Author: Jessica Gelzer
On the evening of Monday, Oct. 5, Ambassador Derek Shearer and his students met President Bill Clinton before a speech on globalization at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. The 19 juniors and seniors in the Diplomacy and World Affairs seminar, American Grand Strategy, attended the speech and had the opportunity to ask questions of and take pictures with the former president.
This is not the first time Occidental students have met Clinton. Four years ago, President Clinton spoke to Shearer’s United States foreign policy seminar. “When I was speaking with him [Clinton] this summer, he said that he’d like to meet with my Oxy students when he had a chance to be in L.A.,” said Shearer.
Ambassador Shearer served under the Clinton administration from 1994 to 1997 as an economics official in the Commerce Department and then as Ambassador to Finland. In that time, he created the coordinated strategy in the Nordic-Baltic region and hosted the Clinton-Yeltsin summit in Helsinki, Finland. At Occidental, he is now a professor of the Diplomacy and World Affairs department and Director of Global Affairs.
Unable to come to campus due to time constraints, Clinton gave students tickets to hear his speech in Pasadena. Shearer’s assistant, Adriana Lim, arranged for students to personally meet and talk with him before the speech.
Students were excited to attend the event in Pasadena and private meeting beforehand. While it was a voluntary field trip, all students participated.
“Two of the men in the class decided to shave!” said Shearer.
“I was shocked when I first heard [we would meet President Clinton],” said Rosie Avolio-Toly (junior). “Professor Shearer said it somewhat nonchalantly and I did a double take.”
The 2,900 seat auditorium was sold out for the event. Clinton kicked off the Distinguished Speaker Series of Southern California, which runs from Oct. 2009 to May 2010. Speakers to follow include former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, broadcaster Dan Rather and Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Michael Beschloss.
Clinton spoke of the current degree of globalization and the negative consequences of inequality, mentioning continual discrimination against women and the widening income-gap in the United States.
“While we’re all connected, this is a very unequal world and in most places it’s growing more unequal,” said Clinton, as quoted in the Pasadena Star News.
Clinton briefly mentioned his recent trip to North Korea, stating how Al Gore asked for his involvement. But, before he could go he had to get permission from his wife and Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. After talking to the North Korean government, he debriefed the Obama administration.
He also spoke on health care reform and the urgency to reform the “embarrassing” system.
“I particularly found relevance in his assertion that we need to move above partisanship and politics. That political games are leading to our failure to pass comprehensive health care and education plans,” said Aviolio-Toly.
Beforehand, Clinton spoke and took pictures with Occidental students for about fifteen minutes in a small hallway that was blocked off.
A couple students asked questions and the conversation was on the same topics as the speech, centering around the need for better health care, a comprehensive plan in Afghanistan and climate change.
“He knew what he wanted to talk about and I think no matter what the questions would have been he would have still said what he wanted to,” said Krystal Zayas-Wright (senior). “He had a few sentences about climate control which he retold word for word after in the large speech, which of course made us all laugh. He is an excellent speaker and it was an amazing experience to stand right next to him as he talked to us.”
Shearer said, “I try to expose Oxy students to a wide variety of real-world players – policy makers including former Presidents, former Prime Ministers. Students get to ask questions, and to see possible future roles for themselves in life from President of the U.S. on down.”
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