GENEVA, N.Y. (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton told graduating students at their commencement that they must decide whether “our common humanity is more important or our differences matter more.”
Clinton spoke Sunday at the ceremony for Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, about 40 miles west of Syracuse.
Clinton, who received an honorary degree, focused his remarks around diversity, saying it was a strength but that the differences between people were vastly outweighed by what all people share as human beings. He told students they didn’t need an America that focused more on “us and them” instead of trying to expand the definition of who fell in the category of “us.”
Clinton told the graduates there were no permanent victories or permanent defeats, only lives of “permanent possibilities.”
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