Bill Clinton receives honorary doctorate from McGill

Former US President addresses crowd of 700 at private ceremony

By: James Gilman

Posted: 10/20/09

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton addressed an invitation-only crowd of 700 as he received an honorary doctorate from McGill last Friday.

The ceremony, which took place at the Centre Mont-Royal, was part of McGill's two-day Leadership Summit.

"While it is normally a custom of McGill University to confer honorary degrees at our spring and fall convocations, this special and unique event, as part of our leadership summit, allows us to - and we're delighted to - award this degree today," explained Provost Anthony Masi.

Although Clinton usually charges hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking engagements, he was not paid by McGill for his participation in Friday's ceremony. The invitation was made to Clinton by McGill alumnus Victor Dahdaleh, a wealthy businessman and Clinton family friend.

Before delivering his speech, a robed Clinton was honoured by McGill leaders, including Chancellor Arnold Steinberg and Principal Heather Munroe-Blum, and officially presented with his honorary degree.

"Both during his term in office and since leaving it [Clinton] has worked diligently, just as we do at McGill, to share knowledge and inspire others to achieve solutions to real world problems," said Steinberg in his opening remarks. "Today he joins an outstanding roster of influential figures who have been recognized with honorary degrees from McGill."

Clinton is the second U.S. President to receive an honorary degree from McGill, the other being president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who received one in 1944 along with British prime minister Winston Churchill.

Other notable recipients of this honour include United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarsjöld (1956), Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson (1959), and the writer Elie Wiesel (1994).

In her introduction, Munroe-Blum described Clinton as "a global leader and human rights champion of extraordinary breadth and vision," and highlighted his accomplishments in government as well as in the fields of humanitarianism and philanthropy.

"A simply brilliant communicator on the world stage, president Clinton has dedicated over 30 years to the highest form of public service, and to the advancement of social justice," she said. "He has advocated powerfully and compassionately for progressive education programs and universal access to health care, [and] he has fought to end poverty, disease, and racial discrimination."

Clinton began his political career after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973, losing a race for a seat in the Arkansas state legislature in 1974, before being elected the state's Attorney-General in 1976 and then governor two years later. In 1992 Clinton won the Democratic presidential primaries, and later that year his meteoric political rise was completed when he defeated president George H. W. Bush in that year's election to become the 42nd President of the U.S.

Since leaving the White House in 2001, Clinton has dedicated much of his time to philanthropy and humanitarian advocacy. He founded the William J. Clinton Foundation, which seeks to address global issues as wide-ranging as climate change, HIV/AIDS, and global poverty. He has served as the UN's Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and in May of this year he was appointed UN Special Envoy for Haiti.

Clinton began his talk by thanking McGill for the honorary degree, and praising the university.

"I am profoundly honoured to be here at this magnificent university and to be honoured in the way president Roosevelt was," he said. "I am particularly grateful for the priority McGill has placed on making serious commitments to broadly shared prosperity, sustainability in the face of climate change, reaping the progress and promise of science and technology, promoting wellness and health, and trying to deal with the amazing array of diversity that exists in our countries and throughout the world that has to be both respected and reconciled."

The former president also found time to praise Canada, noting that Munroe-Blum suggested that he seems to share Canadian values.

"There were many occasions when leaders of the Republican Party suggested I might want to move to Canada," he said "And many when I thought it was not a bad idea."

He even touched on the 1995 Quebec referendum.

"You [Canada] even have occasional votes about whether you ought not to be together," he said. "I'm glad you didn't get a divorce."

In his speech Clinton touched on a number of topics, but his main focus was on global challenges and how to respond to them. Clinton called for a "communitarian consciousness" in order to better deal with issues such as poverty, climate change, and disease, and emphasized the importance of "moving forward together."

"I'm not calling for world government, I'm just saying we have to have a world consciousness," he said. "And in the absence of it we will not make good decisions."

He added that "the reason that a communitarian consciousness is needed today is that the whole world is interdependent to an extent it's never been before."

Clinton also discussed the Clinton Global Initiative, and the many students that take part in the annual meeting. He also praised McGill student and science senator Andrew Ling - a participant in the CGI - who founded Niagara United, an organization that fundraises for the United Way and promotes charities associated with it.

"I had no idea at all that he was going to mention me," said Ling. "My jaw dropped, I was really surprised."

"I really enjoyed my time at the Clinton Global Initiative," Ling added. " I met a lot of fascinating people, and I enjoyed hearing about the many initiatives different students across the United States were working on."

Clinton finished his speech with a call for everyone to strive toward a better world by embracing the communitarian mentality he had described.

"We should be proud of our own distinct differences, but our common humanity has got to drive every single important calculation of the 21st century," he said. "We are going to have to stumble into the future together."