percent
of you which is different and which brought you
here and which can bring you great riches or
whatever else you want, is really the sum of who
you are and that you deserve your good fate, and
others deserve their bad one. That is the trap into
which you must not fall. Warren Buffetts just

about to give away 99 percent of his money

because he said most of it he made because of
where he was born and when he was born. It was
a lucky accident. And his work was rewarded in
this time and place more richly than the work of
teachers and police officers and nurses and doctors
and people who cared for those who deserve to be
cared for. So hes just going to give it away. And
still with less than one percent left, have more
than he could ever spend. Because he realizes that
it wasnt all due to the one-tenth of one percent,
and that his common humanity requires him to
give money to those for whom it will mean much
more.
In the central highlands in Africa where I work,
when people meet each other walking, nearly
nobody rides, and people meet each other walking
on the trails, and one person says hello, how are
you, good morning, the answer is not Im fine, how
are you. The answer translated into English is this:
I see you. Think of that. I see you. How many
people do all of us pass every day that we never
see? You know, we all haul out of here, somebodys
going to come in here and fold up 20-something
thousand chairs. And clean off whatever mess we

leave here. And get ready for tomorrow and then

after tomorrow, someone will have to fix that.
Many of those people feel that no one ever sees
them. I would never have seen the people in Aceh
in Indonesia if a terrible misfortune had not struck.
And so, I leave you with that thought. Be true to
the tradition of the great people who have come
here. Spend as much of your time and your heart
and your spirit as you possibly can thinking about
the 99.9 percent. See everyone and realize that
everyone needs new beginnings. Enjoy your good
fortune. Enjoy your differences, but realize that our
common humanity matters much, much more. God
bless you and good luck